Hey EF Voice, I posted this question outside of thr master thread for questions. Wondering if you could take a look, and get back to me:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...formation.html

Hello kwildnj. To answer your questions, a flight number is required to get flight specific status comments so we have it on the flight specific results page. Also, there is no way to get "more" text from the UA flight status response, despite what the UA response says, as the GDS doesn't support that command.

+1 from me as well. As EF Voice noted, other sites provide fare alerts, however if EF could implement this it would add value to subscriptions. Only they can evaluate the pro's and con's fully though.

I have been looking for a site that would alert me when there's a new

• fare
• under a certain cost
• on specific airlines (BA/IB/AA)
• in business class
• on a specific citypair

with no avail.

I found plenty of sites that who would alert me when every single new economy fare (including junk airlines or airlines I couldn't care about) or lower price comes up on a citypair (farecompare, bing travel, lots of others). I also found sites where I can put specific flights and it will alert me when the cost for those specific flights drops below a threshold. However, I am still to find a service that will alert me on what I need, which is pretty much similar to the one of bingocallerb22: in his case, he wants to be alerted whenever there's a cheaper

• fare
• in business class
• on carrier LA
• on citypair NYC-LIM or NYC-GYE.

For the Flight Alert tool, ExpertFlyer states that it runs your query and checks for availability that meets your criteria "periodically". Can someone here answer me--how often is "periodically"? I'm considering taking out a premium subscription, but would like to know the answer before I plunk down the annual fee. Thanks!

EF is cagey about the answer to this. The most they have ever admitted to is that the frequency goes up as the date approaches. I suspect this is because the automated queries cost them money, so they'd rather not admit how infrequently they are actually checking.

In the past people have reported finding availability that was not reported via the automated queries for several hours. This leads to the suspicion that at several weeks/months out, the frequency they check is only once a day (or less).

Our alerts run anywhere from several times a day to once every few minutes, depending on the parameters of the alert and how close it is to the time and departure of the flight.

That is not the case, as we have stated many times before, the minimum check interval is at least a few times a day. Flight/Seat Alerts are designed for people that don't have the time to constantly check inventory. However if you were to do so manually, you may find availability before the next scheduled alert check, but that isn't the problem the alerts were designed to solve.

VAC
 

Can passenger type "VAC" (Visit Another Country) be added to the drop-down passenger type pick list at http://www.expertflyer.com/air/fareInformation.do?

It would be useful for situations such as my response at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/18568078-post3.html

Sure thing, it will be included in the next release.

The VAC passenger type has now been added to our Fare Information search. This is another ExpertFlyer exclusive feature.

AA X/R Class Update
 

American Airlines has informed us that as of tomorrow June 5th, AA will be removing the ability to view X & R upgrade inventory which will affect channels, including ExpertFlyer.com.

Here is the official statement from American:

As such, starting tomorrow X & R classes will be removed from the AA Award & Upgrade search. In addition, any Active Flight Alert for X or R on an AA flight will be changed to Expired.

Please note this change does not affect A/C inventory, only X/R. There is currently a thread in the AA forum on the subject here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ty-x-r-aa.html

Thank you for your understanding in this matter and continued support of ExpertFlyer.com

No award info for CX, JL, NH?
 

While searching for ORD-NRT awards, I noticed that many major carriers are missing, including Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines and All Nippon. These are rather major players to/from Asia and I was surprised. Are these not available, too expensive, or some other reason?

I'm surprised that your surprised; are you new to ExpertFlyer? When you are creating your account, there is a nice link that clearly allows you to see what is available and what is not:

http://www.expertflyer.com/frequent-flyer-programs

At the above link simply review the "Airline Awards & Upgrades" section and then select the "click here" link to see a comprehensive list of all information available to you.

I can understand being disappointed, but armed with the information that EF clearly makes available prior to creating your account you should not have been "surprised" by the lack of items you called out.

It's probably very safe to assume that EF would love to offer the information you have called out if there was a viable business pathway for them to do so; they don't artificially restrict information.

Regards

I believe aktchi understood that EF doesn't have access to that information, especially due to his/her last sentence ("Are these not available, too expensive, or some other reason?"). I think this question is similar to asking why your local grocery doesn't carry a popular brand of soda. The store probably would if they could, but it would be interesting to know why they don't. Same thing here--like you said, EF would probably like to show that information, but they don't, and aktchi is curious why.

Not all airlines make their award inventory available to us. If you which for a certain airlines awards to be added to ExpertFlyer, you should contact the frequent flyer department of that airline and share your opinion with them about how helpful that would be.