Do you have a specific example of a 77N (flight number/date)?

Are you saying that you did a Seat Map search and you got two different equipment types for the same flight depending on which version of EF you were using? Or that the equipment type was different in the Seat Map vs the Flight Details or Flight Availability search? Can you list a specific example?

Back to RBD Chart 2:

EF shows a ZERO fare on PK from KHI to MEX. The fare is MPM and has no flight restrictions. The only information available now is that the travel should be via Pacific.

Unlikely anyone needs it (miles, origin, economy class etc), however there are more expensive fares with same rules, so there is a chance that the fare is bookable.

So if anyone is able to find booking classes for secondary carriers (stored in RBD Chart 2 of the fare) then that would give us the answer if the fare is bookable.

Domestic US fares
 

It looks like some information is still missing in fare screen:

For example, OW fares from NYC to MIA show a number of cheap Y-UP type fares which are not bookable (and this fares are shown as 'B' = business). Unfortunately the routing rules for US-domestic fares do not show applicable booking classes, which I think may answer the question in this case (the primary booking class [shown on main fare search screen] for Y-UP fares is usually amended by other letters in routing rules).

Any ideas if this is resolvable?

There is no RBD2 chart for that fare, so it's probably an error in the fare submission by PK. The fact that it's $0 would also indicate that.

What makes you think the Y-Up fares are non-bookable? The booking class doesn't show because it isn't returned to us. It isn't returned to us for any US domestic fare however for non YUP fares we cheat and use the first letter of the Fare Basis. Once we switch sources for Routing Rules, the booking class will be in there.

Is this flight on an international route and on a 777? UA has been doing this in some cases because they think they might put the new configuration 777 on that route but aren't yet positive it will happen.

Nope. This was a domestic flight on a two-cabin aircraft.. I was trying to view F, but received that error..

Sorry, missed these follow ups.

The aircraft is the same, but in different places I get different levels of specificity.

I.e., on flight info, it shows 777 (true). On the seatmaps on the mobile seat, it shows 77N (which is of course a 777 but a subclass).

For ex, try BA139 on 9/23. The seatmap on the mobile site shows 77C. "Flight details" shows 777

Depart: LHR
Depart Time: 09/23/10 11:05 AM
Depart Terminal: 5
Arrive: BOM
Arrive Time: 09/24/10 12:40 AM
Arrive Terminal: 2 INTERNATIONAL

Airline: BA
Equipment: 777

Number: 139
Meal: M, M, M
Time: 9h 05m
Miles: 4469
Reliability: 57% / 22m

I just provided one. It's difficult though as I've only noticed this on some particular 77C/77N/777 flights on BA. And < 24 hours before the flight, the seatmaps shut down so I can't get any more data. So the sweet spot is 3 days-24 hours.

Apparently ExpertFlyer's non-mobile seatmaps omit displaying the aircraft information, which the mobile site does. BA is one of those airlines that put a IATA generic aircraft code with schedules and availability, but displays a configuration-specific aircraft code (of their making) with their seat maps.

Completely agree that having this configuration-specific aircraft code display on the main (non-mobile) website would be very useful.

CX is another airline that uses configuration-specific aircraft codes extensively, and am sure that there are others.

This is because when the airline files the Flight Details information with the GDS (which is also returned for availability queries) it files a generic equipment code. Whereas a seat map query gets all of its data in real time from the airline host, where they may return a different equipment code then the one originally filed.


The regular site has always displayed aircraft information, still does. The problem is that we didn't have the equipment codes 77C or 77N in our database and the seat map search on the regular site does a look-up on the codes to display the aircraft name. The mobile site however just shows the returned equipment code to save space.

We just added the two equipment codes to the database so problem solved. If anyone finds another equipment code that we may have missed, send us an email to [email protected] and let us know so it can get added faster, thank you.

I've seen a 77Z before as well.

Wow. Your commitment to customers and your taking immediate action based on customer feedback is impressive. You will go far.


This is an interesting way of doing things; airlines make up configuration-specific aircraft codes all the time, so you're bound to be always missing some. Plus, the way it's currently implemented, you're still not showing the pertinent information: a query on the site made right now for the seatmap of the above flight shows a label of "Aircraft: Boeing 777", yet there is no subtype (which is what is of interest here, since the seats are a generation apart from other subtypes). Wouldn't it be far simpler to simply pass through the 3-letter code on the non-mobile site as well, such as "Aircraft: 77C (Boeing 777)" (or, in case you don't have it in your database, simply "Aircraft: 77C")?

The problem, as it is, is not solved!

This is very inefficient way of doing things; if you want to keep a database of all airline-specific non-IATA configuration-specific aircraft codes, you probably shouldn't rely on the small percentage of customers that care enough to let you know when you miss one. A more scalable way is to have your system email customer service whenever it finds that an airline has returned a code that is not in the database, so that customer service can research what it is and update the database thusly minimizing the amount of incorrect/missing data you're displaying to customer. Case in point, the BA-77C code has been in use for at least a month (if not more) and you're fixing your database only now, with much delay.

Thanks, we added that as well.

Thank you.

Most airlines use the various specific equipment types that are universally used across the industry, not made up ones. Eg 738 and 739 vs just 737. Those we have specific descriptions for: eg "Boeing 737-800".

BA appears to be making up their own. If you happen to have a better description for us to use for these made up aircraft codes then let us know and we'll use them, this way everyone can know what the differences are.

It might be simpler for you because you understand the differences, but other people may not. The best thing to do is to get proper descriptions of each sub-type and use them, this way everyone understands what they're looking at.

What we will also do is display the equipment code if no specific equipment code type is in our database, so either way it's covered. I thought it did that already but I was mistaken. Your suggestion is good, maybe we'll do that as well.

That's why we prefer an email to [email protected] if the issue is a bug or lack of information in a display, such as this, as we can make many changes immediately. As BobbySteel said "Sorry, missed these follow ups."

While I like the site, am happy I paid for it, and will continue to use it -- I have to say that every email I've sent you via your preferred method has elicited the same response: "we'll think about it."

So I suspect that posting on FT is more likely to succeed in getting changes to happen!

We evaluate all suggestions equally, we can't implement all of them for various reasons, but do what we can.

We are about to work on changes to the seat map system anyway so we'll do this as well. My post wasn't meant to be ambiguous about it.

Thanks for the fast follow up here Voice. I've been a member for probably 2 years now and it's my best $100 a year in travel spending!

I'm new to expertflyer and have been playing around with searches for awards under "flight availability." I noticed that awardnexus.com is showing some seats that appear as unavailable on EF for SQ. For example, searching the last two weeks of October in Economy or Business shows some seats on certain days using ANA via awardnexus.com but no O, I, or X seats appear on EF. What am I missing? Thanks!

All award searches should be done using the Award & Upgrade search tool. The list of airlines that are supported by ExpertFlyer for Awards & Upgrades are here: http://www.expertflyer.com/sessionlessClassList.do but is also listed in the Award & Upgrade search tool itself. We do not have SQ award information at this time.

If you have any other questions about using ExpertFlyer, please contact our help desk directly at [email protected] Thanks.

This reminds me, why doesn't EF have award searched for CX and JL? They are available on a free site, so the data can't be difficult to obtain. What am I missing?

We get our data directly from the airline reservation systems (GDS) and airlines don't always publish the same information via the GDSs that are on their websites. Conversely, sometimes data is available via the GDSs that aren't available at all on airline websites, like AA and DL upgrade inventory.

Also, accessing data via the GDS allows us to show actual award class inventories instead of a yes/no answer for a number specified in the search. It also allows us to provide services that we wouldn't otherwise be able to like Flight and Seat Alerts.

Any way to lookup award availability on AA partner airlines - BA or IB? When I select J it shows me J7 for a BA codeshare flight but the AA phone agents dont see this as bookable.

Example BA 6445 LHR-JNB 12/18/2010 - shows J7.

That is because an Award/Upgrade search is for that airline only, not partner airlines or code shares. That's why it states at the top of the results page:

**NOTE** The Award & Upgrade information is only valid for flights flown on the searched airline (not code shares) and only when using miles/points/certificates from the searched airline, not partner airlines.

That aside, AAnytime awards (which is what J is) are not usually valid on partner airlines AFAIK, just SAAver awards. To find out regular award inventory on AA partner airlines, search BA.com or Qantas.com.au using their partner award search tools, or call AA directly.

ExpertFlyer Improvements and Enhancements
 

Over the last few weeks we've been rolling out some new enhancements and improvements to ExpertFlyer. Tonight we sent out an email to our membership with the details:

Major improvements to the American Airlines Award & Upgrade search:

• Now there is no need to do multiple searches with different times of day to see all the flights that have Award or Upgrade availability. Later flights, with availability, will now display, even if earlier flights do not have availability. If no later flights show, then there is no availability for that date.
• A maximum of 12 segments are returned instead of the previous 6.
• When there are more then 12 non-stop or direct flights available, a Get More Results link will appear at the bottom of the flight results allowing you to see the additional flights with 1 click .
• You can now specify connecting airports for an Award & Upgrade search on AA.

We have also added Award and/or Upgrade searching for these new airlines:

• Aerolineas Argentinas (AR)
• Frontier Airlines (F9)
• LOT - Polish Airlines (LO)
• Martinair (MP)
• Tarom (RO)
• Transaero Airlines (UN)
• Turkish Airlines (TK)
• VLM Airlines (VG)
• Air Canada (AC) - Not only have we added Coach Award availability, but both Coach and Business Award availability are now searchable a full 355 days in advance via the Award & Upgrade search tool. (As such, also with with Flight Alerts 355 days out.)

Other recent improvements:

• Flight Status Comments have been improved and now show all the flight comments when applicable for AA flights.
• Qantas Australia domestic flight seat maps are now available for users who have elite frequent flyer status either on Qantas or any of its partner airlines (such as Oneworld). Enter your Frequent Flyer number on the Preferences tab of the My Account page to take advantage of this.
• El Al (LY) Seat Maps are now available
• British Airways Flight Availability information is now available a full 355 days in advance. Just specify BA as the only airline in the search.
• A new “Show Flights with No Availability” toggle filter is now available under "Filter Search Results" on the Flight Availability and Award & Upgrade result pages. This will allow you to hide flights with no availability in the search results.
• We have also increased the maximum allowed number of Flight & Seat Alerts from 20 to 30 for our Premium subscribers.

We hope you find these ongoing improvements helpful in your travels, and we're planning even more improved and new features between now and the end of the year. Thanks for your support.

-EFV

BA seat maps don't seem to work anymore.

We tested several and they are working fine. Must have been a momentary issue with BA. The best way to report a suspected outage in the future is by emailing us at [email protected]

Don't forget that BA seatmaps always are pulled by BA around 24 hours before the flight. Before that they're working fine for me.

Hello-

I'm using the trial and loving it, but a couple of quick questions:

1) How often are the fare alerts running? Previously I've been using KVS every day to validate no seats (award travel) have become available on my preferred flight. Now I've setup an alert (UA), for a trip in early January. Is the expert flyer frequency greater or less than my current once-a-day tactic?

2) I've noticed a lot of weirdness with LX award availability where I try and look up flights, and it acts as if there's not a flight there at all (I can then validate it in KVS). Is this common? (Case to repro: ZRH-JNB on DEC27 in C)

3) Any hope for Continental awards?

Thanks!

Great! Glad to hear. The checks are anywhere from several times a day to several times an hour, depending on how close the departure date/time is. So yes, it's much better then manual one-a-day checking.
If there is no award availability on any flight for a specific class that day, LX won't return any flights in the GDS, not even with zeros, just the message "NO SERVICE BETWEEN RQSTD CITIES" which we show as our standard No Availability message.

Are you comparing to ANA availability or M&M? Are you saying that you see the flight and it's showing zero, or that you see the flight and it's showing available awards for the flight? You can add an "other" class code like Y to the search to see the schedule.

FYI, the LX award availability on ExpertFlyer is from the LX/M&M point of view, not from the ANA/Star Alliance partner point of view. They can be different.

That's up to Continental.

Dear EF,

SU is changing the rules applicable to its fares effective 18 Oct.

I would appreciate if you could check if stopovers are permitted for the lowest RT fare (LPX) for a sample route LON-LED [Zone 2 - Zone 2 is the case in point] => to do that ticketing date on/after 18 OCT should be specified (it looks like the new rule is already active/ available).

Thanks a lot!

Please email the request to [email protected] and we'll see if we can look it up, thanks.

Does anyone have problems viewing seat maps for QF via EF? Haven't been able to load QF seat maps for the past week.

New feature request
 

Having been an EF user for quite a while now, I am pretty happy with it...however, one thing I would really like to see is a "stay logged on" option. I appreciate that this not desirable when using EF from a shared or public computer, but I almost always use it from my own laptop, and having to log on repeatedly becomes a PITA. By all means, make this reasonably difficult to set so people do not turn it on accidentally, but it would be a real boon for a lot of us I'm sure.

This feature request isn't really new. It was requested and discussed a year ago in this very thread. The conclusion is that basically:

EF is going to stay this way for a host of questionable reasons
KVSTool is an alternative software tool that avoids this issue entirely

Understood. There are a few reasons why we do it this way, some may not agree with them, but at the end of the day if something happens because of it, we're the ones liable. That being said, maybe there is a middle ground we can come up with. FYI, even if we did have an auto-login, there still would be a 45 min session timeout as we can't hold sessions (and the resource usage that comes with it) open indefinitely. In the meantime, we're focusing our limited development resources on adding new features.


QF seat maps are working correctly, if you are still having an issue please email [email protected] with the exact seat map search you are having an issue with.

What technology does FlyerTalk, a site with over 250,000 registered users and over 25,000 active users, use that allows them to remember my login session for several weeks?

A cookie, like every other website. However our back end is much, much more complicated then a bulletin board website, and it's a business decision as much as a technical one. Just because you think something is simple, doesn't mean it is (as our developers like to remind us) or doesn't lead to other unintended issues. We will look at it and determine what the best use of our resources is regarding the matter.

There is a huge disconnect in what users are asking for (keep me logged in) and what EF Voice is saying can't be done.

Of course the logical fallacy is when the jump occurs from "keep me logged in" to "keep an active session on the server," which no user has asked for. Plenty of sites much larger and more complex than EF have figured out how to do it. It's very difficult to believe this request is technically impossible. It seems much more likely that EF either completely misunderstands the request, deems it too expensive to justify, or is simply unwilling to adjust its service to accommodate its paying users.

You're misunderstanding my response. "keep me logged in" vs "keep an active session on the server" are not two different things, they are technically linked and changing one requires us to change the other to ensure continuity and to not introduce user confusion when, say for example, a Refine Query link is clicked and a blank search form is shown instead because the users session information has timed out, or they are sent back to the page you see after login, etc.

If you require a more technical response, feel free to email us at [email protected] and we can talk about this off-line since you can't really know what can/can't be done or how without knowing how our system works. Nothing is "impossible", everything is just a trade-off or a matter of priority, as is the norm for a small business.

However, don't think for a moment that we don't accommodate requests for tweaks and new features when possible, we do it all the time, and it's a big factor in our product road map. Flight Alerts, Seat Alerts, the Mobile site, numerous tweaks to the UI - all user requests. The latest user request we accommodated is showing both the equipment code we receive from the airline as well as our description of it for Seat Map responses. This way you know which equipment sub-type an aircraft is for airlines that make up their own equipment codes (like BA). We released that two days ago.

Please send all feature requests/suggestions to [email protected] so we can have them saved for proper evaluation. Thank you.

There is a big non-technical difference between the two sites. FT is a free-service with no information of inherent value about the user stored in their profile. EF is a subscription based service with sensitive information about the user accessible to one who has access to the logged in account. To me, the requirement to log in every time is a security feature I welcome regardless of whatever "back-end" technical issues there may or may not be. My online bank, credit card sites, AA.com, and other sites that hold sensitive information, do not offer the option to keep me logged in and will in fact time out and log me off after some short period of inactivity.