It helps to know what browser your using, so please email us so we can help you troubleshoot. Again, if you your browser or a proxy server is caching old cookie or page information, you will have that problem as the session cookie expires when you close your browser.

Always with Safari on MacOS X. Wouldn't the fact that one logs in refresh all session cookies? That's what's puzzling, seeing the error as the response to a login page. As for closing my browser, well, that's what the every three-month reboot is for, right?

No, a web session is separate from if you are logged in or not. Every time you visit a website that is a "session", even with websites that don't require you to login. It is inherit to web servers that have some code processing back end (PHP, Java, .Net, Ruby, etc). The session is maintained in a cookie that lives as long as the browser is running. If your login to ExpertFlyer times out before you close the browser, when you then click the first link or button in the EF browser window, you are prompted to login again as that session no longer has a valid user logon associated with it. That's the way it's always worked and hasn't changed recently.

One caveat that we know about is if the page that you leave open and time out on is an SSL page (like the My Account page or Login Help page) you may have to login twice. The easy work around for that is to go to the home page before you login again to reset the session. However since those are pages you wouldn't regularly use or see, that shouldn't be an issue.

If you need more specific technical support please email us.

I am sorry, but I am using expertflyer.com for the first time. I am searching the business award availability from dtw-lhr, but I don't see booking code O listed in the details below. Please help me understand how to find it. Thanks.

Flight Stops Depart Arrive Aircraft Frequency
Reliability Available Classes
(Click on the class code for details)
0 Connections
DL () 18 0 DTW
06/18/13 10:20 PM LHR
06/19/13 11:05 AM 764
Daily
90% / 93m J9 C9 D9 I9 S9 Y9 B9 M9 H9 Q9 K9 L9 U9 T9 E0
0 Connections
KL (DL) 6078 0 DTW
06/18/13 10:20 PM LHR
06/19/13 11:05 AM 764
Daily
90% / 93m J9 C9 D9 I9 Z9 Y9 B9 M9 U9 K9 H9 L9 Q9 T9 N9 R9 V9

Awards and upgrades can be searched via the Award & Upgrade search tool, not the Flight Availability tool. There all of the supported airlines and award/upgrade classes are listed, also listed here: http://www.expertflyer.com/sessionlessClassList.do

For DL, ExpertFlyer supports upgrade inventor but not award inventory.

Thanks.

So, expertflyer.com does not support DL O class? I am looking for DL business award availability.

Affirmative.

Oh well, I just wasted my money!

EF offers a 5 day trial and a public list of airlines they support awards for as mentioned by EFV. You shouldn't have wasted anything.

Not sure if you've already tried it, or what you mean by "proper notifications", but I've never had a problem with the FT notification system: Thread Tools (upper right) / Subscribe to this Thread / Notification Type: Instant Email (or whatever you prefer).

Also, the MyFlyerTalk link on the upper left will show you all of your subscribed threads in reverse chronological order of most recent post.

If you've found glitches in the notification system or have other suggestions, please do post them in the Technical Issues Forum so that all FTers can benefit. :)

Not happy - I have a saved alert for R>0 for EWR-HKG. Two seats showed up this afternoon but the only reason I knew that was because I checked the UA website. I bought my ticket and used my GPU - there is still at least one R remaining now but I still have not received my EF notice, even though an earlier post by EF says they check several times a day. I wonder what I am paying for:confused:

I'm sorry you're not happy TheCount2, however we can't help you unless we know who you are so we can look up the alert that you created. You haven't emailed support nor have you given enough information in your post to look up your alert, such as the departure date.

What you are paying for is a service that has worked successfully and consistently since it was launched in 2005 (Flight Alerts was launched in 2006). It's possible the alert was created for the wrong date or class by mistake, or that you created a Seat Alert when you meant to create a Flight alert. You can use the Quick Check feature on the Saved Alert page to see if the system sees the open R inventory. If so, then it's just a matter of time before you are sent an email. If not, then the alert may have been setup incorrectly.

Either way, the Flight/Seat Alert system is meant to check the inventory when you can't. If you still check the inventory manually and find availability before our system does, that's great, there is nothing wrong with that.

While EF may have worked successfully and consistently since 2005, the facts are that I did have my alerts properly set up, and I as I was in my office I checked UA several times after buying my ticket and the website always showed R>=1. I did not get an alert email from EF until yesterday afternoon, which was more than 24 hours after I first saw R2 and bought my ticket, and also after I exchanged emails with customer service. When I wrote to EF customer service yesterday your response was that R=0 so I did not get an alert - although I checked just before and just after receiving such email from customer service and both times R=2.

If your initial response had simply said there may be some glitch due to UA newly reenabling seat availability, and you would run some tests to check your system, I would have accepted that as your explanation.

No, we wouldn't have said that as our systems were not dependent on nor affected by UA newly re-enabling fare class availability, we don't want to just make something up. We monitored the inventory of that flight and saw that UA kept changing the availability between 0 and not 0, so that was the cause of the issue. However since you did receive the alert notification email, we know that the system is working.

UA Awards Restored
 

We're happy to inform you that United Award searching and alerting (O,I,X,FN,ZN,HN classes) has been restored in ExpertFlyer.

• A Quantity must be specified in the search and the results will show if that amount of inventory is available on a flight (Yes or No).
• All future dated Flight Alerts for these classes have been reactivated.
• All Saved Queries for these classes will now work again. A Quantity of 1 will be assumed for Saved Queries that did not specify one.

If you encounter any issues, please let us know. We are also working to restore numerical UA search functionality. Thank you for your support.


Note: We are aware of a bug that may return an error when searching for an award after clicking on Refine Query. We will push out a fix tomorrow.