payam81

Understood, thanks for the explanation.

MSPeconomist

DL apparently is in the process of "aligning" their fare class codes with AF/KLM. In particular, upgrade fare classes will be given new letters, for example O for upgrade into business class inventory. There's a thread on this that appeared in the DL forum today, starting with someone having received an email from DL about the changes.

Will EF make information about the new upgrade class(es) available for us to see and search? When will these changes be implemented?

Thank you.

anabolism

Can you elaborate a little on these two kinds of searches? Does the GDS cache data and use it for non-direct searches? (I had been under the impression that the airlines themselves used GDS to maintain flight data and hence updated the GDS in real time, hence queries against the GDS would normally be accurate, not counting very small time windows when a query and an update happen at or nearly at the same time.)

ExpertFlyer Voice

Airlines can participate in the GDSs at many different "levels". The higher levels result in the GDS asking the airline for last seat availability with each request, the lower ones use slightly cached info, where a direct connect availability search is done by EF in the cases where we know it results in better information.

Beyond that we cannot comment on specific airline-GDS relations or setups. As always any questions about specific availability searches should be emailed to [email protected] for the best response.

ExpertFlyer Voice

Thank you for your question. First, as a general matter and general note to all, if you would like to get our attention about an urgent matter, the best way to do so is to email us at [email protected] We see that this question has been asked in no less then 4 threads today. Posting the same question that someone asked in one thread in a different thread won't make us see it any faster and will probably delay our response. Send us an email, and if it's something we need to make a public statement about, after we know the answer we will post it in this thread. Thank you.

Now, on to the issue at hand. Good news, as it turns out we do have access to the new RU/OU classes. We did some testing and we see them replace V/X for flights from Jan 30 and after. We have to make some tweaks to our back end to support 2-letter class codes for DL, but we should have an update pushed either later this week or early next week.

See Delta's statement to travel agents here: https://www.worldagentdirect.com/del...ntCode=FCA_IMP and the FT thread on it here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...alignment.html

FAQs:

- When will we be able to search RU/OU classes? When we push an update that allows for it in the next few days, we will post here when the update is in production.

- What about my Flight Alerts and Saved Queries for V/X classes? When we post the change that allows for searching of the new upgrade classes, we will automatically change all existing Saved Queries and Flight Alerts to use the new classes for flights on 1/30 and after.

- What about when Z/G is removed on Feb 6 for flights on or after Feb 19th? Good question. In our brief testing we have been seeing the RU/OU class codes match the inventory for Z/G for flights many months in the future. DL may decide to use RU/OU for them as well or use another subset of R/O classes.

- Does this mean that an DL Award search on DL.com will be the same as an Upgrade search since the classes start with the same letter? According to a DL rep, no. The Upgrade inventory is represented by classes which are separate from the Award inventory.

- Does this mean we will be able to search awards for DL as well now? That depends on if the R/O/N award sub-classes are available in the same way the RU/OU upgrade classes are. We haven't seen this so far, however we will keep looking and let everyone know should award DL inventory become available.

For questions about EF please post here. For comments regarding the implications of the changes as a Delta flyer, please post to this thread in the DL forum: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...alignment.html

Thank you all for your continued support!

javabytes

Supposedly these are the coach fare sub-classes.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...l#post20075738

TTT

ExpertFlyer Voice - post 4 in this thread lists the various award buckets.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta......-nd-nk.html

Thanks.

mnredfox

EFV, thanks for your clear explanation of what you've done and how it will affect us. ^

ExpertFlyer Voice

The update has been released and the new DL upgrade classes are now available. If you encounter any issues please send us an email. Thanks!

timmy83

Thanks for the quick fix!

TTT

If Delta uses RU/OU as their complementary upgrade classes and miles/SWU classes but uses some internal designation to manage the two different upgrade methods would there be a way in EF to determine that?

ExpertFlyer Voice

We cannot speculate or comment on something that hasn't, or may not, happen. When it is determined what changes, if any, are made then we will know how that affects our displays.

tubulus

Apologies if this is explained somewhere else...

I am searching for AA milesaaver awards. In the available classes in the results screen, some flights show all 3 classes (even if zero) while other flights only show coach, and some flights don't show up at all. Does that mean that no award seats have ever been released for that flight, or something else?

ExpertFlyer Voice

You may want to check out the EF Help Desk Thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...sk-thread.html

If an award class isn't returned for a flight, that means there is no availability in it. AA only returns a limited amount of "0" flights for a search for a given class code.

Keter

Hi, could you please add premium economy seat maps for SU (available on 77W)?