ExpertFlyer earns its fee
 

I've seen people question here and elsewhere the value of ExpertFlyer subscription fee. I thought I would document two cases where EF has clearly paid for itself...

A few weeks ago I was shopping for a New York to Europe flight in June. I had a specific flight in mind and found fares around the $950 mark. But I didn't act. Two weeks ago I decided to buy and went back to book it... fare had jumped to ~$1400. Ugh. United had zeroed out the lower fare classes. Rather than pay the $1400 I suspected that if I was patient they might release seats at the lower fare -- so I set up an EF alert. A few days ago the alert triggered and I went in and purchased the flight at $950.

Last year I had purchased a business class flight New York to SE Asia, it was pretty pricey, fully refundable. I set up an EF alert for the "discounted" business class fare buckets just in case it became available. Remarkably at about 24 hours before flight time the alert fired... I was able to purchase a new business class ticket on exactly the same flights and then cancel my existing ticket... savings in the order of $2000.

Then there are award seat, upgrade and empty seat alerts to which you cannot attach a specific monetary value. E.g. I know that if a higher tier frequent flyer gets upgraded then their nice aisle or window seat at the front of economy will free up... so I put alerts on those so that I can move myself from further back in economy cabin should anything open.

I don't travel nearly as much as i used to, but I have kept my EF subscription active because it really doesn't take much for the $99 to be worth it.

Keep up the good work guys.
Thank you

DAK

Thank you DAK, glad we're able to help.

Delta data?
 

Any progress on returning delta data to EF?

More than you know... keep it up. ^

At what intervals does EF query the GDS to update award space alerts? More frequently than daily?

Sorry for not reading all 66 pages!

At least several times a day, more so as the date/time of departure gets closer.

DL Award Beta
 

We have released a DL Award search Beta. There is an in-depth The Points Guy post about it here: http://thepointsguy.com/2015/06/delt...n-expertflyer/ with FAQs and a DL forum thread on the topic here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...-space-ef.html Please email customercare@ directly with any feedback or issues, thanks!

ExpertFlyer.com - Master Information and Updates Thread
 

Hi EF! Many thanks for finding and alerting me when my aspirational seats became available!

Now, please convince UA to let you find reward space :)

Does EF not show all airlines? Was searching REP-DMK and nothing comes up at all (except the PG flight to BKK). There are 4 Thai Air Asia flights a day.

Not all airlines participate in Global Distribution Systems, which are the source of EF's information. In particular, low-fare airlines very often do not do so, as part of their business model.

Thanks. Good to know.

In addition, Delta have prohibited EF from showing their flights. DL operated flights that are codeshared to another airline do appear as that other airline's flight (with a notation that it is DL operated) but apart from those no DL flights.

DAK

Accuracy of Expertflyer
 

Hello guys! Just discovered expertflyer a week ago and started to explore all the options available.

However, I do have a quick question: How accurate is Expertflyer on seat availability on Emirates from your experience?

Thank you!

Average.

I've seen Y in the 9's J in the 7's F in the 4's and the flight was 30 plus over in Y and went out full.

You know its over booked in Y if Y is 0 or just the Y bucket is 9.

You can not account for stand by tickets ie staff travel or missed connections.

Its a guide nothing more.

ExpertFlyer shows exactly the information the airline publishes to the global reservation systems (what travel agents use). To that end it 100% accurately shows what the airlines are publishing.

The Flight Availability results show at least how many tickets and airline is willing to sell in each fare class for a flight. It is not a hard indicator of exactly how many tickets are left due to oversell situations.