I can't speak about Emirates, but I use ExpertFlyer frequently for American and occasionally for other airlines. Basically, I subscribe to it and like it a lot, and it generally is correct if it shows upgrades or award seats available. But occasionally when I call AA the phone agent will find upgrade/award availability that hasn't shown up on EF.

A few other pieces of EF advice:

1. Occasionally if you look for availability from point A to point B and/or from B to C, you'll find it whereas looking for A to C (via B) doesn't show up at all. For instance, with AA I occasionally find that if I simply search for economy to business upgrades from SFO to LHR, it won't show availability even though LAX to LHR is available and should show up as part of the SFO-LHR search.
2. Conversely, even though EF correctly shows availability you might have to ask the phone agent to check A to B and B to C if she can't find A to B to C as one search.
3. Some phone agents are better than others, so if you encounter one who sounds unhelpful or ignorant in trying to find seats that EF shows as available, just politely HUACA (Hang Up and Call Again).

Thanks m3red for your help! I will be able to test out how it compares soon!

I did encounter point #3 and did the exact same thing!
Taking a flight soon after using EF and will be able to see how it compares! I am really hoping EF is correct this time around!

Thank you for your input!

I use it often for D/Z class (upgrade) availability and alerts.

In what way? The ticket or physical seat availability now will not be the same as when you board the plane.

That is married segment logic at work. That's why for AA upgrades specifically you must search 1 segment at a time, not your entire trip, or the AA reservation system won't return the correct upgrade class inventories. We recommend that in our Help pages here: http://www.expertflyer.com/popup/hel...s.html#notesAA

That's what I do too, although I like playing opup roulette.

A number of posts have been relocated to the Expert Flyer Help Desk thread, for housekeeping and classification purposes. See beginning around post #961:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trav...thread-24.html

Overbookings
 

I'm wondering how overbookings work with eExpertflyer availability. As many airlines sell more seats than there actually is on the flight, does Expertflyer show these overbookable seats as available? For example, if I see on Expertflyer that every class is 0, but Y has 2 seats available, are these 2 seats overbooking? Or maybe, when I see every class is 0 even Y, maybe that means all regular seats are sold, but it would still be possible to book a seat at risk of overbooking?

In other words, if I see one seat left available, am I booking an "overbooking seat" or would EF not show these as available?

Thanks.

There is no way to know from ExpertFlyer availability if a flight is overbooked or not. Overbooking is airline and route independent. Some airlines will book only to aircraft capacity... others will overbook by 25% on some routes.

Authorized sale levels are not publicly available.

Greg

So in other words, if I see one seat left available, I am not booking an "overbooking seat" because EF would not show these as available. Correct?

EF shows seat availability based on the authorized booking level, not the actual number of seats.

I'm a bit confused. :confused:

If I check for an airline that does overbook, and I see 1 last seat showing on EF as available, does that mean there is an overbooking? Yes or No?

It could be either.

Let's pretend there is a 50 seat aircraft.

Airline A authorizes 53 tickets to be sold for a flight. 50 tickets have already been sold.

Airline B authorizes 50 tickets to be sold for a flight. 47 tickets have already been sold.

In both examples, ExpertFlyer will show Y3, because both airlines are willing to sell 3 more tickets for each flight.

In the case of Airline A, the flight will be oversold with the next ticket sold.

In the case of Airline B, even if all 3 tickets are sold, the flight will not be overbooked.

Unless you know the authorization level for each flight -- and you don't because it is not publicly available -- you won't know if the flight is overbooked or not.

Greg

One additional comment, even if an airline overbooks flights... overbooking levels vary by flight, route and destination.

American Airlines has historically zeroed out inventory in the case of IRROPS to accommodate impacted passengers. in that situation, ExpertFlyer will show no availability even though there are plenty of available seats.

Greg