Understood. Many Thanks ^

I would expect this to be a heavily overbooked flight but it is not possible to say for sure without internal information. The information you see is what the airline wishes to present. It is only an approximation of the load the airline expects on the flight.

Although the airline will know how many passengers are at any one point holding reservations on the flight, even the airline doesn't really know if the flight is going to be "overbooked". Missed connections, last minute changes, no shows and high value customers force booking a seat on a full flight all conspire to keep the true load of the flight potentially unknown until the boarding is complete.

Is there any history of Expert Flyer going on sale - say for like Black Friday? Would feel silly if I signed up now only to have it be discounted next week. Flying AA a lot more and annoyed they don't have as much info as UA on their website to figure out how full flights are and what stand by options are out there.

They have offered 15% off new subscriptions on more than one occasion in the past, but there's no way of knowing whether or when they'll do so in future.

UA/Star Airline Awards
 

We are happy to announce that ExpertFlyer again supports UA Award searching and alerting. Also additional Star Alliance airlines have been added and now all Star carriers are supported for award searching. The award searches for the new airlines will return a Yes/No availability answer to the Quantity requested in the search.

Notes:

• For UA, only the O,I,X award classes are supported for searching and alerting. No other award or upgrade classes are available.
• At this time there is no Star Alliance award search, each airline would be selected individually.

As always, the full list of supported Award & Upgrade airlines/classes for searching and alerting is available here: http://www.expertflyer.com/sessionlessClassList.do

If you encounter any issues or have questions about specific searches, please email us directly at [email protected] with the details about the search and results.

-EFV

What does this mean? Is the search a one-time search? Are you saying that there is no continuous update/searching available?

No, that's not what we're saying at all. It means that if you want to know if there are 2 of an award class available, you set 2 as the Quantity in the search and you'll see a Yes or No next to a flight in the response, as opposed to a specific class value.

The alerts haven't changed and work the same as they always have, for all supported airlines.

Sorry to be so thick, but just want to confirm: Once set, the alerts will continue to be active until inventory is found (at which point one would be notified), or the alert expires at the time of the flight?

Thank you for your clarification.

Correct, that's how Flight Alerts have always worked.

Thanks.

Star Alliance is Back!
 

I got this E-mail two days ago and am surprised not to see this update in the thread. It looks like you can't do super close in LH searches, but all in all I'm happy to have these airlines back. ^

We are happy to announce that ExpertFlyer again supports UA Award searching and alerting. Also additional Star Alliance airlines have been added and now all Star Alliance carriers are supported for award searching on ExpertFlyer. The award searches for the newly added airlines will return a Yes/No availability response for each award class for the Quantity requested. "Yes" means at least the requested Quantity of awards are available, "No" means they are not.

See above.

I was only 14 day behind.....I've done worse :D. Thanks.

What is the reasoning behind the Yes or No response as opposed to the specific class value (which I prefer)? Does this apply to all airlines now, or just the new ones (noticed BA is also the same)?

Enjoyed your Italy trip report. Former crew here, but not in that league...