is there a free availability tool?
 

I had been using a free availability tool - availability.publicbackup.com - to check on class availability. But that tool is no longer working. And, there is a paid tool KVS. However, I won't be using it much - maybe once or twice a year! So, is there any free availability tool still available? Thanks.

That would be great. I used to use KVS, but it seems the "free" tool is no longer available.

For one time, you could use expertflyer's five-day free trial (actually a five-day cancellation privilege, but they promote it as the same thing). You'd have to pay a few dollars to repeat the next time, but many people find it worth the money to resubscribe for a month each time they need it.

Otherwise, if your needs are only on a specific airline or alliance, there may be focused options. For example, ANA has something that works for *A flights. You need an ANA frequent flyer account to use it, and you're supposed to have miles in that account, but there are currently "back doors" to get around the second requirement.

About 3 years ago we changed it to be a no-credit card required 5-day free trial period. So since you're not giving us your billing information on sign up, it cancels automatically without any action on the users part after 5-days. You can then sign into the account anytime after and reactivate it with a monthly or yearly subscription if you want. Please let us know if you have any questions.

The short answer is that it depends on exactly what availability you want/need. FlightStats.com has a decent view into multiple classes for many (but not all) airlines. They recently instituted a policy requiring registration to access the data though it appears free for now.

Thanks for the update! I first subscribed before then, so I didn't notice this. (Due to a greatly reduced travel schedule I've become a "subscribe for a month when you need it" customer rather than my earlier annual subscriptions, but I still think you do a great job.)

Thank you, glad we can help.

Thanks, smb12, for the website. I have registered and it meets my needs. I am happy to use it for the moment - hope it will stay free.

Thanks to everyone else for replying as well. Appreciate all for your comments.

Does expert flyer do things like send you an email if a certain award flight becomes available? (i'm specifically thinking star alliance flight, but via UA miles, ie starnet blocking)

Yes, we call it Flight Alerts (we do the same for seats, called Seat Alerts). However the alerting, like the Award & Upgrade searching itself, is limited to that airlines metal. So an AA search would only show AA flights, not oneworld flights, as alliance searching isn't available via the reservation systems (GDSs).

so basically if i wanted to go say nyc to paris, i'd have to setup a separate alert for lga-iad-cdg on UA, and ewr-cdg on CO, etc? are there other tools that would do alliance searching?

AwardNexus does user driven alliance award searching for free, but no other site has the alerting functionality.