Simple Web-Based System to Check Seat Availability by Fare Bucket
 

Since this is of interest to frequent fliers on any airline -- to anyone who needs to find flights with availability of any discounted or (public) award booking class -- I think & hope Milesbuzz is an appropriate forum for this post. My sincere apologies if not.

Posts in multiple FT forums have discussed a system at aeroplan.de for viewing Galileo CRS inventory data for most (all?) airlines. Like "expert mode" at Travelocity, this system makes it possible to see discounted premium booking codes (A, C, D, etc.), but it turns out to be somewhat faster than signing into Travelocity and also doesn't require establishing an account there. Finally, it packs an impressive amount of data onto a single screen -- great for experts and aspiring experts alike.

The problem to date has been that the system's interface is only in German. But I figured out earlier today how to translate the initial form in the system into English; results are then pretty universal (day, time, flight number, inventory by booking code).

For the system, see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...travel/galileo . For a frame-enhanced version (thanks to FT'ers for this suggestion), see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...leo/frame.html .

Further enhancement suggestions welcomed (here or via email). I'll make every effort to implement the ideas I receive.

The other problem is that it only displays a maximum of ten fare buckets. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif For example, if you're looking for "T" inventory on UA, the site usually claims there isn't any when, in fact, there is.

Translation into English (or whatever) isn't technically challenging, but there's no way around the site's inherent deficiencies.

you can also use:

http://flyaow.com/classavailability.htm

it is itn based, but you don't have to sign in and switch to expert mode...

dupe

[This message has been edited by Pacha (edited 09-17-2002).]

The Galileo site uses German point of sale avaiability which is usually lower than US point of sale avaiability.

I tried this and it worked great....problem now is I don't know how to read the numbers I am seeing to understand enough of what they mean...

Any help there? Thanks

Thank you. The German wasn't much of a problem, but your layout of the results is certainly more concise and faster to read through than the original.

Now if we could only get it to display RXI & O fare classes for UA...

When it says next to the class 'C' instead of a number what does this mean?

Thanks
goodo

Closed, I believe.

Thanks to people in the US forum I use www.etour.co.jp/solar. It gives you more fare buckets. On US it gives you the I and G domestic upgrade buckets, which is very helpful. Unfortunately, it does not offer any such help for UA.

Closed is right. This is different from showing 0 (zero), because the 0 may easily change into 1, 2 or even 9 within hours.

But don't take a "C" from one site as gospel. I've just booked an N class seat (lowest fare sale class) on a BA longhaul. Yesterday I was getting C's or 0's from different sites in different countries, and was looking at a V fare instead. Waiting until today, I got an N seat which had come back into the system, when the German site continued to insist on "NC".

I wanted to let people know about a few recent revisions to the system described at the start of the thread --

1) User interface improvements. Namely, select date from drop-down list. Further suggestions requested via email.

2) A separate (though very similar!) system for the etour inventory site that gnaget linked to. I'm not clear on whether the etour site is still Galileo or is something else; perhaps someone can shoot me an email (or post here) so I can make sure the title and description are completely accurate. I might also change the URL (or, better, make an additional URL) depending on what seems logical.

The main site remains at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...ravel/galileo/

Frames version at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...leo/frame.html

Etour version at
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...eo/frame2.html

For those who use this site frequently -- please consider making your Expedia, Orbitz, and Priceline purchases through my links. Every little bit of clickthrough commission helps justify my continued work developing this site.

Thanks for doing this. I've just recently started fooling around with it and will make sure to keep it in mind if ever I book something outside the airline websites. http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttr...orum/smile.gif

Is the site down? Currently I get:

It's down, in a manner of speaking -- our IT folks have done something terrible to the web server! I'll see that they fix it ASAP. (Indeed, there's lots more at issue than this mini-site!)

These things are always *much* harder than they look, for all kinds of reasons I am sure.

Thankfully, this was fixed in mere minutes last night. The "forbidden" symptom was a brief (~8 minute) stage as the server restarted. And this is fixed, so the "forbidden" error (most likely) won't be seen the next time the server has to be restarted.

What does "L" in the same context mean

L stands for "list" as in waitlist.

See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...ravel/galileo/ -- "Letters where the inventory data belongs: ... L: No seats are available, but passenger may ask to be added to the waitlist."

[Edited to fix typos.]

[This message has been edited by bedelman (edited 07-15-2003).]

I noticed that when using bedelman's site, I always get the invalid date error. Is this going to, or has it been, fixed? I know I can just enter the date in the correct format when on the German site (3108 for August 31st), but just curious.

By the way bedelman, I think I recall you writing in a thread that you were thinking about adding additional features to your tool. Namely, I think you mentioned writing a code so that the program automatically pinged Galileo at set intervals to check for specific inventory on a given flight (ie check for 2 Z inventory on the hard to get AA flight LAX-LHR), and then send an email to the person letting them know the inventory opened up.

I wanted to say that I would greatly appreciate this ability, and will support the development if possible/needed. Are others interested in this capability? And how easy do you think this capability would be to add to your site, bedelman?

Weird that you're getting an invalid date error. Certainly the system works fine for me and literally hundreds of other people every day.

You're selecting a month and date from the drop-downs either at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...ravel/galileo/ or at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...ileo/frame.asp , right?

It shouldn't even be possible to enter an invalid date (except, perhaps, for one in the past).

I have been thinking about adding such a capability. I have two basic concerns:

1) That it would take a long time to write this program, and I'm busy. I appreciate "support" but would not be comfortable accepting money for this project given my sense of the FT community plus the fact that we're using data posted to the web by aeroplan. (To be sure, I think I'd be within my rights to accept money; I just don't care to.) So it's really a question of whether I can spare the time, or whether someone else has the skills & inclination.

2) As mentioned in another thread (by anothre FT'er!), I'm concerned that writing this script could hasten the demise of the feature we're using at Aeroplan to get the data at issue. Especially with the etour (Japanese) site inaccessible, it's particularly important to avoid getting aeroplan's Galileo interface shut down. But the large load that could be generated by this tool (many tools checking the site many times per day) makes me worry the tool would have precisely the reverse effect.

I would be careful with the frequent pings. It might cause so much traffic that the host of the site might block your access. What you are considering would be handy but I hope we don't get greedy and loose what we have. Thanks for your contribution.

I was on the phone with delta one night and I had your site up while I was trying to book 5 seats on a day with very little discount availability. The agents kept coming up with higher fares (I had vouchers so had to book on the phone). Finally I saw one of the agents taking the seats out of the bucket I wanted in front of my eyes. Bingo I knew she was the only one trying to get me the right fare.

It was magical, something I would have never dreamed possible 10 years ago.

I think those are great points. I hadn't considered the pinging issue. You're both right, we certainly wouldn't want to lose this valuable resource.