This seems to be related to air fares, so please enjoy contributing to this topic in the TravelBuzz! forum. Thanks.

Randy, the tool actually had nothing to do with fares, and was used to gauge availability and inventory, especially upgrade inventory.

Galileo

It was a great/fast tool to use.

Thank you, Matthias, it was wonderful while it lasted.

To any airline managers reading this thread: You like to cut costs, right? Why not come up with some kind of online access to check award availability? Sure, many airlines have this for their own awards, but why not something like Matthias' fabulous app., which allowed you to quickly check multiple classes accross several airlines?

Yes, this would cost some money to set up, but think of how many calls to humans this would save.

About 2 years ago, I signed up to be a individual travel agent via Sabre and got direct access to the Sabre system. Sabre gave me a program that I have downloaded onto my laptop (mysabre). Check out the link below for more details:

http://www.sabretravelnetwork.com/su...taccess_us.pdf

Or Call with questions: 682 605 5525. The .pdf indicates you need to have a sponsor agency. I just called and explained that I wanted the service as an individual account and they were OK with this. I travel a ton and love to check the latest info on flights (sold out, new routings, etc). Here is an example display:

131MAYORDLHR5P‡AAš
31MAY TUE ORD/CDT LHR/‡6
1AA 86 F7 A4 J7 I0 D7 Y7*ORDLHR 510P 650A‡1 777 DB 0 DCA /E
B7 H7 K7 M7 V7 S7 L7 G7
2AA 66 F7 A2 J7 I0 D2 Y7*ORDLHR 630P 815A‡1 777 DB 0 DCA /E
B7 H7 K7 M7 V7 S7 L7 G7

This is exactly what a travel agent sees on his/her screens. Some awards seats are available (Delta is not). Although Delta upgrades buckets (V and G) are available. I believe AA award buckets are shown.

You have to learn the codes that travel agents use to pull up availability and fares, but there are help sections to learn this. For $45 a month it has been worth it for me.

Happydad

Oh, so close. You had me really excited about this, until the $500/yr. part. Still, thanks for the info.

How about ExpertFlyer? Is that not a useful alternative? I am considering signing up for their service myself, so if you have any opinion on them I'd very much like to hear it.

I signed up for this service this week. It was $4.99 per month, however I quickly found out that the NW upgrade "R" bucket was not available on this site. I then sent a note to the company canceling my subscription and the were very nice about it and obliged me and even refunded my $4.99.

Nice tool but not what I needed, as I only fly NW and was only interested in the "R" bucket.

Same for me, and I bucket also not available.

Very professional looking with lots of neat features if you fly the right airlines. Otherwise, the same information is available for free elsewhere.

Can someone tell me what buckets it does show, I am intrested in AA award availability

Trying to request availability from i.e. SFO - JFK, I get:

F7 A5 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M7 L7 W7 V7 G7 S7 N7 Q6 O0

but some hidden classes may be shown by requesting the specific letter.