ExpertFlyer Blog

EF changes in features and data over time

Recently on FlyerTalk a forum for frequent flyers and business travelers (many of whom are ExpertFlyer subscribers) there was some discussion about the features of ExpertFlyer and information that we do or don’t have.  We want to set the record straight on some issues, and instead of posting a long reply on FlyerTalk, we’re posting it here.

US Air and United Seat Map fixes

Today we fixed a couple of long standing seat map bugs.  First, most of the US Air seat maps were not showing available seats properly.  This was due to the data we were receiving from the reservation systems being, to put it nicely, out of specification with how the data should have been.  We figured out a work around that seems to have solved the problem.

As we were solving that problem we came across another issue where in some cases a seat that was tagged as both "Occupied" and "Premium Only" was being shown as Available with the Premium Only designation when it should have been shown as Occupied.  This was especially evident on the United p.s. cabins where all the seats are designated "Premium Only". We thought it was a little odd that every seat on tomorrow's JFK-SFO flights in p.s. were empty.  So they are now accurate and usable as well. 

New Features - Award & Upgrade searching and Get More Availability

Today we're introducing a new search tool on ExpertFlyer - Award & Upgrade Availability Searching.  Now as you all know, we've had the ability to get award and upgrade inventory for certain airlines for a while now, but let's face it, we didn't make it easy.

Up until now new users had to look at a chart of the airlines we support awards and/or upgrades for (found here) to find the class code of what they were looking for, then they had to look to see if the class was "hidden" or not (a throw back to the archaic 30 yr old mainframes that the airline reservation systems run on).  Once they knew this information, they then had to remember to, if the class was "hidden", do a Flight Availability search specifying only that airline and the classes they wanted to search for.  A little confusing.

Well now all that is gone and we've made a drop dead simple way to look up award and upgrade inventory information for any airline we support, no guessing, no looking stuff up, just easy.  Now the folks who have been using ExpertFlyer for a while may be used to the old way of doing things, but in the long run separating our the Award and Upgrade searches into a separate function will help us improve the overall functionality of the site in the long run.

We've also made a couple other changes, below is the email we sent out to all our users today that has the details:

First Post!

Welcome folks, my name is Chris and I'm one of the people behind the scenes at ExpertFlyer and I want to welcome you to the official ExpertFlyer.com blog. 

We'll use this blog as a forum to openly communicate with our fellow travelers not only about how we can make ExpertFlyer a better product and let you know what we're up to as a company, but also discuss trends and happenings of the travel industry at large. 

2008 is already shaping up to be a great year for us and we have some major changes right around the corner.  So stay tuned, and safe travels...