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:

Dear ExpertFlyer Subscriber:

As part of our policy to continually improve the ExpertFlyer experience, we are proud to announce several new additions to ExpertFlyer. Specifically, the following improvements and additions have been made:

• The introduction of new service feature: Awards & Upgrades. This allows direct access to available award and upgrade inventory without having to know or remember specific inventory codes. This also allows us to facilitate additional award and upgrade inventory from more varied sources in the future. Keep in mind the data is not different; it is just a different way of accessing and presenting the information. Both hidden and non-hidden award and upgrade inventory for available airlines is viewable through this feature.
  
  
  • To help make this new feature speedier for you, you can set an optional default airline to search for awards and upgrades. Go to My Account, click on the Preferences tab and enter your preferred airline code in the first box. These will then be used as default fill-ins every time you do a search in Awards & Upgrades and Flight Availability. Additionally, you can add two more airlines codes that will be use only for Flight Availability searches.

• Inside of this new Awards & Upgrade search feature we have added the ability to search for three (3) classes of any type paid-for revenues you want using the new Other Fare Class feature.

• For the existing Flight Availability search feature, searching for hidden award and upgrade classes will no longer be available. For this, please use the new Awards & Upgrade search feature. However, non-hidden award and upgrade classes will still be available through the Flight Availability search in addition to the new Award & Upgrade search.

• For the Flight Availability search feature we have improved upon the inventory class filter. You can specify the classes you want to search for in a free form manner with up to nine (9) non-hidden classes. "FJYBKVS", "F J Y B K V S" and others are all acceptable input.

• If our Premium subscribers have any existing Flight Availability Saved Queries, they will be automatically converted to new Awards & Upgrades Saved Queries if they contain any airline/class combinations (i.e. AA C inventory) that will only be viewable in Awards & Upgrades search.

• We have added on new feature to the Flight Availability search. At the bottom of the results screen for these searches you will now see a link Get More Results which will automatically get more results in time for your search if they exist. This eliminates the need to modify your search by increasing the departure time and repeating the search to see more flights. In effect, you can see the flights for the entire day that match your search criteria without having to modify the original search criteria.

• We have improved the calendar function used for to help you input a date. We think you will find it faster and more user friendly.

• We have also updated the User Guide to explain these new features. Look for it in the FAQ/Help section of the website.

We are confident you will find these features to be a positive benefit to your ExpertFlyer experience. We are continually looking for ways to improve ExpertFlyer and look forward to your comments and suggestions.

As always, we appreciate the support you have given us over the years and thank you for your loyalty.

Sincerely,
The ExpertFlyer Team

As always, you can contact us with feedback, suggestions, or otherwise from our About Us page.

Comments

[Ryan]

I'm glad to see this search form added - it will make searching a lot easier. As I understand, some airlines do not release the upgrade class availability until a certain time prior to the flight departure (I think for AA it's 72 hours). Is this correct and if so, is there a single resource that defines these limitations for each airline?

[Chris]

For AA and other airlines the award and upgrade inventory is available from the date the flight is published.

The exception is AA X and R inventory which is only viewable 24 hours before departure.

[Tim]

Regarding this FAQ: "How often do Flight Alerts check for availability?"

and the response:

"We have a proprietary algorithm that we will adjust as we learn more from the requests for Flight Alerts that our subscribers make. Suffice it to say, the polling frequency increases as the departure date and time approaches."

What does that really mean? Are we talking once a day? Every few minutes?

Thanks!

[Chris]

As stated in the response you recieved, it changes, from several times a day at the outset to every few minutes as the flight comes closer to departure.

[Tim]

Thanks Chris. I guess my reason for asking is that I have an award search in there for a few limited days and it might make sense to have more optimal checking times, i.e. just after midnight in each US time zone, when held awards would expire, for example.

Just an idea!