ExpertFlyer Blog

Seat Alerts - Be alerted when the seat you want becomes available

Today ExpertFlyer is proud to announce the release of our newest tool in our toolbox - Seat Alerts.  A complimentary feature to our existing Flight Alerts and Seat Maps features, Seat Alerts allows you to be notified if a currently occupied seat on your flight that you wish you were sitting in becomes available.

Some common situations where a Seat Alert could save the day:

• Families wanting to sit together but lacking enough free seats near each other.
• The specific seat you want/like isn't currently available. Very useful in business or first cabins on long haul flights (sleeper seats that face certain ways, etc)
• If you're stuck in a middle seat and want an aisle and/or window seat. Just click the Any Window or Any Aisle buttons.
• All seats are reserved but you have a ticket because the flight is oversold, if a seat opens up, you want to get it ASAP.
• You're flying in coach but want to sit in an exit row seat (for the extra legroom), but none are currently available. You can set a Seat Alert to be notified if an exit row seat becomes available

To create a Seat Alert, just view the Seat Map for your flight as usual, then click on the Create Seat Alert button next to it.  For example:

 
In this example, there are no window seats available so we can click on the "Any Window Seat" option and Seat Alerts will check for any open window seat. Also we have clicked on 3 other seats we want to be alerted about.  Just click Save and Seat Alerts takes care of the rest. Seat Alerts are supported on the 85 airlines we currently support Seat Maps for.

We also have an option that allows you to tell Seat Alerts if a seat designated as Premium Only can satisfy the alert.  Since not everyone can reserve a seat designated for flyers with elite frequent flyer status, Seat Alerts can be told to ignore them.

Just like our existing Flight Alerts service (which checks for available award/upgrade inventory), Seat Alerts helps to take some of the pain out of the travel planning process. Enjoy!

 

Qantas Awards now available on ExpertFlyer

We're happy to announce that full Qantas Award availability for all 4 cabins is available again on ExpertFlyer.com. Not only can you search for Award inventory and know the exact number of award available on a flight, but you can use our unique Flight Alert feature to have our system notify you when an award becomes available that is currently unavailable.

As always the full list of airlines/class that we show Award & Upgrade inventory for is here.

  

4 New Airlines added to the Award & Upgrade Search tool

We're happy to announce the addition of 4 new airlines to the Award & Upgrade search tool:

China Southern Airlines (CZ):
First - Award (P)
Business - Award (I)
Economy - Award (O)

Brussels Airlines (SN):
Business - Award (Z)
Economy - Award (U)

Kingfisher (IT):
Economy - Award (R)

Hawaiian Airlines (HA)
First - Flex Award/Upgrade (P)
Coach - Flex Award (Q)

As always, the full list of airlines we have award and upgrades for can be found here.

Flight Availability Improvments - Waitlists and more

Two of the most common requests we get regarding Flight Availability results are "can you tell us what the waitlist status is?" and "what do those letters and numbers mean?"  Well we just released an update that will address both those issues.

Now, you can click on any fare class in the results and it will tell you what the fare class is, what cabin it books into, how many seats are available, and if available the status of the wait list.  Here is an example:

 

The possible statuses, other then a number from 0-9 are:

A - Available, however the amount is unknown
L - This class is closed however the waitlist is open, please contact the airline.
C - This class, and its waitlist, are closed.
R - This class might be available upon request, please contact the airline.
X - This class is not available on this flight

Also you'll notice that if a flight is canceled, we'll now show it directly in the availability results.

ExpertFlyer now has El Al Awards and Upgrades

We have just added full Award and Upgrade inventory for El Al Airlines (LY).  Now you can search for  El Al award and upgrade availability and take advantage of premium ExpertFlyer features such as multiple day flexible searching, Flight Alerts, and being able to do searches on the go with our Mobile Edition.