There is nothing more annoying than trying to use up your hard-earned frequent-flyer miles only to be told that the flight you want has no frequent flier seats available. Many airlines block out seats and dates for frequent-flyer eligibility. And their sites make it especially difficult to find out which flights have such seats. My experience is usually going to the Awards section of the airline site in question and spending an hour doing repeated searches until a flight pops up that doesn’t leave at 6 AM with two connections.
For those road warriors out there with a lot of frequent-flyer miles piling up, a saner way to figure out how to use those miles is ExpertFlyer. On the site, you can check regular seat availability for 400 airlines, and award availability for a smaller selection of major airlines. This feature was relaunched in April with an updated, easy-to-use tool. The U.S. airlines the award-seat feature supports are:
Alaska, Airlines
American Airlines
Delta
Frontier
Northwest
United (just added)
It can also check award status on the following international airlines:
Aer Lingus
Air Canada
Air China
Air France
Air New Zealand
Air Tahiti Nui
British Midland
CSA Czech Airlines
Qantas
Shanghai Air
SWISS Air.
You just put in your flight and it tells you how many award seats there are, for each different class of award. The site lets you set up an alert for when award tickets become available on a particular flight. I just wish it didn’t cost $5 a month. But enough hardcore flyers are willing to pay the subscription that the site became profitable seven months after it launched in January 2005, says co-founder Chris Lopinto. The company has not taken any VC money.
They tap into the same global reservations systems that travel agents use and are charged for each query. But Lopinto is now exploring the possibility of launching a simplified version of ExpertFlyer that would be free, focused around providing seat availability for award seats and discounted Y-class fares. That probably won’t launch until nextyear, however. So for now, you have to pay.
“So for now, you have to pay.”
Has there every been a company on TechCrunch that has implemented this business model? LOL.
I will wait for the free version, thanks.
Just use up all the miles at once. I bought First Class tix to New Zealand & Australia. Since then, I’ve given up on accumulating miles altogether.
Expert Flyer is amazing!
As a user of EF I can say that for someone blowing $25k+ a year on international air travel, $5 a month is nothing since it helps me find upgrades so I don’t have to sit in coach for 10 hours at a clip. I’ve used their premium plan for the alerts feature to email me when upgrade availability has opened up so I don’t waste time checking the airlines site all day.
I used expertflyer’s premium service about a year ago and I was not very impressed. I canceled my account before it was set to renew.
While I like the idea of being able to check award ticket seat availability, in the end your still going to need to call the airline to book the award travel ticket or upgrade and incur a service fee.
I may be an airline/points nerd, but I gotta tell you, ExpertFlyer is *amazing*. Truly one of the best prosumer apps online today. I’ve been a paying customer for over a year, and I just adore it. Yes, it’s nerdy…but it’s worthwhile if you travel a lot.
Very nice service! Wish it covered one of my main airlines: Hawaiian.
Aloha, http://beatofhawaii.com
…..only a matter of time before somebody launches a free ad-supported version.
“in the end your still going to need to call the airline to book the award travel ticket or upgrade and incur a service fee.”
If you are an elite flier with a particular airline program, these fees are usually waived. For example, if you are a 1K on United Airlines …
Furthermore, most airlines have websites (shock!) that let you book award travel for free or reduced cost. You may not need EF if you exclusively use one program, though EF’s interface is far better than provided by any single airline and may help you construct award tickets that these airline websites may not be able to find.
Airline GDS != Google Search engine, TC ‘tards!
“…..only a matter of time before somebody launches a free ad-supported version.”
Yes, with $10M funding from a bunch of fifth-rate VCs and it will never be profitable. LOL. Here’s the word from The Man at EF:
“As for the other tools that offer some of the information ExpertFlyer does, since they are not built around sustainable business models …”
The business model doesn’t look reliable or stable in terms of long term growth. What are the key things that need to change in their business to ensure longevity and profitability? Some suggestions anybody? My answers are included here… http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
Well it’s not a perfect tool, but ANA airlines offers a search tool for star alliance award availability.
Best of all, it is a free tool.
@12 Well the only problem with the ANA tool is that it doesn’t show the expanded UA award inventory for 1K members, doesn’t show the exact number of awards or upgrades available and doesn’t have the alerting feature of EF so you don’t have to check it every day. Also if partner airlines want to show different award inventory to ANA vs their own native flyers looking for inventory, you’d never see what’s really available.
You get what you pay for.
Three things that do what expertflyer does and more:
kvstool.com, Award & Class availbility, seat maps, Trip/PNR manager
$30/yr (Gold) $60/yr (Plat)
matrix.itasoftware.com, Travel Planning matrix (inc fare rules) (Free)
Flightstats.com, Flight, Airport & TSA info (free)
As a user of ExpertFlyer, I can tell you that none of those sites do what EF does:
- KVS doesn’t have a mobile version, an alerting feature, upgrade information for NW, DL, AA, UA, etc, nor show you the actual amount of awards or upgrades available. Since KVS just shows (and takes) info from various airline and travel agency websites, it doesn’t show anything more then an airline website shows, which why EF has been around so long in the first place. I also like that i can subcribe for only a month at a time if I want to when my flying is light.
- itasoftware is good at showing cheap fares, but it won’t show you all the fares, the fare basis codes, and all the explicit routing rules as well as fare rules.
- the flightstats data is already integrated into EF which makes it nice to the the ontime rating for flights directly in the availability results instead of having to look up all the flights manually on flightstats.com
Since EF is the only site that has my AA upgrade info (aa.com doesn’t even have it and I hate calling the AAgents), I’ll be sticking with it for a while.
Frequent flyer miles was the worst idea ever..
I’m sorry Mike R but the ITA matrix does show fare-basis codes and fare rules.