Expert Flyer and QFF

[Chucksta]

who's a member of Expert Flyer? would you recommend it?

Does it work well with QFF?

Should i go for the basic or premium subscription?
www.expertflyer.com

Can you actually search for award tickets and upgrade availablity? Is it accurate - ie real time info?

thanks

Chucksta

 

[NM]

who's a member of Expert Flyer? would you recommend it?

Does it work well with QFF?

Should i go for the basic or premium subscription?
www.expertflyer.com

Can you actually search for award tickets and upgrade availability? Is it accurate - ie real time info?

thanks

Chucksta

I have an annual premium membership and am very impressed with it. It was EF that allowed me to easily find QF reward seats for Mrs NM and two kids during the Christmas school holidays using AA miles for the flights.

Yes, it shows the QF award buckets (X, T, U, Z).

Yes, its pretty much real time. When I called AA to book my QF award seats, the availability of the U seats changed immediately the agent said the seats had been reserved.

It won't help for international upgrade availability since they are always waitlisted. But it can give an indication of the likelihood of the waitlist clearing.

If you are interested in a annual membership, drop me a PM and I may be able to point out how you may be able to save 10% .

 

[DPG]

One things I have noticed with ExpertFlyer and QF is that it doesn't differentiate between a blocked seat and a taken seat.

It shows exit rows as being taken rather than blocked, or for premium allocation.

D P G

 

[NM]

I can confirm that the seat map on EF is real time. I just called QF to change a seat assignment, and hit the refresh button while on the phone with the Qantas agent. The new seat assignment was showing immediately on EF.

 

[NM]

One things I have noticed with ExpertFlyer and QF is that it doesn't differentiate between a blocked seat and a taken seat.

It shows exit rows as being taken rather than blocked, or for premium allocation.

D P G

Is there any tool that makes that differentiation with QF? I think it is more to do with the way QF handles allocated vs blocked seats in their system, and all on-line seat map tools show them both as allocation.

 

[serfty]

One things I have noticed with ExpertFlyer and QF is that it doesn't differentiate between a blocked seat and a taken seat.

It shows exit rows as being taken rather than blocked, or for premium allocation.

D P G

For Qantas E/F does show unallocated premium seating as 'blocked' (

) and unallocated general seating is shown as 'available' (

). Exit rows & bassinet positions are always shown as 'occupied' (

).

That's better than www.checkmytrip.com which shows all unallocated premium seats as allocated.

 

[serfty]

I'm trying to look up the V-flyer reference for ExpertFlyer on www.v-flyer.com, but am getting the following error:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error '80004005'

[DBNETLIB][ConnectionWrite (send()).]General network error. Check your network documentation.

/inc/dbconn.asp, line 23

Anyone else having a similar issue?

 

[NM]

For Qantas E/F does show unallocated premium seating as 'blocked' (

) and unallocated general seating is shown as 'available' (

). Exit rows & bassinet positions are always shown as 'occupied' (

).

That's better than www.checkmytrip.com which shows all unallocated premium seats as allocated.

Yes, that seems to be the case for economy allocations, but for premium cabins (such as row 16 and on 744, and 23AB/JK on 3-class 744) they always show as occupied rather than blocked.

 

[NM]

I'm trying to look up the V-flyer reference for ExpertFlyer on www.v-flyer.com, but am getting the following error:Anyone else having a similar issue?

Yep, same issue for me.

 

[NM]

I'm trying to look up the V-flyer reference for ExpertFlyer on www.v-flyer.com, but am getting the following error:Anyone else having a similar issue?

Back up and running again now.

 

[Mal]

Yeah EF is a great tool.

I use the premium version and probably use it once or twice a week at least.

Came in very handy when doing research for some trips I've taken, in particular working out possible flight times that had the right availability.

I use the seatmaps before calling Qantas to assign seats on my longhaul flights, also do fare shopping on the site to work out what the cheapest fares are in certain classes/locations etc and their associated rules.

Very handy. Some of the features I talk about above are only in the Premium version. Look at the pricing and details here: https://www.expertflyer.com/services.jsp

One (small) issue is that it doesn't always show the correct aircraft type for Virgin Blue flights. Not sure why, but assume Virgin Blue aren't providing the correct aircraft types in the GDS feeds, or do a lot of last minute substitutions.

 

[bravoecho1]

Mal,

a family member used to work for DJ up until Jan 06 and said that it was rediculous how many plane changes and re-routing's they did at the last moment, so I would probably say that EF is correct.