How an ExpertFlyer Alert Got Me Into Business Class

Last week I flew from Canada to Australia. At the time of booking, there were no Business Class reward seats available. I was travelling around the end of the school holidays and ended up just booking an Economy seat on Air Canada using my Velocity points.

I had resigned myself to spending 15 hours in Economy from Vancouver to Sydney, and wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. But, just in case a Business Class award seat happened to open up, I also set some ExpertFlyer alerts.

With ExpertFlyer, a paid subscription service, you can search for award and upgrade availability on a range of different airlines. You can also set up Flight Alerts that notify you if seats become available in a specific fare class, including award buckets.

I set ExpertFlyer alerts on various different Air Canada, Qantas and United flights around my travel date. Sure enough, a few weeks before departure, Air Canada released some Business reward seats on a flight from Vancouver to Brisbane.

I immediately jumped on the phone to Virgin Australia. Around 15 minutes later, I had a new ticket for Air Canada Business Class. I just had to pay Velocity a $60 cancellation fee for the original Economy booking, and the difference in points and taxes.

By the following day, those extra Business reward seats were all gone. So, if I hadn’t gotten in quickly, I probably would have missed out. And I wouldn’t have known about the seat release without that alert from ExpertFlyer.

The flight from Vancouver to Brisbane was excellent, and I very much appreciated being able to get a good night’s sleep in a lie-flat bed! I would consider this to be a superb use of 104,000 Velocity Frequent Flyer points and ~$104 in taxes.

ExpertFlyer no longer supports most Star Alliance award availability

Unfortunately, not long after I rebooked my flight, ExpertFlyer announced that it’s no longer able to provide award & upgrade availability information for most Star Alliance airlines (except Aegean and Turkish Airlines). The outage affects over 20 airlines including Air Canada, as well as Virgin Australia and Vistara (which are not part of Star Alliance).

The notice from ExpertFlyer says:

Due to issues in obtaining award and upgrade data for the below airlines, we have removed them from our list of supported airlines in the Award & Upgrade search for the time being. This also means that any active Flight Alerts for those airlines are not currently working.

Late last year, ExpertFlyer also announced that it was no longer able to access reliable award availability data for the following airlines:

• British Airways (except for Gold Elite Awards)
• Qatar Airways
• Iberia
• Korean Air (only Saver award classes removed)
• KLM (only Saver award classes removed)
• Emirates (only Saver award classes removed)
• Etihad
• LATAM
• Virgin Atlantic
• Fiji Airways
• Icelandair
• Some of the smaller oneworld airlines
• Some of the smaller Skyteam airlines

ExpertFlyer continues to fully support award availability searches and alerts for the following airlines:

• Aegean Airlines
• Aer Lingus
• Air Europa
• Air France
• Air Mauritius
• Air Serbia (Economy only)
• Air Tahiti Nui
• Alaska Airlines
• American Airlines
• Azul
• Canadian North
• China Southern
• Czech Airlines
• EL AL
• Finnair
• GOL Transportes Aereos
• Gulf Air
• Hainan Airlines
• Hawaiian Airlines (Business/First only)
• JetBlue
• Kenya Airways
• KLM
• Korean Air
• Kuwait Airways
• Qantas
• Saudia
• Shanghai Airlines
• Turkish Airlines
• Xiamen Airlines

The drop-down list of airlines for Award & Upgrade Availability Searches also includes Air Seychelles, Aeroflot, Air Malta and Martinair. But we couldn’t actually view any results for these airlines, and the latter has been a cargo-only airline since 2011.

I still find ExpertFlyer a very useful service for its many other features, and will be keeping my subscription. But this is still a disappointing development. And I suspect it’s largely beyond ExpertFlyer’s control.

Air Canada sends “cease and desist” letter to Seats.aero

Around a week ago, Air Canada’s lawyers also sent a letter to Seats.aero requesting they “cease and desist” scraping award availability information from the Air Canada website. This happened around the same time that ExpertFlyer stopped supporting award availability information for most Star Alliance carriers. We suspect it may not be a coincidence.

Seats.aero is a useful tool as it makes it easier for people to find reward availability. The company claims that it is not breaking any laws because it is simply accessing publicly available information. It does not intend to comply with Air Canada’s request and says it is prepared to defend its position in court, if needed.

You can still set seat alerts

In the meantime, you can still set ExpertFlyer award seat alerts for any of the supported airlines in the above list. You can also continue to use ExpertFlyer to set seat alerts (which assist in seat selection) and flight availability alerts for most airlines.

Various other third-party tools, including Seats.aero, continue to support award alerts for Air Canada and other Star Alliance members.

Nonetheless, this is a disappointing development for frequent flyers. Without award seat alerts, I probably would have flown across the Pacific in Economy last week. That’s not the end of the world, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t delighted with the opportunity to redeem my points for Business Class.