Expert Flyer does not show number of VA award seats available

[PeterE]

Hi
I saw the webcast last night and tried Expert Flyer for the first time today searching for VA award flight availability. The results page just shows yes or no for availability but not the number of seats. Is this a peculiarity of VA searches or have I missed something? Matt's demo last night used QF and it returned number of available seats in each class. Thanks, Peter

 

[clipped_wings]

Glad to know I wasn't the only one who found this confusing.

I search periodically each week and found (2) Virgin Australia Z fares SYD-LAX that clearly showed at least 2 seats for redemption on the Virgin website. But when I cross checked with Expert Flyer - it said none were available for that day and that flight. I re-checked. Same conflicting info.

Weird.

 

[serfty]

Expert Flyer uses a Delta Skymiles based award screen scraper for VA award searches.

If not available for Delta Skymiles then it wont show any.

 

[clipped_wings]

Thanks @serfty, odd how the domestic reward legs are always illustrated.

 

[serfty]

It seems you often cannot book Skymiles awards on VA if more than one segment is required. So at that level E/F fails.

Moreover VA don't make all award seats available to their partners, trans Pacific especially.

 

[jch]

It seems you often cannot book Skymiles awards on VA if more than one segment is required. So at that level E/F fails.

Moreover VA don't make all award seats available to their partners, trans Pacific especially.

EF wasn't showing two flights SYD-LAX that had availability on the Virgin site this week.

 

[maccaisking]

It seems you often cannot book Skymiles awards on VA if more than one segment is required. So at that level E/F fails.

Moreover VA don't make all award seats available to their partners, trans Pacific especially.

EF wasn't showing two flights SYD-LAX that had availability on the Virgin site this week.

I am having the opposite problem. Using E/F I found a VA reward seat in J would like to book from BNE - USA. It is available with points on the Delta site, but not with points through the VA site. Has anyone come across this and tried calling Velocity to book it? I will be trying in a week or so, would just like an idea of whether I should expect success...?

 

[pauly7]

Having given up on EF moved to Velocity but Has Velocity got a (another) bug on their site? I’m searching for J redemptions on a said date. It says unavailable, but shows a month view calendar with random dates saying available. Clicking on the supposedly available dates makes the website think for a few seconds then make that date unavailable, then change another day to available. Clicking on that new date results in same - thinking a few seconds and making unavailable!

 

[PeterE]

Went in to EF yesterday for MEL-LAX-JFK. It showed business availability but the Velocity site showed that "Any Seat Business" was the only one available. Yeh, sure, a million points or so !!

Anyway, tracking through Velocity has paid off as I found a J seat on 1 October, a day later than I had originally sought and First Class LAX-DFW-JFK with good connections. Very happy with that. Patience, it seems, is a virtue

 

[gilldo]

Having given up on EF moved to Velocity but Has Velocity got a (another) bug on their site? I’m searching for J redemptions on a said date. It says unavailable, but shows a month view calendar with random dates saying available. Clicking on the supposedly available dates makes the website think for a few seconds then make that date unavailable, then change another day to available. Clicking on that new date results in same - thinking a few seconds and making unavailable!

Yes I have seen this issue occur when searching for DL rewards on VA - sadly too consistently!