Seats.aero - a useful tool for finding Qantas & Velocity reward availability

[Uncharted6264]

In my experience this is the best.

Most other sites use the same API for searches, Seats.aero is the first I've seen that actually properly indexes award flights only available on the Qantas website.

Specifically - Expertflyer is practically useless for Q reward seats.

This is a great tool.

 

[Bryce]

I found a limitation with alerts, I hope they make allowances in the future to create alerts.

I am after 2 reward seats using QFF, as the quantity of seats can't be determined by seats.aero if I try and create an alert it won't allow it if there is a flight with a single seat available within my criteria. For example if another flight becomes available, I will not be alerted. I would even go with 1xF and 1xJ

Still a handy tool.

 

[FishFood]

I've enjoyed using this so far, at least once I tried creating an alert for the app to tell me there is already award space which I then booked. One alert fired at 3 AM, which meant at 6 AM when I searched for the award it was unavailable.

 

[PeterG]

I've just signed up for the Pro version and I'm loving it.
Aeroplan is very interesting especially at the moment when there is a 50% bonus when changing MR to MV points. AC Aeroplan rate seems considerable cheaper than some other options. Using Aeroplan points from MEL SIN in J on EK it's 75000 points and $118CAD tax. Same thing with QF FF is 75000 but the tax is $1234AUD

 

[SYD]

I’ve often wondered if the limited reward seats is due to BOTs harvesting and reselling? Meanwhile, the airlines are pushing back on tools that assist…?

Airlines Try To Shut Down Websites Scraping Award Seats

Airlines are going after websites that scrape award seats to make it easier to redeem miles. Is this helpful or harmful for consumers?

onemileatatime.com

 

[Uncharted6264]

I’ve often wondered if the limited reward seats is due to BOTs harvesting and reselling? Meanwhile, the airlines are pushing back on tools that assist…?

Airlines Try To Shut Down Websites Scraping Award Seats

Airlines are going after websites that scrape award seats to make it easier to redeem miles. Is this helpful or harmful for consumers?

onemileatatime.com

I've thought the same but honestly if I have alerts on for this it's something I'll book immediately when I get the email, so there is that too.

The whole thing would be a moot point if airlines invested the smallest amount of time in making their reward booking tools a fraction better!

 

[kpc]

Could be the beginning of the end of seats.aero and orher award seat search tools!

""We want to provide an update on Seats.aero support for Air Canada Aeroplan. On Thursday, Air Canada had its attorney send a cease and desist letter to Seats.aero. Their letter demanded that we must stop retrieving availability from Aeroplan just 25 hours after receiving the letter. Their letter appears rushed and we believe it has no valid legal basis or argument, and could apply to any site or tool that searches Air Canada Aeroplan for reward availability.

Seats.aero works by periodically visiting the public websites of airlines and retrieving the reward availability for each date and route. This common practice is usually called “web scraping” or similar names and is used by all travel tools in some form. Courts have routinely held that retrieving public information from public websites is legal and does not require us to follow any restrictions the airlines may try to arbitrarily impose, as we are just visiting their public websites.

It appears that Air Canada is trying to intimidate us into shutting down Seats.aero’s support for Air Canada, and potentially other travel sites as well. We do not intend to comply with their request and will continue to maintain Seats.aero’s support for Aeroplan for the foreseeable future. We are confident in our position, and if needed, we will see Air Canada in court and defend our practices to the fullest extent possible.

Thanks for your support,

Ian Carroll""

FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - [SHUT DOWN] Unofficial Advanced AC Reward Search Tool (cowtool)

Post 35643683 - FlyerTalk is a living, growing community where frequent travelers around the world come to exchange knowledge and experiences about everything miles and points related.

www.flyertalk.com

 

[Uncharted6264]

Will be interested to see how the case plays out. Interestingly I couldn't find any language in Qantas' TOS that prohibits scraping last time I looked.

If Aeroplan requires an account to view seat data like Qantas does I'd say seats.Aero has almost no chance of their suggested defence working.

 

[serfty]

Expertflyer too:

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. We’re reaching out because you had at least one active alert that is affected by this outage. The affected airlines are:

• Adria Airways
• Air Canada
• Air China International
• Air India
• Air New Zealand
• ANA- All Nippon Airways
• Asiana Airlines
• Austrian Airlines
• Avianca
• Avianca Costa Rica
• Brussels Airlines
• COPA
• Croatia Airlines
• Egyptair
• Ethiopian Airlines
• EVA Air
• LOT- Polish Airlines
• Lufthansa
• SAS
• Shenzhen Airlines
• Singapore Airlines
• South African Airways
• SWISS
• TACA
• TAP- Air Portugal
• Thai Airways International
• United Airlines
• Virgin Australia
• Vistara

As always, the full list of supported Award/Upgrade airlines and classes can be found on our Help/FAQ page here:

https://www.expertflyer.com/sessionlessClassList.do



If you have any questions, please let us know. Thank you for your continued support and understanding.

Thank you, ...

 

[SYD]

Expertflyer too:

Well, I guess SAS will return when they switch to ScaryTeam…

But in some ways, disabling these tools might actually better for the majority in the long run. Who remembers when you had to call to book a reward flight? Usually far enough in advance, there would be plenty of premium cabin rewards…

 

[levelnine]

We do not intend to comply with their request

That's all well and good, but once AC work out the bank of IP addresses from which seats.aero is scraping, they'll presumably ban them.

 

[Bryce]

Searching for reward flighs to Christchurch from Sydney August September 2024. On Qantas website there are tons available (I booked)
seats.aero is showing just a single flight into CHC for 2024 from HKG
Something is clearly malfunctioning. Great tool when it works I guess!

 

[ozflier]

That's all well and good, but once AC work out the bank of IP addresses from which seats.aero is scraping, they'll presumably ban them.

Fellow posters may have by now realised that I am a bit of cynic ....
I am a bit suspicious that organizations like Seats.aero and maybe EF may be using individual frequent flier numbers (with or without the permission / knowledge of their owners) to scrape airline reward availability .
If this is the case , I hope the account owners will not be dragged into the litigation or punished by the airlines.
Just thinking ....

 

[Uncharted6264]

Fellow posters may have by now realised that I am a bit of cynic ....
I am a bit suspicious that organizations like Seats.aero and maybe EF may be using individual frequent flier numbers (with or without the permission / knowledge of their owners) to scrape airline reward availability .
If this is the case , I hope the account owners will not be dragged into the litigation or punished by the airlines.
Just thinking ....

This is 100% how they are doing it - but you wouldn't need to steal anyone's creds, you can just sign up for a new FF account any time you like with bogus details.

 

[ozflier]

This is 100% how they are doing it - but you wouldn't need to steal anyone's creds, you can just sign up for a new FF account any time you like with bogus details.

Good point.

 

[Must...Fly!]

If the airlines just spent a few thousand dollars on a recaptcha prompt would this not likely put a stop to a lot of these tools, if that's really what the airline desired?

 

[Uncharted6264]

If the airlines just spent a few thousand dollars on a recaptcha prompt would this not likely put a stop to a lot of these tools, if that's really what the airline desired?

Most likely want the legal win, rather than the technical one, to be able to validly threaten others doing the same/deter new ones, vs arms race using a technical solution all the time.

 

[PeterG]

Searching for reward flighs to Christchurch from Sydney August September 2024. On Qantas website there are tons available (I booked)
seats.aero is showing just a single flight into CHC for 2024 from HKG
Something is clearly malfunctioning. Great tool when it works I guess!

Hey Bryce,
Just had a look on seats.aero using their search function for SYD CHC and put in a date of 01/09/2024 +- 28 days and it is showing heaps of QF availability for both months in Y and J.

 

[Bryce]

Hey Bryce,
Just had a look on seats.aero using their search function for SYD CHC and put in a date of 01/09/2024 +- 28 days and it is showing heaps of QF availability for both months in Y and J.

That's interesting, my search is anywhere to anywhere, 2024 arrive CHC
Only one result. PRO of course.
Just re-checked this morning, still the same only one flight shows for 2024. So there's an error somewhere.

 

[PeterG]

That's interesting, my search is anywhere to anywhere, 2024 arrive CHC
Only one result. POR of course.
Just re-checked this morning, still the same only one flight shows for 2024. So there's an error somewhere.

Just had a look. So you are looking at the Explore tab, is that right? I get similar results if I use that tab.
If you use the search tab instead it brings up lots of SYD CHC flights for August September next year.
Like you said must be a problem with Explore.