A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how some Star Alliance carriers are attempting to restrict websites scraping award availability (this started with ExpertFlyer announcing it would no longer show Star Alliance award availability). There’s now a major update, as the first lawsuit has been filed regarding this…
In this post:
Star Alliance restricts websites scraping award availability
There are a variety of websites that try to make it easier to help consumers book award tickets. Some let you search availability across many airlines, while others let you set award availability alerts. Historically, the way that many of these tools work is that they scrape award availability directly from airline websites (essentially they use scripts to search availability, and then present it on their website).
Some Star Alliance airlines are trying to crack down on this. For example, Seats.aero is a search tool that makes it easier to search award space, and a couple of weeks ago, the company revealed that it had received a cease and desist letter from Air Canada lawyers, requesting that the website stop using Air Canada’s website to search award availability.
The timing here was interesting, because just days earlier, Mark Nasr, Air Canada’s EVP of Marketing and Digital, appeared on a Facebook Live with Points Miles and Bling. During this, he hinted at taking some drastic steps in the near future to help improve partner award availability.
In this, he talked about points brokers, and also talked about some of the automated tools that scrape availability, which make it harder for others to find availability. However, it’s my understanding that it’s not just Air Canada behind this action, but that other Star Alliance airlines are involved here as well.
Nasr essentially said that these search tools initially started from a good place as passion projects to help the community. However, in the meantime, the volume of these searches puts burdens on Aeroplan and partner IT systems, and enables points brokers.
Air Canada sues Seats.aero
Since Seats.aero didn’t comply with Air Canada’s cease and desist letter, the airline has now filed a lawsuit against the company. Air Canada claims that Seats.aero is in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and is using the company’s name and trademark without permission.
Air Canada argues that the terms of service of its website prohibit data from the website being used in a way that’s not explicitly allowed, and scraping services don’t abide by this policy. For example, the terms of use of Air Canada’s website state that by using the website, you agree not to use automated scripts, among other things.
The counterargument is that scraping websites is perfectly legal, no matter what terms of use a website creates. The idea is that you can legally use public information from public websites for your own purposes, and you’re not violating any laws by doing so. This precedent has been upheld in court many times, and the argument is that just because an airline makes this request, doesn’t mean it has any legal grounds.
Here’s part of the lawsuit that Air Canada has filed:
The Air Canada Group brings this action because Mr. Ian Carroll—through Defendant Localhost LLC—created a for-profit website and computer application (or “app”)—both called Seats.aero—that use substantial amounts of data unlawfully scraped from the Air Canada Group’s website and computer systems. In direct violation of the Air Canada Group’s web terms and conditions, Carroll uses automated digital robots (or “bots”) to continuously search for and harvest data from the Air Canada Group’s website and database.
His intrusions are frequent and rapacious, causing multiple levels of harm, e.g., placing an immense strain on the Air Canada Group’s computer infrastructure, impairing the integrity and availability of the Air Canada Group’s data, soiling the customer experience with the Air Canada Group, interfering with the Air Canada Group’s business relations with its partners and customers, and diverting the Air Canada Group’s resources to repair the damage.
Making matters worse, Carroll uses the Air Canada Group’s federally registered trademarks and logo to mislead people into believing that his site, app, and activities are connected with and/or approved by the real Air Canada Group and lending an air of legitimacy to his site and app. The Air Canada Group has tried to stop Carroll’s activities via a number of technological blocking measures. But each time, he employs subterfuge to fraudulently access and take the data—all the while boasting about his exploits and circumvention online.
Regarding this lawsuit, Seats.aero has issued the following statement:
Unfortunately, we have learned that Air Canada filed a lawsuit against us today in the US District Court for Delaware to try and shut down Seats.aero’s support for Air Canada. We attempted to work with Air Canada several times, including offering to change how our scraping worked, but they refused to work with us and filed this lawsuit without any further notice. This is a hostile move against all award travel tools.
Air Canada is alleging that we are retrieving availability too quickly for Star Alliance to handle, but we retrieve availability from other Star Alliance airlines at the same rate, and they appear to have no IT issues coming from it and have never complained to us. We have built our systems to protect the airlines from excessive load, as we search Air Canada for availability at a fixed rate and have controls in place to rate limit all requests sent to Air Canada’s systems. When our users view Aeroplan results on Seats.aero, they no longer have to go run the same search on Aeroplan’s site, saving them resources.
Air Canada is alleging our searches caused them issues but do not acknowledge other points search sites and malicious third-parties that are known to scrape Air Canada as well, and they don’t attempt to distinguish our searches from them at all. The complaint doesn’t quantify our searches compared to anyone else. Additionally, Air Canada tries to paint us as malicious hackers despite us having previously worked with them to resolve cybersecurity issues in their own systems.
We are disappointed in this outcome but we are determined to fight this unfair attempt to shut down Seats.aero’s support for Air Canada. If you are a Seats.aero user but not a Pro user, we encourage becoming one if you can to help us fight this lawsuit, which will take a lot of resources for our small company. Thanks for your support during this time.
Are airlines looking out for consumers, or…?
Is this just a case of airlines trying to bully consumers, or are they actually looking out for peoples’ best interests? Ultimately how this plays out will come down to a legal question, rather than a function of whether airlines are actually trying to help consumers with this change or not.
Honestly, this is a tricky topic, and I can see both sides. As we all know, saver airline award availability can be tough to come by.
One of the biggest issues facing award availability is fraud from mileage brokers. There’s no denying that they use automation for finding award seats — I’m just not convinced that they’re using these publicly available award tools that other consumers are using. Or perhaps more significantly, I don’t think eliminating these publicly available search tools will do anything to stop mileage brokers in the future.
This change simply makes award availability harder to find for savvy consumers, which is a double edged sword. On the one hand, finding award seats will take more work. On the other hand, eliminating the automation levels the playing field a bit.
For example, some of these tools let you set award availability alerts, and then you’ll get a message if a certain award seat opens up. That can make it hard for the “average” person to find that award seat, when someone else doesn’t even have to check manually.
Saver level award availability is harder to come by than ever before, all while there’s more interest in miles & points than in the past, and more people are competing for those few seats.
Another argument by airlines is that these tools are overwhelming their servers. I’d be fascinated to know to what extent that’s actually the case, because in many ways these tools mean that consumers have to do fewer searches directly with the airline, which should lower some of the burden on these servers.
If airlines actually want consumers to search direct, how about making searching awards as easy as these sites do? I like many things about the Air Canada booking experience, but you can only search award availability for a day at a time. That makes it incredibly time consuming to search award availability with Air Canada, especially given how hard it can be to find saver award availability.
Bottom line
Air Canada has filed a lawsuit against Seats.aero, requesting that the website stop scraping award availability from the Air Canada website. It’s my understanding that other airlines and award search tools may also be involved here as well.
Legally, Air Canada is arguing that scraping availability from its website violates the terms of use. The counterargument is that there’s legal precedent for being able to scrape publicly available websites. Seats.aero, doesn’t plan on complying with Air Canada’s request, so we’ll see how this plays out in court.
What do you make of airlines trying to stop award availability scraping? Do you think this is good or bad for consumers?
Seats.aero screwed up by establishing itself in Delaware. If they were outside the US it would be way harder to sue them.
This is a silly suggestion; this is a small company run by ~2 people. It’s quite a bit of resources to incorporate somewhere overseas and it’s absurd to just presume they’d even need to do this for fear of a lawsuit, that isn’t something that’s really happened up to this point.
Not surprising I guess, I feel like Air Canada is one of the airlines making their site harder and harder to use, rather than easier. You used to be able to see a week at a time, and apply filters for partners, etc. And all of that is gone now. Their searches turn up mostly mixed cabins and their own metal at variable rates.
They wanted to be a top rate loyalty program but then quickly dialed it back once it became popular. I hope Seats.Aero wins!
Probably their profits in the points division are sliding due to too many premium redemptions. Clearly seats.aero, and others, make it easier to find those redemptions. Most people in the points game aren't in it to redeem their points on long haul, economy flights. AC are probably getting push back from their high end partners like SQ as far too many premium seats are being bought via aeroplan.
If the airlines made it easy to just see a whole calendar of available flights, ppl wouldnt need third party ones. But no, their sites almost always suck. They will even stop working after youve gone thru 20 days or so as it thinks youre a bot.
In the end, a court will decide. Until then and while the case might take some time to resolve, the court can issue a temporary injunction prohibiting seats.aero from including Air Canada in searches. Might want to consider Plan B if this happens.
All the sites using some sort of webscraping will be at risk, not just seats.aero. So that means anyone who has a service charging people to find award availability using webscrapers may be exposed. Maybe they all got letters from AC but the others just aren't saying anything.
Will be an interesting case as what is the difference between google flights and all the OTA's going on and getting cash fare information off the Aeroplan/Star...
All the sites using some sort of webscraping will be at risk, not just seats.aero. So that means anyone who has a service charging people to find award availability using webscrapers may be exposed. Maybe they all got letters from AC but the others just aren't saying anything.
Will be an interesting case as what is the difference between google flights and all the OTA's going on and getting cash fare information off the Aeroplan/Star Alliance sites vs just award fares? Is it just award fares that AC don't want scraped? That would be bizarre. How would that stand up in court?
I don't know anything about it, but I am surprised to read that there is good precedent that scraping websites is okay, whatever the terms and conditions.
If this is true, why don't third party sites show Southwest fares?
They do. Skiplagged for example shows Southwest fares. It's just that most third party sites use fare systems that Southwest doesn't push to instead of scraping.
Re: brokers:
The fact of the matter is that many brokers built their own scraping tools that don't have many of the rate-limiting features o seats.aero. in addition, seats has worked to identify broker activity on their end, and attempted to reach out to AC and maybe other airlines to see if they wanted to work together and share some sort of broker blacklist. This feels way more like AC just being unhappy with...
Re: brokers:
The fact of the matter is that many brokers built their own scraping tools that don't have many of the rate-limiting features o seats.aero. in addition, seats has worked to identify broker activity on their end, and attempted to reach out to AC and maybe other airlines to see if they wanted to work together and share some sort of broker blacklist. This feels way more like AC just being unhappy with the number of high value redemptions that are made as a result of these tools - and I think there's something in that FB interview Lucky mentioned that alludes to this.
And why doesn't Lucky mention points.me in the article, which at least at one point he had a financial interest in via points pros.
Agreed the advent of seats.aero probably screwed up Air Canada’s business model of selling points on soecial and then making it hard to redeem those points. There’s probably a broker problem as well that air Canada should address.
I’m not buying any more ac points. Too hard to redeem, high fees, if something goes wrong you can’t get through to their call centre for hours. Not worth the hassle.
Will not be giving...
Agreed the advent of seats.aero probably screwed up Air Canada’s business model of selling points on soecial and then making it hard to redeem those points. There’s probably a broker problem as well that air Canada should address.
I’m not buying any more ac points. Too hard to redeem, high fees, if something goes wrong you can’t get through to their call centre for hours. Not worth the hassle.
Will not be giving them any more money in their points sales so they can capitalise their business with my money. Nb I was going to cancel my seats.aero account but will keep it on so Ian can fight this case.
*on special
This is post 2020 stuff. Prior to 2020, award seats were much easier to find and readily available if you searched a few months out. Now? Mass chaos. Everyone and their mother has an Amex Plat, plenty of miles or dollars to spend on premium seats. The game has changed.
Airlines make it notoriously difficult to redeem rewards.
It is inherently in airlines' vested interest to make redemptions difficult enough that many miles expire or that they can devalue our miles in the meantime.
I'm just playing the game by the rules set by the Airlines. Their business model is to give away points like candy and make it difficult to fulfill their promises. My job is to play by the rules and maximize free perks. And if that means using seats.aero then so be it. And if it means canceling and then rebooking flights to take advantage of lower fares then I will.
Good, hope other airlines follow
The problem is, you’ve got phantom availability, and you’re missing a ton of airlines.
If you take away the scraping, ok sure MAYBE I can get a better redemption at the end of the day. I’m willing to buy that excuse.
But if I can only get like 3 of the airlines in the program, what good is it? Fix that first.
If airlines made award seats reasonably available, they would not have the "scraping problem" in the first place...
I could accept this as a temporary measure. But the airlines really need to find a way to go after and close down the accounts used by the point brokers. In the meantime, this feels like class detention. We’re all being punished for the transgressions of a few.
I posted this on Live and Let's but I'll also post it here.
If they're serious about cracking down on fraud and brokering then go after those things. Dont go after a tool that isnt hurting anyone and that the vast majoroty of the time is the community, not brokers. This will not have a significant effect on fraudulent brokers for 2 reasons. 1. These brokers likely could build their own scrapping tool for...
I posted this on Live and Let's but I'll also post it here.
If they're serious about cracking down on fraud and brokering then go after those things. Dont go after a tool that isnt hurting anyone and that the vast majoroty of the time is the community, not brokers. This will not have a significant effect on fraudulent brokers for 2 reasons. 1. These brokers likely could build their own scrapping tool for the airlines and routes they frequently use. 2. They could use sweatshops in Bangladesh, Laos, or Cambodia and have 10 yo's just manually searching day by day on the AC/UA website. Remember, fraudulent brokering operations are run primarily out of PRC(mainland China) and India, respectively. In order to seriously crack down on fraud and brokering, North American carriers need to add a designee list as others have mentioned. You could add 2-6 people to this list with possible exceptions for immediate(parents, spouse, and children) family members and there will restrictions on how often you can change this list. Additionally, adding protection from bots that snipe seats the moment the calendar opens would be good as well. Remember different people play the points and miles game differently, some of us are economy vs luxury, close in vs year out, point to point vs complex multi legs, visiting friends family vs aspirational vacations. Different people do things differently and as long as people stay within the rules there shouldnt be issues. They should go after actually fraud and brokering being committed instead of after tools that make this hobby, slightly easier. Alternatively, just make the search better. Also, AC is so concerned about a community tool that makes things easier, yet they have no sense of urgency to stop blocking partners like Eva, Ana, Thai etc. Why spend hours on their site searching for partners they're blocking when you can find out in 5 mins on seats.aero? Like come on.
What a long winded way to say you have no idea what you are talking about
Not really. All valid points that have been raised.
Absolutely true!
Very well worded! The real facts have been mentioned!
It's ok to write paragraphs.
It’s quite easy if airlines were so inclined to solve this.
1. Limit redemptions for every account to just 10 people max.
2. For every account sign up, ID verification is needed (e.g. Social Security Number) to prevent brokers from simply signing up for new dummy accounts, and to make sure that the same ID isn’t used to open multiple accounts.
3. Points shouldn’t be transferable between other accounts (e.g. member A...
It’s quite easy if airlines were so inclined to solve this.
1. Limit redemptions for every account to just 10 people max.
2. For every account sign up, ID verification is needed (e.g. Social Security Number) to prevent brokers from simply signing up for new dummy accounts, and to make sure that the same ID isn’t used to open multiple accounts.
3. Points shouldn’t be transferable between other accounts (e.g. member A on Aeroplan shouldn’t be able to transfer points to member B on Aeroplan).
While I don't like it, learning from East Asia carriers is an easy way to put a brake on the crazy mileage broker scene.
Some carriers already do something very similar to this, e.g. Singapore Airlines. These are perfectly reasonable restrictions. The problem is that it's really difficult to identify people and the brokers will find a way of using fake IDs.
Yes, I subscribe to ExpertFlyer but completely fine with killing all these leech tools.
Somehow I suspect the LH group in this. I have had EF alerts for six months on LX, LH, and OS. Not one saver award has popped up for Europe to EWR. Coincidence?
Why not just provide an API for these searches, then there won't be any problems with technology.
They already do this for travel aggregation and regular flights...
I am confused by this suggestion, APIs have no load on servers?
There's a huge difference between hitting an API and sending just the requested data vs serving all of the data on the pages each time there's a hit to retrieve it. Not to mention having to hit multiple pages to drill down for the data vs just the API hit.
Well if airlines go the way of UA, they simply eliminate all saver awards and gouge their customers. OR virgin, allowing two awards per plane. Or just throw the whole award scheme in the trash, which seems closer than ever. I wonder how the banks feel about this, since they make money off of points cards.
Throw in the trash??? It's the only source of profits for the US big three!!
Anyone with a brain can see that this is exactly what's happening.
The scraper/fraud "issue" is a deflection.
Agreed. If fraud and brokering is a problem then address those. Not something the community values and a small fraction of the time is brokers. Why soend hours on the AC website to find out they're blocking Eva, ANA, Thai, etc. when seats.aero will tell you in 5 minutes. No sense of urgency is fixing the blockage of those carriers.
Nasr is and always had been a lying sack of sh!t
AC is blocking partner awards in favour of their own 400k metal awards. They also minted too much mileage and brokers are running wild with bought miles and family pooled accounts.
But you gotta blame someone/something.
B
I watched that facebook interview with Nasr. Thought he came across as very genuine and trying to find solutions for a very complex IT situation. Why do you say he's a 'lying sack of sh*t'? Their program has been revolutionary and they've found they need to make changes.
It's a shame if the brokers are using these scraping sites to perpetrate fraud and game the system. I'd definitely be acting if I were them...
I watched that facebook interview with Nasr. Thought he came across as very genuine and trying to find solutions for a very complex IT situation. Why do you say he's a 'lying sack of sh*t'? Their program has been revolutionary and they've found they need to make changes.
It's a shame if the brokers are using these scraping sites to perpetrate fraud and game the system. I'd definitely be acting if I were them in this case especially if it's ultimately affecting their bottom line.
It would probably be good if the whole issue of website scraping got tested in court once and for all as to whether this is a legal practice. Of course, as others have mentioned there are plenty of ways that the brokers can be stymied with a few rules put in place about opening accounts, who you can book for etc. Disclosure I personally use seats.aero a lot and hope it does continue!
So having millions of people constantly searching for award seat give a relief to their IT infrastructure as opposed to a dozen “scrapers”? If I search on seataero then I don’t tax any air Canada or United IT resources.
Completely agree.
Tell everyone you have no idea how IT infrastructure works without telling everyone how IT infrastructure works.
Malfriend, I can only assume that you've never written a scraper script, nor have you ever helped manage a resource being scraped.
I love that you used a picture of Lufthansa's first class to illustrate this post! It's like a five-star hotel in the sky.
The airlines make it difficult for folks to find those choice awards because they will earn more money if the consumer pays more or never uses his airline miles. British Airways is one of the guilty parties in which you can only move from one day to the next to view their awards. Even if you call them up, the agents have to laboriously go through day by day to see if award space if...
The airlines make it difficult for folks to find those choice awards because they will earn more money if the consumer pays more or never uses his airline miles. British Airways is one of the guilty parties in which you can only move from one day to the next to view their awards. Even if you call them up, the agents have to laboriously go through day by day to see if award space if available. So there is no upside, in their view, by making it easier to book cheap award tickets. The point broker argument doesn't pass the smell test.
If they can make their services easier to use, we wouldnt need to use services like seats aero. Its been ridiculous how hard it is to book anything with points these days. They want to maximize their profits i get it. But dont screw your loyal customers over.
"the volume of these searches puts burdens on Aeroplan and partner IT systems, and enables points brokers."
I buy the second rationale but the first seems spurious.
Also, it's hard (not impossible, but hard) to see how the airlines prevail here without the ruling also crippling the AI industry, which relies on public information in a similar fashion, making me even more skeptical that their objections are on solid legal ground.
A competently written and lightly used scraper puts no great burden on a robust resource, true. But notice all the qualifiers I used. A black hat points broker has no incentive to do anything other than hammer the target hard and repeatedly, because if he doesn't then other black hat brokers will, and eat his lunch. It's a race to the bottom.
The server costs are marginal; that argument is bullshit.
Agreed. It's part and parcel of the pattern of airlines lying to customers.
Tell us you've never administered a public server without telling us you've never administered a public server.
Agree that something has to be done. However I fear this will go the way of concert tickets where published rates mean nothing. If airlines are smart (and most are) they would follow the concerts/sports/ events model and it will be much worst than what we have now. It will become a zero sum game so enjoy it while we can.
Who cares about the average person? If they are not using the tools available to them, they are suckers. The customers using these tools are the most engaged customers - the ones that deserve the award seats.
@Ryan - If the average person perceives the system is rigged, they will abandon loyalty incentives and move on. And this population is probably not an insignificant number so the airlines are protecting their flanks.
ANA has a great solution for mileage brokers. They require passengers to register up to 10 nominated people who can receive mileage awards from their account. If you want to change a registered user, you've got to fork over 5,000 miles.
I bet brokers just make new accounts and fund it, and then make new ones and fund those, forever and ever. It's a hard problem.
If airlines made their award availability more transparent and search functions as good as these 'scrapper websites' people wouldn't feel the need to pay for these services. Because airline award search engines are so crappy and fraught with too many errors people look elsewhere to look for availability. Why can't airlines build alert function so that people wanting to travel can book award tickets? Because airlines don't want customers to know that there is free(award)...
If airlines made their award availability more transparent and search functions as good as these 'scrapper websites' people wouldn't feel the need to pay for these services. Because airline award search engines are so crappy and fraught with too many errors people look elsewhere to look for availability. Why can't airlines build alert function so that people wanting to travel can book award tickets? Because airlines don't want customers to know that there is free(award) seats available. They want people to keep spending money on them
Seems the airlines are missing out in a potential added revenue here by selling access tokens to their apis and limit the number of hits (similar to Google flights API).
It all depends what the airlines hope to do with the space, are they going to try to sell that space or offer elite upgrades? Why sell the ability to other companies when they should get 100% of the profits?
I worked for Worldspan when Orbitz was being created. Orbitz was an attempt to sell remaining seat inventory and was a cooperative effort by airlines to make that happen. The huge amount of data we...
It all depends what the airlines hope to do with the space, are they going to try to sell that space or offer elite upgrades? Why sell the ability to other companies when they should get 100% of the profits?
I worked for Worldspan when Orbitz was being created. Orbitz was an attempt to sell remaining seat inventory and was a cooperative effort by airlines to make that happen. The huge amount of data we held was staggering, why would any airline sell that off for API access fees? They wouldn't and won't.
This might seem anti consumer but in the end it makes it harder for the average person to find space, that only increases my odds of finding what I want!
Google Flights APIs don't do anything with the inventory .. they just sell access to the information and scale the cost based on the number of hits. That's what i'm suggesting. It's better than just slamming the door on people willing to pay for the information or ease of search.
Pretty obvious that Air Canada printed too many miles for too low a price and now want to inhibit searching for the most valuable (and expensive for their program) partner saver awards.
They've been blocking availability on many airlines for months.
I think this is definitely part of it and also the reason AA have stopped having points sales. Too big a liability on their balance sheet as well when they print miles.
Maybe Aeroplan’s partners are getting sick of all the cheap Aeroplan award people cluttering their premium cabins too.
The brokers are definitely a factor too but there are definite ways to shut their business model down if the airlines really want to....
I think this is definitely part of it and also the reason AA have stopped having points sales. Too big a liability on their balance sheet as well when they print miles.
Maybe Aeroplan’s partners are getting sick of all the cheap Aeroplan award people cluttering their premium cabins too.
The brokers are definitely a factor too but there are definite ways to shut their business model down if the airlines really want to. It’s just how to do this without affecting their private ffs.
Star Alliamce are in the wrong here, they aren't tackling the right problem with this legal strategy. Part of the reason elite members use third-party tools is due to lack of usability on their own search portals, and difficulty finding upgrade availability (such as PlusPoints).
I am a subscriber and supporter of seats.aero, and a frequent flyer with top status on star alliance.
Aeroplan / United / star alliance should focus on adding friction...
Star Alliamce are in the wrong here, they aren't tackling the right problem with this legal strategy. Part of the reason elite members use third-party tools is due to lack of usability on their own search portals, and difficulty finding upgrade availability (such as PlusPoints).
I am a subscriber and supporter of seats.aero, and a frequent flyer with top status on star alliance.
Aeroplan / United / star alliance should focus on adding friction for points brokers instead. For example, accounts that routinely book tickets for new customers that never flew the airline before, with high volume of transfers from different sources, different credit cards, etc.
The answer is not to make point redemption more difficult for frequent flyers, but to deploy smarter IT systems that combat fraud and point brokers.
This isn't some sort of complex self-learning AI system - you look at patterns and build some basic rules to stop brokers from booking random tickets over and over for passengers that don't even fly with the airline.
For example, British airways allows you to have 6 nominees for your "friends and family" list to avoid abuse of selling your points to someone. The list can only be changed every few months. That is a far better model than making it hard to find award availability through great tools that automate alerting and help you search across airports and programs.
Even easier solution: Limiting award bookings to the account holder himself and other passengers he has previously traveled together with on the same booking.
Max: So I first need to book a revenue flight for my son and me before we could fly on an award ticket?
How about my expat colleagues who wants to fly in his parents on an award ticket?
Pretty sure it's a game of cat and mouse. Airlines are gonna shut down scrapers. Brokers have to get more clever. To fight brokers they just need more rules. Pretty sure these airlines can just run a query to see which accounts have activities that are suspicious. Maybe it's a limit on how often you can cancel tickets last minute and if you do that, they can restrict some aspects of the account. It's like...
Pretty sure it's a game of cat and mouse. Airlines are gonna shut down scrapers. Brokers have to get more clever. To fight brokers they just need more rules. Pretty sure these airlines can just run a query to see which accounts have activities that are suspicious. Maybe it's a limit on how often you can cancel tickets last minute and if you do that, they can restrict some aspects of the account. It's like ticket master. If they forced you to upload a photo ID for purchase of the concerts most likely scalped to young fans, these scalpers can't exist. Make it onerous to book because it already is for us normal ppl who redeem once or twice a year. Airlines want to increase their take with credit card companies and you can't cater to brokers or even users of scraper sites bc those are the minority. Most of these CC sign-up ppl are plebians. Make it work for us.
When airlines make award seats available, that means they are okay taking that booking. This isn’t a way to reduce award bookings for consumers and I’m surprised at how many people are suggesting that.
I think it's a great idea and only fair. I don't subscribe to any of these brokers. I search for awards on my own manually, the old fashioned way. Been doing it for decades. Lately, it's been extremely difficult to find the award flights that I want... even a year out. I don't know if it's because there are more people playing this miles game or if it's because of the automated scrapers that some...
I think it's a great idea and only fair. I don't subscribe to any of these brokers. I search for awards on my own manually, the old fashioned way. Been doing it for decades. Lately, it's been extremely difficult to find the award flights that I want... even a year out. I don't know if it's because there are more people playing this miles game or if it's because of the automated scrapers that some of brokers have. I think it will even out the playing field if the brokers are prevented from using their automated software.
Agree with this. The situation has become like Ticketmaster scalper bots causing issues for regular consumers
I agree. This has made award seats much harder for the average buyer to find. Other pet peeve is folks making speculative bookings only to cancel. I prefer the old fashioned way to find them manually.
Curious what are the hard stats re award inventories, vs previous years etc. ? This would answer a lot .
The lack of availability is a function of the regions you are trying to travel from too. There is generally more availability for Oceania to Asia where I am based. Anything long haul to and from the US is very hard to get. This is understandable considering the number of points currency being printed by the US credit card companies. I’m basing this on experience of trying to book a rtw trip from Oceania.
@Ben, what is the "saver award" level you often refer to in articles regarding Aeroplan (and maybe others)? It's not an Aeroplan term I'm familiar with.
Ben, where does Point Me a scrape their Star Alliance availability from?
Reading on FT looks like one of ACs points via Nasr is partner IT considerations. So for example maybe AC is getting in hot water with an alliance partner because its own site is making too many calls to the partner system thanks to the scrapers and the weak partner(s) aren’t capable of handling the concentrated load.
Who are the major mileage brokers? Where do they find these Super Elite accounts?
The problem is that finding points seats on airline sites is generally a horrid experience that only lets you search for point to point redemptions.
If the airlines would enable 'show me everything' options then they could block all of these paywalled search sites.
This is a good, and fair, overview and kudos for not speculating on that legal issue beyond your actual knowledge.
One additional factor is that any business is concerned with customer engagement though their website and when a measurable percentage of the interactions move to other parties it probably rings alarm bells.
The solution is easy: Provide reasonable search tools and availability alarms for your own customers. This way no external tools are necessary. If its about the server load: provide APIs for external searches. Easier and more efficient.
I for one hope the airlines find a way to shut down those brokers who are using all the practices in your article on broker fraud methods.
It’s going to be a fine line that the airlines walk to stop their frequent flyer programs from being abused. There are definitely ways of doing it by tightening up the rules on who can book a flight and close in cancellation fees. However they are not going...
I for one hope the airlines find a way to shut down those brokers who are using all the practices in your article on broker fraud methods.
It’s going to be a fine line that the airlines walk to stop their frequent flyer programs from being abused. There are definitely ways of doing it by tightening up the rules on who can book a flight and close in cancellation fees. However they are not going to want to jeopardise their lucrative points and miles selling divisions.
Clearly seats.aero was the most effective of the award search sites. I’m going to try and book flights to use most of my points very soon. If seats.aero gets shut down it’s basically game over for my aeroplan miles.
Hi Ecco,
honest question because I am not with Aeroplan (but Miles&More): why do you guys need seats.aero to book awards? Is the Aeroplan search soo bad?
It sounds like all your Aeroplan miles are now worthless as seats.aero does not work anymore? What’s the relationship between those two?
He's being dramatic. I have millions of AP and don't need tools. It'll be rougher obviously, but if you know the routes and airlines and patterns you can significantly reduce your time spent. Yes, I'll prepare more for future bookings and more time invested, but I'll still get EXACTLY what I want.
No relationship with AC. Same proposition as it was all the years before seats.aero
The main problem with AC award searches is you can't search awards for flexible days. AC has so many partners beyond star alliance so, while you can search United website for Saver Star Alliance awards and then search the exact dates found there on AC, the non star alliance awards you have to search day by day. But I think its quite a bit of hyperbole to suggest it's game over for Aeroplan miles. Unless you just refuse to do any work yourself to find award flights.
You need to give seats.aero a go to see its functionality in relation to aeroplan. I don’t have the time to go searching for unicorns, as some do. Also all the airlines have different award availability even if they are in the same alliance so searching united is not the answer. Also ringing aeroplan to book is not viable unless you have hours to spare whilst they put you on hold.
I’ll definitely be on seats.aero this weekend!!
Let us consumers fight back, ditch any and all frequent flyer programs.
And how exactly would that help “us consumers”?
Aeroplan's actions feel incredibly disingenous when they're not taking clear and obvious actions that would directly target mileage brokers. If that's truly the problem then limit who we can redeem for (a nominated list of friends and family, for example), but don't take drastic action that affects everybody (pulling many different types of awards entirely) and blame it on the services that most people are using to get around how stingy award availability is these...
Aeroplan's actions feel incredibly disingenous when they're not taking clear and obvious actions that would directly target mileage brokers. If that's truly the problem then limit who we can redeem for (a nominated list of friends and family, for example), but don't take drastic action that affects everybody (pulling many different types of awards entirely) and blame it on the services that most people are using to get around how stingy award availability is these days.
I agree, I'm not sure how effective banning public/"commercial" scrapers are. Any broker of any decent size will likely want to roll their own scrapers anyways. The only real way to combat fraudsters would be some sort of verification system (tied to a real identity) for FFP accounts, specifically targeting those with suspicious activity.
Everything else is just whack-a-mole. Ban 1 account and 2 more pop up.
No snark intended... but don't you have a financial interest and partnership with a service doing exactly this?
Scraping yes, not milage brokering. Regardless, I like how he didn't use his business as the example. That was my first thought as well though.
Anything about point.me
Yeah doesn't Ben have a financial interest in point.me? Why not make reference to that when talking about competitors?
The issue is not mainly websites scraping award inventory, but mileage brokers, controlling tons of Super Elite 100K accounts, squat, transfer award tickets like no one else matter.
Just by adding a random delay before cancelled award ticket back into inventory, and add a cancellation fee for everyone like 7 days before departure, would solve a lot of those mileage brokers.
Could be easily circumvented by the airlines if they'd
1) only allow account owners to book awards for themselves and persons they have previously booked/traveled together with.
2) Randomize inventory, giving every frequent flyer a slightly different award availability.
1) yes; 2) makes no sense
1. Yes - rewards should not be transferrable - should only be redeemable by the member and others travelling with account holder need to be on same PNR.
2) would make the scrapping pointless as the scrapper tools would no longer be able to find the actual award availability for that member.