ExpertFlyer is a valuable tool for frequent flyers, which I’ve been a (paying) member of for as long as I’ve been in this hobby (nearly 20 years… time flies). That brings us to the current mess at ExpertFlyer, which I figure is worth addressing.
In this post:
ExpertFlyer loses important seat map features
There are many areas where ExpertFlyer is useful, and one of those is being able to look up at seat maps for most airlines. Not only does this allow you to view a “live” seat map for a flight, but it also lets you set seat change alerts and aircraft change alerts, which are features that I use constantly.
Along those lines, when you look up seat maps for most airlines with ExpertFlyer, you’ll see the following message:
An error has occurred while communicating with the airline reservation system. The support team has been notified of this problem. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
This started several days ago, and at first I thought we should give them a day or two to resolve this, since I figured it was a technical glitch of some sort.
However, days have passed, and the issue still hasn’t been resolved. Not only that, but ExpertFlyer hasn’t even acknowledged the issue, which is really the biggest problem. In the past, the company would put up a banner when certain functionality was down, but that hasn’t been done this time around. For that matter, the company even has a page that’s supposed to list known tech issues, but that’s not even being updated.
I reached out to ExpertFlyer to ask if there was any explanation or insight into what was going on, but I haven’t heard back. So yeah, unfortunately I have no insights.
Roughly a year ago, ExpertFlyer became a bit less useful, when the service could no longer search or set alerts for Star Alliance award availability. Clearly this came down to an issue between airlines and ExpertFlyer, as some airlines were trying to shut down websites scraping award seats. In the case of seat maps, I can’t help but wonder if this is just a technical glitch, or if ExpertFlyer was for some reason forced to remove these.
Is ExpertFlyer in a slow death spiral?
ExpertFlyer was launched in 2005, by some passionate airline geeks. In 2018, the company was sold to Red Ventures, which owns a bunch of websites, including many in the travel space (like The Points Guy). Even after ExpertFlyer was sold, one of the founders, Chris Lopinto, stayed on to largely run the company.
However, in April 2023, he shared how he would be leaving the company. As he wrote in a FlyerTalk post:
For those who don’t know, I’m the last of the original ExpertFlyer founders that is still working at Red Ventures/TPG after the 2018 acquisition of ExpertFlyer, however I’ve been posting as EFV for long before that. After almost 20 years of running the business, this Friday is my last day at ExpertFlyer/RV and this is the last time I will post as EFV.
I’m telling you this because I don’t know what the future has in store for ExpertFlyer. I hope that the new version of EF that we’ve been working on gets finished and released and that EF survives as a standalone product, but unfortunately that is something I no longer have control of. I hope that whoever will be taking over the service will continue to be part of the FT community and posting as EFV, however I don’t know what form future community outreach may take.
Yesterday, in the FlyerTalk thread dedicated to ExpertFlyer, Chris posted under his personal account, writing the following:
On a personal note, I am truly dismayed and sorry this is happening. If standard customer care isn’t replying, maybe some other people could be more responsive to your concerns.
I almost can’t help but wonder if there just aren’t people working at ExpertFlyer anymore, and it’s just running on autopilot? If there were anyone actually running the site, you’d think they would have at least acknowledged this situation.
It’s also not a great sign of confidence when one of the initial founders essentially suggests reaching out to Red Ventures. Reading between the lines, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have much confidence in what’s going on there either.
It sure seems like Red Ventures is almost slowly letting ExpertFlyer die, and is no longer making it a focus. That’s of course Red Ventures’ choice, since it might not be that lucrative. But when you’re offering a paid subscription service, you expect a bit more.
It’s sad, because there’s not really an alternative to ExpertFlyer, that provides a similar service. For those who value ExpertFlyer, it’s kind of invaluable, and I couldn’t imagine managing so much of my travels without it. Sadly I’m starting to think that ExpertFlyer’s best days may be behind it.
Bottom line
For several days now, ExpertFlyer has been unable to show seat maps for most flights, and that also means that aircraft change and seat change alerts aren’t working. While tech glitches happen, the company hasn’t even acknowledged these issues, which makes me wonder what’s going on.
While ExpertFlyer was sold in 2018, one of the founders stayed on until last year. Since then, we’ve seen a significant decrease in the usefulness of the website. One can’t help but wonder if Red Ventures has at this point given up on the service, and is just milking it for as many subscriptions as it can still get, or what exactly is going on.
What do you make of the current ExpertFlyer situation?
Is there any other service where it's possible to create seat alerts (i.e. when I'm looking for a specific seat or window seat etc)?
I terminated auto-renewal based on this article and in the survey following cancelation, one of the potential options is "no longer flying due to COVID-19," so this thing truly does not appear to have any sort of on-going maintenance if they think people are still concerned there.
I'd love to know the timing restrictions in the sale agreement as to how long the founders have to stay out of this space. 1.5 years now for the last guy to leave, I'd watch for them to create a new product in the near future. Bad news for the VC company to lose all the knowledge they paid for in 2018...
This has been going on for more than a month (coincidentally it started just after I renewed for the year). Other than seat maps and award availability, the other things I use Exoert Flyer most for is Minimum Connecting Times, and Interline Agreements. Does anyone have alternatives for those, in case the situation at EF doesn’t improve…or gets worse?
I am fast becoming a fan of seats.aero. I am a little bit of a techie but the sorting and multilevel filtering available on the free version is pretty impressive. I am going to soon commit to a subscription to the pro version as it seems pretty timely as to showing last minute postings of award travel availability.
another site that has seat maps: https://awardfares.com/seats
I think Chris' tone when he mentioned he was leaving - said it all. RV has probably become a toxic place to be. They won't support his product and he saw the writing on the wall. I don't recall the last time I went to TPG website.
Today it says “Notice: We are currently experiencing technical difficulties with Seat Maps. Our team is actively working to resolve this issue and restore full functionality as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding.
”
So maybe withhold judgment for a bit longer ?
FYI, I just logged in and found the following notice:
"Notice: We are currently experiencing technical difficulties with Seat Maps. Our team is actively working to resolve this issue and restore full functionality as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding."
Me too.
I've been using it for yours primarily to see inventory numbers (and partly seat maps, where it nicely showed a difference between "taken" and "blocked"), but indeed noticed there was zero evolution of the interface, even in the most trivial ways.
It really appears to be running on auto-pilot without any investments.
I stopped using it when they stopped supporting their app. I could no longer save or pay for seat alerts. I reached out to them and they told me to use the website. But that didn’t work either. Then I deleted the app (to reinstall), but the app is no longer available in “your region”. I tried Europe, US, Australia, Southern Africa - “your region” seems to be the planet!
Most phones come with an app called email. If you don't have it, that's the one you need to install to receive notifications.
This is the most idiotic comment.
Thanks for calling out your comment. I didn't understand what you were trying to convey.
Let me explain it again in simpler words: EF no longer supports their own app, in the app store it is no longer available. And the app’s functionality is down, it no longer processes payments. Their website also no longer processes payments, to pay for single seat availability alerts.
Got it? Now what on earth does that have to do with e-mail? And with notifications?
That is in response to Jake’s comment.
They keep charging my credit card despite me telling them not to so I would warn people about Expert Flyer. They keep saying their team will get back to me but several days have past with no ckntact
I’m pretty dismayed by the dwindling airlines/groups available on EF. I wish someone would see an opportunity. Plenty of $99/year subscribers ready to switch. Lucky, do you know anyone at point.me?
I was really disappointed when ExpertFlyer announced that they were discontinuing with their Beta version and took down the website. it was a vast improvement over the current site.
"Red Ventures" sounds awfully familiar to "Sabre Red," basically the most common GDS (Global Distribution System) out there. I wonder if its ownership group is connected with Sabre?
If so, I would not hold up much hope. Sabre has slowly been diminishing the capabilities of its product — taking away features that power users used to be able to do magic with and going in the direction of point-and-click graphic interfaces. And when contacted about...
"Red Ventures" sounds awfully familiar to "Sabre Red," basically the most common GDS (Global Distribution System) out there. I wonder if its ownership group is connected with Sabre?
If so, I would not hold up much hope. Sabre has slowly been diminishing the capabilities of its product — taking away features that power users used to be able to do magic with and going in the direction of point-and-click graphic interfaces. And when contacted about capabilities that have been removed, they simply make no response at all. Sabre has near-monopoly control over the GDS industry and seems to turn a deaf ear to complaints by its customers.
Does Ford have access to Sabre? If so, would you be able to log onto his Sabre system and use it for your own purposes?
EF is valuable for so much more than just award searches. There’s no other tool that can display inventory and fare rules. That alone is good reason to keep a subscription going.
But there have been previous clues about EF basically being on autopilot. For example, it does not understand TQO (new airport in Tulum, MX). I emailed and asked that it be added (should be trivial) and got a response that they would NOT be adding any airports.
That's astonishing! No new airports? When did this happen? (your convo w/ them?)
ITA Matrix has fare rules for free
I hope seat maps don't die. So far l contacted EF twice and l still waiting for a respond. The only issue of EF for me is just the seat maps, and without EF there is nothing out there that l can use. I'll wait a few weeks before canceling my subscription.
For people who buy care about award availability, there are multiple alternatives. For us true power users, who rely on EF for planning complex itineraries and for find alternative flights when there are delays, cancellations, and schedule changes, and for alerts for such as well as for aircraft swaps and seat availability, there is no alternative.
I'm amazed people still pay for it. I gave up on it years ago.
Red Ventures has not invested a cent in it.
Sad to hear this development, but it's still useful for me for the only thing I use it for: setting alerts for U space on Alaska flights to use my GGU's. If that ever goes away, I'm cancelling.
Starting next year Alaska will send you notifications when there's confirmable upgrade space. So you shouldn't need EF, but on the downside it means there'll be more competition.
https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/membership-benefits/2025-updates
I cancelled my membership when they removed *A award searches. Became useless to me after that.
Is there any replacement service for getting seat or fare class notifications (for non awards)? Don’t mind if paid.
This site is dead. It was very clear when they decided to shut down beta.expertflyer.com, which has been around since 2018 and would have been launched had Chris not sold to Red Ventures, earlier this year.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's literally nobody working there: only a bunch of code processing credit card payments and queries with no supervision (and obviously nobody fixing things).
So very sad.
That's because Sabre and TK could not reach an agreement when their contract was up for prolongation.
The battle is still ongoing, seems very fierce, and poses quite a problem for travel agencies using Sabre.
I’m pretty sure as well they have no intention of fixing anything. Seat guru is dead and that was the database for the seat maps. Most of the airlines they had supported are no longer supported. I’ve basically just been using it for schedule and aircraft changes, but I think it is time to give it up. Honestly even in the past their service responses were basically oh well with no hope of any feature...
I’m pretty sure as well they have no intention of fixing anything. Seat guru is dead and that was the database for the seat maps. Most of the airlines they had supported are no longer supported. I’ve basically just been using it for schedule and aircraft changes, but I think it is time to give it up. Honestly even in the past their service responses were basically oh well with no hope of any feature improvement. They couldn’t even figure out how to detect a flight cancellation. The interface is first year programming and the whole site could be written with a script at this point. The only value add is the contracts to access to the inventory and seat maps.
I'm not sure if this is related, but EF has had no Turkish Airlines info for over a month now. I reached out to them and they wrote this back:
"Thank you for your email. Regrettably, due to persistent challenges in accessing data for Turkish Airlines (TK) through the GDS, we have decided to remove them from our database. At this time, we do not plan on switching to a different GDS; we will...
I'm not sure if this is related, but EF has had no Turkish Airlines info for over a month now. I reached out to them and they wrote this back:
"Thank you for your email. Regrettably, due to persistent challenges in accessing data for Turkish Airlines (TK) through the GDS, we have decided to remove them from our database. At this time, we do not plan on switching to a different GDS; we will simply remove TK from the database. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you have any questions, please let us know. Thank you for your continued support and understanding.
Thank you,
The ExpertFlyer.com Team"
Very very disappointing.
Sorry, my response should have gone here (not in reply to Jake):
That's because Sabre and TK could not reach an agreement when their contract was up for prolongation.
The battle is still ongoing, seems very fierce, and poses quite a problem for travel agencies using Sabre.
I've cancelled my auto-renew the other day.
I'm trying to decide whether to file a charge back as, obviously, what I paid for is not being delivered.
Thoughts?
I am considering contacting them for a full refund as well (which is the first step before a chargeback, which comes only if they don't agree to one).
On top of everything else (no Turkish, this glitch, etc. etc.) they also have problems displaying fare rules, especially those form Qatar, so the usefulness has been dwindling while the list of broken promises.has been growing.
A few years ago, a number of key airlines "temporarily" stopped showing availability on EF. I emailed them asking how they could expect customers to pay the same monthly price for getting less value.
Their reply was literally "i have looked at your search history and see that over 55% of the searches you ran returned results - feel free to cancel". Horrible customer service - they deserve to fail.
You won’t get a chargeback approved. You willingly paid for the service and they have ability to change or limit content at their sole discretion. You still got access to the site so Red Ventures would dispute the chargeback and it wouldn’t be approved. You do realize vendors have to agree to a chargeback in most cases right?
I’ve used experflyer for years, just to see the current seat allocations. That is invaluable if travelling in economy and you just want a comfortable seat. I’ve just cancelled my renewal reluctantly. It’s a shame that the owners don’t have the common courtesy to let longstanding customers know what is going on. They are obviously very poor business people.
Surely it must be worth something to sell to one of the points scraping award availability sites,
Expert Flyer has been going down in quality/service for quite some time. Earlier this year they had repeated database issues that resulted in hundreds (if not thousands) of alerts being falsely generated, and in some cases, you had to delete and manually recreate them all to fix them. They wouldn't respond/acknolwedge any tickets for days either. I stopped paying for an unreliable service.
This keeps happening to a lot of great sites - they get bought out and left to rot. Amex bought LoungeBuddy, Pointsguy bought ExpertFlyer, Concur bought hipmonk, Google's Trips, Utrip, the list if long. Those large companies and credit care pushers don't know sh!t about these services or their users, not really sure why they continue to spend money buying these sites just to shut them down later. It's taken YEARS, but it looks like...
This keeps happening to a lot of great sites - they get bought out and left to rot. Amex bought LoungeBuddy, Pointsguy bought ExpertFlyer, Concur bought hipmonk, Google's Trips, Utrip, the list if long. Those large companies and credit care pushers don't know sh!t about these services or their users, not really sure why they continue to spend money buying these sites just to shut them down later. It's taken YEARS, but it looks like a loungebuddy replacement is up - LoungeReview (which seems pretty nice so far).
If someone has the time a resources, there is OBVIOUSLY a market for an EF replacement (and quite a few others). I certainly didn't mind the 1990's interface, it worked well and provided what I needed, but it would have been nice to have an android app Get coding!
I prefer the old-style interface. One thing I hated about the beta version was the “modern” interface, which makes it harder and take longer to fill in forms. If anything, I’d prefer a more streamlined interface for power users doing repetitive queries, even a one liner where everything is typed in rather than scrolling and clicking.
Been subscribing for 10+ years, I hoped this was just a glitch but alas I fear the end of EF in its current form, I was hopeful you would get some kind of explanation but as I thought and after reading the FT thread it’s coming to an end.
I've subscribed to EF for many years, even through Covid.
My renewal date is the end of this month, and I've flipped off the auto-renewal...
Great report. I had subscribed to ExpertFlyer for a few years. Its user interface is clunky. (It's almost Windows 3.1 in nature.) Ultimately, I dropped it in favor of two other award search sites. While they might not be as robust as ExpertFlyer, the user interface is smooth and they do what I need: alert me when award inventory is available. I've been pretty successful with specific seat selection on my end.
PS - To move from the Windows 3.1 feel to a modern user interface would require a huge capital investment. It's hard for me to imagine that Red Ventures would make that investment. Given that competitors have entered the market, what's the net present value of future cash flows if we 1) do nothing or 2) upgrade the UI? Over time, its revenues will dwindle and ultimately not cover the cost of operating its servers and it will cease operations.
They already had a modern UX in the form of beta.experflyer.com, but decided.to shut it down after years it was running instead of launching it as the main site.
In any case, the design is 100% irrelevant and does not take precedence over the quality of the data.
I prefer the old-style interface. One thing I hated about the beta version was the “modern” interface, which makes it harder and take longer to fill in forms. If anything, I’d prefer a more streamlined interface for power users doing repetitive queries, even a one liner where everything is typed in rather than scrolling and clicking.
I have subscribed to EF for many years. ExpertFlyer has been losing access to airlines and functionality bit by bit ever since RV bought them out in 2018, and unfortunately it looks like they will continue on their downward slide.
I don't mind the dated interface. What I care about is functionality and that sadly keeps deteriorating. Seat maps and seat alerts are a bit reason I subscribe. The other main reasons are inventory, award...
I have subscribed to EF for many years. ExpertFlyer has been losing access to airlines and functionality bit by bit ever since RV bought them out in 2018, and unfortunately it looks like they will continue on their downward slide.
I don't mind the dated interface. What I care about is functionality and that sadly keeps deteriorating. Seat maps and seat alerts are a bit reason I subscribe. The other main reasons are inventory, award alerts (sadly reduced functionality over the years), aircraft change alerts (can mean lost or changed seat assignment), flight change alerts.
There is still value in EF for me, but the permanent loss of seat maps and seat alerts would be a major loss and I will have to rethink my commitment if this is permanent. Every year they lose something else and the decision to continue subscribing gets harder.
Unfortunately they killed the new (then "beta") version of Expert flyer because of existing users complaining that they didn't like change. The new version was way better, not only from what I assume would be for new users to get the hang of it, but it also let me build searches based on URLs which I could create a number of links to search options on in a Google sheet with some simple logic.
And...
Unfortunately they killed the new (then "beta") version of Expert flyer because of existing users complaining that they didn't like change. The new version was way better, not only from what I assume would be for new users to get the hang of it, but it also let me build searches based on URLs which I could create a number of links to search options on in a Google sheet with some simple logic.
And I don't know who else was a founder aside from Chris, EF has always been secretive for some reason.
It's been sidelined for a long time now with functionality declining with no one tending the shop. They are still gathering renewal subscriptions so its kept alive but there's nothing being done behind the scenes. It was a great product for which I paid for many years but I cancelled my renewal a year ago. Sorry to see it go as in its prime it was essential.
Oh man, I hope it doesn’t die. So much info with EF from seat alerts to inventory searches. Has made my flying wonderful.
Thank you for posting this - I just went into EF to cancel future automatic renewals.
It was a great site while it lasted. Hopefully someone else can create a site that has the same functionality that EF had.
Is this something you'd think about looking into @Ben? You must have some good connections who could speak to the GDS systems and understand if a paid "approved" service could be viable? Or could this be an add on to something like point.me to round out the proposition
The last few EF alerts for schedule changes and aircraft swaps have been super delayed- think weeks after being notified by the operating carrier. Not sure if setting up EF alerts for award seats is worth it, if those too are affected by such delays!
Surely expert flyer started to be useless when they didnt make any attempt to add displays for points availability back for the airlines they lost access to.
The previous owner should offer them a small amount to buy it back and make it good again!
Also a lot of TPG stuff feels like its written by people who would be impressed at getting a free breakfast at a holiday in express.
Red Ventures let EF die just like TPG is slowly becoming less useful.
I can't see any financial benefit for Red Ventures to keep EF going. Probably involves a lot of IT and airline permissions. Subscriptions probably don't even pay the bills.
I feel like TPG has just been one giant advertisement for years now. Ever since they disabled comments.
I had some issues as well, but managed to resolve them by simply repeating the search. I have the same issue with other websites, so my guess was that there is a general internet glitch. On the other hand, access to the inventory was limited throughout the existence of EF, remember when DL only showed if you searched explicitly for DL.
Of course I share your worries about the post of the founder, which might...
I had some issues as well, but managed to resolve them by simply repeating the search. I have the same issue with other websites, so my guess was that there is a general internet glitch. On the other hand, access to the inventory was limited throughout the existence of EF, remember when DL only showed if you searched explicitly for DL.
Of course I share your worries about the post of the founder, which might indicate that it is indeed running on "autopilot" with nobody left on the flightdeck ....