ExpertFlyer is a paid subscription service that I find incredibly useful for searching award space, looking at flight loads, and setting availability alerts. It looks like it got a bit less useful for Delta flyers as of yesterday, unfortunately. Per an email sent out to ExpertFlyer members: Dear ExpertFlyer Subscriber, As of today, Delta has…
Continue reading: ExpertFlyer no longer displaying Delta elite upgrade space
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
You say that you find it incredibly useful for searching award space. I think it depends on your needs and travel patterns. For a person like me who travels at the most 2-3 times a year, I find it quite over rated, at least at the current subscription price. Being a loyal subscriber for a couple of years, perhaps I will not renew it next time.
Wow - this is such a bummer. I used to use my MR points to transfer to delta and upgrade myself to international J all the time. I used to fly Delta precisely because I could do this. I guess I'll be flying AA or BA from now on.
@ caveman -- You're right, for the person booking only a couple of awards a year the ability to search awards probably isn't that valuable. That being said, I think one tool that's very useful even if you don't book a ton of awards is the ability to set availability alerts. Given how tough award space can be to come by nowadays, being able to set 30 availability alerts is extremely useful, in my opinion.
@lucky - There are so many airlines for which you are supposed to enter the award codes yourself. How do you overcome this issue? Is there a comprehensive list.
Also why don't they search Cathy Pacific, one the most useful one world partner.
@ caveman -- Typically award space doesn't show up for the airlines for which you have to enter the code. The reason ExpertFlyer doesn't show award space for many airlines is that they're not screen scraping from airline websites, but rather pulling their information directly from the GDS.
This makes no sense to me. What exactly is Delta trying to hide? There must be some DL upgrade trick that I'm not aware of.
@ Gene -- I'm with you, I don't totally follow the logic here either. The only thing I can think of is that they think that the harder they make it to find upgrade space, the higher the chance people will outright buy first class. Don't necessarily think that's true or smart, but that's the only reason I can come up with.
It looks like OP (international upgrades with miles or PMU's) is still supported by Expert Flyer?