Award Booking Like a Pro with ExpertFlyer

Getting the scoop on an award flight opening up is the difference between sitting in Coach, and sitting in Business on your next flight.  I frequently have to accept a mixed class award when I book since I string together long layovers in order to get the best value from my award tickets. This post tackles first the Why we need a service like ExpertFlyer, and then the How to set it up and be prepped like a pro – if you want to jump straight into that then click Here

For example, this weekend we are going on a short trip from New York to Panama, it will involve 3 flights, but is actually part of a much more elaborate award nexus:

• JFK-PTY
• PTY-SJU
• SJU-JFK

Seems pretty straight forward, but it is really from the following Tickets:

• EWR-MXP (5 nights) FCO-JFK (Stop 5 months) JFK-PTY (mixed class, FCO-JFK-PTY priced in I Business Class Award)
• PTY-SJU – is actually just that, it is a connector flight that takes me out of Central America United Zone and into North America American Airlines Zone.
• SJU-JFK (stop 2 months) JFK-ZRH

I crafted the tickets in this way in order to leverage the free one ways from United and American Airlines that are effectively making this weekend trip a free bonus.

When we started out on this one, back with the flight from Newark (EWR) to Milan (MXP) we booked in Coach, and I grumbled about it so we upgraded the way back flight into Business Class from the hotel the night before departure. The hurdle we hit was that the flight we were trying to upgrade had two components, the regular flight and the ‘free one way’.

The regular flight FCO-JFK was available, but the 5 month stopover for the JFK-PTY flight meant they had not released award space in I class yet.  You will find that Business Class (I Class) is typically released in small stages, as they rightly want to ensure that there are enough seats available to actually sell to people in Business Class rather than give away on awards.

I was able to book the ticket into JFK in Business Class, and have them hold my original seat in Coach (X Class) but I had to pay the full price of the upgrade in miles.  To me, that is not unfair, because I get the leg I really wanted in Business, at the same price others would pay, and if I can later find award space in I class from JFK-PTY then I should be able to swap into it with no fee, even if it comes within the 21 day late booking window.

Waiting for Space

We fly on Friday morning, so we are currently T-80 from departure, and to be honest I am not holding my breath for the upgrade, I have checked a few times, and even finding one seat hasn’t worked.  We could fly on a later flight, but we decided that it is more important to arrive early, since we are only spending one day in Panama.  The good news is that we booked this on a split PNR – in that we have two separate locator numbers for this reservation, which means if one seat opens we can snag that, whereas if we were on a joint PNR we couldn’t upgrade just one of us (a very frustrating feeling).

Using ExpertFlyer to Track Award Inventory

ExpertFlyer has 3 tiers of Membership:

• Free
• Pro Basic $4.99 per month
• Pro Premium $9.99 per month

Clearly, in such a pricing model they offer better options as you go up in price, and unfortunately in order to be made aware of new Award Seats you need to use their Pro Premium package.

They actually allow you to set up to 30 Alerts at a time, which is pretty useful, and more than enough for me, I set up one for every flight we have booked at this time, which is just the 4 mentioned above, from JFK-PTY-SJU-JFK-ZRH-JFK.

Here’s how to set one up:

On the left of the screen is a link to Create New Flight Alert, when clicked it brings up the main page (you can see both in the image below)

Things that you will need to know about the alert here are:

• The Alert is only for that specific flight, not that route.  Therefore if you know of other routes, partner airlines etc then you need to create alerts for each one.  Remember, if you have an Economy(Class X) award booked, or simply are waiting to pull the trigger in Business (Class I) it doesn’t have to be on that same flight to be valid as a swap with the airline.
  • For example, if you are flying from LAX-SFO on 11/11 you could fly on either an AA Flight, or a JAL flight (within OneWorld) or equally an United or an ANA flight (within StarAlliance) therefore, remember to set more than one alert if there is more than one option to get from Point A to Point B.

Copa Fare Codes

• Fare Codes are a confusing thing, there are so many and you need to get the right one.  Within alliances some airlines code the same fare type with a different letter, so when I am looking for my I Class using United miles I just take that extra step of confirming that the Partner, Copa in this case agrees with me that the Ticket Code I means Business Award.
  • Remember – even though we use the word ‘upgrade’ here for change our ticket from a Coach fare to a Business fare it is not an upgrade, so don’t look for upgrade awards – these fare codes are used for people who have a paid ticket already.  You need to be looking for Business Class Award or First Class Award, as shown below.

Example 2 American Airlines Award Codes

If you were doing a similar search for American Airlines codes you would have these to chose from:

 

The good ones here are:

• T – Coach (milesaaver ticket – cheapest option)
• U – Business (milesaaver ticket – cheapest option)
• Z – First (milesaaver ticket – cheapest option)

Valid American Airlines Award codes for the same seats are below, you could set alerts for these too, but they are double the price of the Milesaaver award tickets and a horrible value in my opinion:

• Y – Coach (AAnyticket – most expense option)
• J – Business (AAnyticket – most expense option)
• F – First (AAnyticket – most expense option)

The following also imply an upgrade award, but cannot be used if you are trying to get an award ticket, such as if you hold Coach and desire Business, these don’t help you as they focus on revenue tickets:

• C – Upgrade a paid Coach ticket to Business (using eVip vouchers given to Executive Plats etc)
• A – Upgrade a paid Business ticket to First  (using eVip vouchers given to Executive Plats etc)

So, you have learned how to set an alert, and what the codes mean – I would really advise you to check each time to make sure you enter the correct code.  But, before I do any of that with ExpertFlyer I see if the plane has space, otherwise all that effort is futile.  If a plane is fully booked then there is no chance that they are going to open up seats for an Award passenger, it simply isn’t possible.

This is where it is handy to know the codes again, and keep on cross checking, because you will be able to pull up airline inventory by class, and even though it is not quite what you are looking for as it is only a paid class available, it will let you know how many seats are open, and you can make an educated guess as to the likelihood that they will release them as award seats.

Checking for space, and Alternate Route Planning

This step also feeds you the relevant information regarding different routes that could be possible for your journey.  Using the menu on the left again select the “Flight Availability’ button, and punch in your data, since we are able to book within the Partner Network I am not going to limit myself to just Copa, in case there is another flight that might work for me.

Step 1. Enter Airports- Pro Tip if you were flexible with airports for either departure or arrival then you might find availability as a second best option, examples of this might be using Gatwick or Heathrow for London, or CDG or Orley for Paris – to do this you would have to run a separate search, or use codes like LON for London and NYC for New York.

Step 2 Enter Alliance (Star for this New York to Panama flight) and

Step 3 DO NOT ENTER A BOOKING CLASS we want to see how full the plane is, so restricting it to the award classes of  X Coach I Business O First would show no results, but we are planning to see on how many seats may open up, so leaving it blank offers us better answers.

Run the results

The top answer is the flight we are booked on, Copa 803, and the good news is the C9 number:

• C Relates to the class of ticket, for Copa C means Business Flex, basically a super expensive Business Class Revenue Ticket.
• 9 Means number of seats available at this rate (though they can only display 1 digit so 9 means at least 9)

So they are telling me that at the moment there are at least 9 unsold Business Class seats available, and that makes me feel hopeful that they might decide to unlock some of those as Award Inventory, hence me setting up the Alert, as outlined above.

A neat trick here is that there is a little seat Icon to the right of the available tickets, clicking that opens up a seat map, which shows that there are actually 11 Business Class seats available, and allows you to create an alert directly from this page – making this a nice shortcut approach to not only see what flights are options for you, which are most likely to be able to accommodate an Award Inventory Release and easily set up an alert for it.

Being able to secure the flight from anywhere

This is the final piece of the puzzle.  There is no point in having an email launch to you to say that the ticket you desire is now available if you are out and about.  You need to have access to the following information immediately:

1. Your Frequent Flyer number
2. The phone number of the desk to call (with United awards like this I call the Round The World desk, because ironically your call doesn’t get routed around the world to a call center in India with these experts.
3. Your Locator Number (the 6 letter code)

Personally I just build an email that gives me all of this and include a trigger word in it (a word that I can remember and search for easily) and mail it to myself.  That way when the email from ExpertFlyer hits my inbox on my iPhone I can enter the trigger word, dial up United and tell them the info right then and there.  I guess you could also put that information into the Name line of the ExpertFlyer Seat Award but I prefer having it in the body of an email to read.

Conclusion

ExpertFlyer is a powerful addition to your frequent flyer toolbox, I personally find the price a little steep, and wouldn’t continue to pay $9.99 unless I had need of the service for flights perhaps every other month.  Using it correctly will get you the scoop on award seats and help you get the one you are looking for.

Lastly, in case you skipped over the ‘why I need it’ part of this post.  If two or more people are on a shared Locator number or PNR you will need two or more seats to open up in the class you want, you would not be able to switch out just one of the seats, for that reason I personally prefer to book on separate PNRs, though this comes with a risk that in the event something goes awry with your booked flights they may send you onwards to your origin or destination separately – might be something to consider for families traveling with kids, or people who need help to travel.