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ExpertFlyer is a site that I’ve used for a number of years to alert me when American Airlines releases award inventory or upgrade inventory on to the market. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve been able to grab hard-to-find awards or snagged last minute upgrades thanks to an ExpertFlyer email. And the site has just got a lot better.
Up until last week ExpertFlyer didn’t have access to United Airlines award inventory but that has now been added and you can now search for (and set alerts for) all Star Alliance Awards – that was a major boost to an already very useful site. If that wasn’t enough good news, ExpertFlyer has now announced that it has access to British Airways award inventory too.
What Is ExpertFlyer
ExpertFlyer is a paid-for website that gives users access to an array of useful tools to help them plan their trips. Some of the information on ExpertFlyer can be found for free elsewhere but no other site has all the information in one place.
Some of the more useful functionality on ExpertFlyer includes:
- Award searches – search for awards on numerous major airlines
- Awards Alerts – get an email alert when specific award inventory becomes available
- Upgrade alerts (specific airlines only) – get an email alert when an airline opens up upgrade inventory on your chosen flight
- Seat Alerts – get an email alert when specific seats or specific types of seat become available on flights of your choice (great for snagging exit row seats after their occupants have been upgraded).
- See how heavily booked flights are – gives you a good idea of what your chances of an upgrade are
ExpertFlyer offers a free 5-day trial so you can see what it offers for yourself and you can get more of an idea about the functionality of the site here.
The regular cost of a full ExpertFlyer subscription is $99/year or $9.99/month for the service that gives you the all-important alerts.
Searching British Airways Awards On ExpertFlyer
ExpertFlyer subscribers can search for all of the different award types that British Airways offers:
- Economy Class Awards — X Class inventory
- Premium Economy Awards — P Class inventory
- Business Class Awards — U Class inventory
- First Class Awards— Z Class inventory
Don’t let the letters faze you, they’re just the codes British Airways give to the various classes of award.
The user interface on ExpertFlyer is very simple….
In this example I’m checking to see if there is a single Business Class award available on British Airways for travel between London and Los Angeles (direct flight) on 30 October 2016 and 3 days either side – all these options can be tailored to suit whatever it is you’re looking for.
The results appear like this and, as you should be able to see, there are no Business Class awards available on the 30th……
…and, as it happens, there are no Business Class seats available on any of the other dates either.
This isn’t surprising as the London – Los Angeles route is one of the hardest routes on which to find British Airways award availability…..but that’s where ExpertFlyer comes into its own.
Up until now your only real recourse when searching for hard-to-find awards has been to check back with the airline every day to see if they’ve released any inventory. Not only is that tedious but there’s also no guarantee that you won’t miss the award inventory being released.
In situations like this, if you have an ExpertFlyer account, you simply click on the “!” next to the flight of your choice and set up an alert:
All it takes is a few seconds and then ExpertFlyer does the rest. The site searches British Airways award inventory on a regular basis throughout the day and emails you should something matching your alert parameters become available.
Because British Airways uses the same inventory for upgrades as they do for award seats, the search I’ve illustrated above would also act as an “upgrade alert”.
For anyone wondering what they’d see if an award seat was available, here’s an example of what ExpertFlyer would show:
In this case both First Class and Business Class awards are available to be booked on BA269.
Bottom Line
If you’re not a regular flyer then ExpertFlyer may not be for you but, if you fly with any frequency or search for awards with any frequency, this could save you a lot of time (and possibly money).
Aside from the award alerts and the seat alerts (which you can get for free on ExpertFlyer) I’ve found being able to see how many seats an airline has for sale in each cabin very useful. It allows me to be clever about my choices of flights if I have a number to choose from – picking flights with low loads in Business Class close to departure has almost certainly increased my upgrade percentage more than a few times.
British Airways is an airline I use quite a bit when I’m flying around Europe and award availability on some of the routes I fly is pretty hard to come by during the peak months. Quite often, whether awards are available or not, I still have to do the trip and they can be quite costly (even at the back of the plane). Now that I can use ExpertFlyer to alert me when/if awards become available I’ll hopefully save a bit of cash by grabbing the awards I’d normally miss.
