ExpertFlyer Adds Award Availability for Korean Air, Iberia, Icelandair and Updates United/Continental
As you know, ExpertFlyer is one of my favorite tools for finding seat availability and award seats on flights, now it’s even better thanks to a few recent additions to the award availability it shows.
Korean Air Awards
Perhaps the biggest news is that ExpertFlyer is now showing business class award space on Korean Air flights. Though the site previously showed A fare (first class) award space and O fare (business) upgrades, it will now also show outright O fare business class awards as well starting on March 1. Update: According to our source at ExpertFlyer, Korean Air is displaying A first class award fares but not O business class award fares, though you can still find Z business upgrade fares on the airline on EF.
That’s good news for people with Chase Ultimate Rewards through the Sapphire Preferred and/or Ink Bold, which transfer to Korean Air, as well as Skyteam flyers since you can’t search for Korean Air awards through Delta.com, and you can’t even use Korean Air’s search engine unless you have enough miles in your Korean Air account to complete the booking. So until now, the only way to search for these awards has been to call up the SkyMiles desk and hope you get a competent, well-informed agent who knew how to book partner awards.
Now that you can find award availability on ExpertFlyer, you can nail down which flights you want, call the Delta desk with the information and book them. Much easier.
Other Additions
They also just added Iberia business class awards, plus Icelandair business class awards and upgrades as well.
They will be making code changes on Saturday after the official merge of United and Continental, once the new United site (basically Continental’s old site) launches and adjusts the award and upgrade classes for United in ExpertFlyer’s search. To make the transition smoother for EF users, the site will also change any dated saved queries or alerts for United with the adjusted fare classes, but everyone should double check any saved alerts on Saturday after the changes are done to make sure their seat alerts are still in the system properly,
So, some great additions and changes are in the works for ExpertFlyer that, in my opinion, will make this already valuable resource that much more useful. Now if they'd only add British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Delta award availability!
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