ExpertFlyer: The Ultimate Tool for Optimizing Flight Searches

The ExpertFlyer tool will mainly make our lives easier by conducting availability searches on our behalf when we encounter fully booked flights using points.

• See in real time which booking classes are available for a given flight, which is particularly useful for finding award tickets or specific classes for upgrades or other purposes.
• Receive a notification as soon as a specific seat becomes available (aisle, window, lie-flat seat, etc.), ideal for optimizing your comfort without constant monitoring.
• Be notified as soon as an award seat (points/miles) or upgrade opportunity appears on your desired flight (Award & Upgrade).
• Track delays, schedules or changes in real time.
• View the exact cabin configuration of airplanes with available, occupied, or selected seats, and choose the best locations according to your preferences.
• Access interesting information such as delay frequencies, aircraft types used, and past trends for a given flight by consulting the history.
• Identify the best routes with convenient connections and less risk in the event of delays.
• Compatible with most of the world’s major airlines.

Airlines rarely put all their vacant award seats on rewards programs. In fact, on Aeroplan seats on partner flights is limited, while all available seats on Air Canada flights are displayed, but at dynamic fares.

Knowing the best time to book is crucial; if you miss that time, ExpertFlyer can come to the rescue!

Indeed, you can use Aeroplan points to book a seat on Lufthansa, an Air Canada partner. However, partner seats go fast, and some seats are only made available close to the flight date when they cannot be sold within their program; for example, Lufthansa’s first class is only released 14 days before departure.

This is where ExpertFlyer comes into play; its primary function is to find the seats we want and to send us an email alert so that we can proceed with the reservation as soon as possible.

In addition to the availability alerts, ExpertFlyer offers much more!

ExpertFlyer is a handy tool for Points and Miles Enthusiasts. On the other hand, it is a paid platform to unlock the desired features. You can try it for five days before paying for the subscription.

Three plans are available to you: the Free plan, the Basic plan and the Premium plan.

The simple version ExpertFlyer is free, and you can create seat alerts. On the other hand, you’re limited to one alert at a time, although you can pay for additional seat alerts at a cost of USD 0.99 each. You can’t search for availability without a paid subscription.

With ExpertFlyer‘s Basic plan, you can search availability across hundreds of carriers, access detailed cabin plans, create alerts for specific seats, and more. However, there is a monthly limit of 250 searches, and these are restricted to direct flights.

ExpertFlyer’s Basic plan costs USD 4.99 per month.

The Premium subscription to ExpertFlyer gives you access to many exciting features, including the possibility to create flight availability alerts. This will ensure that you receive an email when seats become available in your desired fare class and on your selected flight or aircraft.

There’s no limit to the number of searches, which can span almost a week (so you avoid searching for flights date by date), and you also unlock the freedom to create other types of alerts. This can be an asset for the AvGeek who would like to choose their plane or simply for the person who hopes for a schedule change to modify their itinerary for free.

ExpertFlyer’s Premium plan costs USD 9.99 per month or USD 99.99 if you take the annual subscription. Don’t forget to use a no-conversion-fee credit card like the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite to save 2.5% on your purchase!

Not all airlines are displayed on ExpertFlyer; make sure you have access to the airlines you are targeting before subscribing to a plan.

Indeed, it is not possible to search for availability on Bangkok Airways, Condor, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, LATAM and Qatar Airways. Inventory results are often in error for these airlines.

Although we cannot rely on ExpertFlyer to search for availability in Qsuites, we can find information such as the cabin plan on Qatar Airways. Then, the tool is still helpful for nearly a hundred airlines.

The airlines that are available on ExpertFlyer’s search engine include the following:

Booking award tickets is usually the main objective when doing travel hacking. Points are easy to accumulate, but we sometimes come up against inconclusive search results, especially since the emergence of Revenge Travel. ExpertFlyer comes to our rescue when we can’t find seats on the flights we want; it saves us the hassle of constantly refreshing the search engine.

Also, one can rely on the information from ExpertFlyer when considering transferring points to an airline program. For example, Membership Rewards points can be transferred to Aeroplan. So you can check availability with ExpertFlyer before transferring, as reversing the transfer is not possible.

To search for award ticket availability with ExpertFlyer, click on “Awards & Upgrades” on the left side of the screen.

In fact, all ExpertFlyer’s functions can be easily found on the left-hand side of the main screen.

You will then be taken to another page where you can enter your search data:

• Route
• Dates (flexible or not)
• Airline
• Number of passengers
• Fare class
• Type of flight (direct or with connection)

Here, you can see that ExpertFlyer can save us a lot of time, as the search can be conducted across multiple dates and fare classes, and it’s possible to filter the results to view only direct flights using the tool.

This is very practical if you want to avoid connections with the current frustrating situation at airports and the rise of Revenge Travel, which disrupts flight schedules.

For example, here we’ll be looking for availability on Austrian Airlines between Montreal and Vienna. The advantage of this route is that it is subject to a fixed fare for travel to Europe, unlike award tickets on Air Canada. However, availability is scarce, which is where ExpertFlyer proves to be useful.

The search results show that award flights are only available on July 25, 2022.

Next, you can easily confirm on the Air Canada website that it is indeed possible to book a flight between Montreal and Vienna on Austrian Airlines on July 25, 2022.

Then, under a date constraint, you have to create an email alert; ExpertFlyer will notify you if a seat becomes available. What are the chances that seats will become available? Cabin rescheduling is always happening, right up to the last minute, with some passengers cancelling and others changing their flights. So you have to be quick to get your hands on those seats!

Finally, on the same page, you can find a wealth of information about the flight in question: aircraft type, flight frequency, flight information, cabin plans, delay reliability and so on.

I like to know the flight frequency with ExpertFlyer to know my options when planning my vacation.

Alerts can be used in two ways

• You want to find award availability on a particular flight
• You want to be notified if award availability on a flight decreases

To create an alert with ExpertFlyer, click on the exclamation mark icon. A new window will open. Next, you need to choose the class of service for the alert. For premium subscribers, you can create as many alerts as you like, covering multiple dates and classes.

The second way is practical when you are waiting to make a reservation because there are free seats, but you want to receive an alert if the situation changes to decide whether or not to make the reservation.

Secondly, the search options can change from one airline to another. For example, when you select Air Canada as your carrier, the class options are different. In fact, in addition to searches for award ticket availability, ExpertFlyer can help you find the famous “R” seats on Air Canada.

For eUpgrade credit users, ExpertFlyer makes it easy for you to get immediate confirmation of your business class upgrade when “R” seats are available. More details on this subject in the next section.

When travelling, you often hear the terms “Economy,” “Premium Economy,” “Business Class,” and “First Class.” Indeed, these are the different cabins available on the aircraft. However, the four classes are not available on all aircraft and all airlines; for example, Air Canada does not offer “First Class,” and there is no “Premium Economy” on an Airbus A320.

Then, the seats in each cabin are further subdivided into multiple fare types; Economy Class can have a dozen different fare categories!

These fares are represented by letters; each has its price and particularities.

Here is a table of Air Canada fare subdivisions

These letters indicate all the details relating to the ticket you have purchased and determine the benefits you have. For example, Y Economy fare is the full Latitude fare where you can cancel at no charge or take advantage of a same-day Air Canada hold with no route constraints.

The famous “R code” is what you look for when you hope to get immediate confirmation in business class using eUpgrade credits. Business class can be empty, but you can be added to the upgrade waiting list due to a lack of availability for R seats.

So ExpertFlyer can help you determine the number of “low cost” tickets in economy. This way, those who simply want to travel as cheaply as possible can find out if they need to book right away, or if there are still many tickets available at this fare.

In general, we can assume that there are plenty of seats when there are at least 9 free seats; on this flight between Montreal and Vienna on Austrian Airlines, there are still plenty of seats. However, don’t forget that not all seats on partner airlines can be reserved. This can be seen in the following screenshot.

Finally, I had a situation where I found a reasonable rate by researching with one passenger. However, when I repeated the search for 4 people, the price per ticket was not equivalent to the first fare found. This was due to the fare classes; there was only one ticket left at the low fare.

We just detailed the availability search function for award tickets. However, ExpertFlyer can help you find availability on all flights and routes between your departure and arrival points.

So, if your flight ends up being canceled, you can find possible alternatives on other flights yourself to ease the process. In fact, according to the APPR, the carrier must rebook you on another flight if a delay of more than 9 hours occurs; this alternative flight can also be on a different airline.

For example, if your return flight from Italy with Air Transat is canceled, Air Transat is obligated to place you on another flight (including competitors) if the delay exceeds 9 hours, according to the APPR.

Search on ExpertFlyer you can see for yourself that there is space on the Air Canada flight from Rome to Montreal in all fare classes. This means you’ll be able to reach your final destination, Quebec, without being subject to a delay of more than 9 hours.

In fact, missing the first flight segment would have caused a significant delay (since there’s only one flight per day between FCO and YUL, leading to a delay of over 24 hours), which entitles you to protections under the APPR. Additionally, a delay causing you to miss your connecting flight and resulting in a delay of more than 9 hours is a situation covered by the APPR.

Then, if you want to use the Air Canada Same Day Standby feature, ExpertFlyer can tell you whether or not flights leaving earlier have space. This way, you can find out in advance, rather than waiting for the registration to open.

Finally, when we take a look at the availability of our flight, we can also get an idea of details such as:

• The flight is empty: you may be able to lie down on several seats

Another use of ExpertFlyer is to find availability for specific seats. This feature can be beneficial for travelling in a group, if you prefer a seat with a bassinet for a baby, if you want to sit in the emergency exit row, etc.

You can access the plans:

• from the main menu
• on the search results page

Just like the availability alerts, ExpertFlyer will send you an email as soon as it becomes available. So you can quickly get your hands on it. Don’t forget to use your National Bank World Elite Mastercard travel credits for a seat selection fee refund!

For example, you’ve managed to book tickets on the superb Qsuite for your trip to the Maldives for your honeymoon, with no flexibility in the dates. Ideally, you would like to have two seats side by side where you can lower the center divider.

You can select the desired seats one by one and you can do it with all the seats that can be accepted with seat alerts with ExpertFlyer. Qatar Airways may unblock these seats or some passengers may change their flight, so you want to be notified as soon as possible.

For many travellers, the type of aircraft on your flight can matter greatly, and choosing the right plane requires careful selection. It can be quite disappointing if the aircraft is swapped without notification! With timely information, you can decide to adjust (or not) with a different itinerary or date, especially if it’s a last-minute change.

Indeed, one example where a change of equipment can be very frustrating is with the Qsuite and Qatar Airways’ outdated business class. Same class of service, but a totally different experience.

You can set up an aircraft change alert from the seat alert page or the ExpertFlyer homepage.

The primary use of ExpertFlyer is to search for flight availability and book tickets with points. ExpertFlyer, on the other hand, is packed with a wealth of other information; these are advanced and technical, but it’s worth knowing about them, whether for your own curiosity, to plan your lounge visits or to help you make a claim for compensation under the APPR.

With this function, you can consult a tide of information about your flight before and after your departure; you can use your flight number or you can manually enter your route.

Before departure, you can use this function for logistical planning like lounge access, terminal changes, or your arrival terminal, for instance, to let your family know where to pick you up.

Post-departure information can be very useful in the event of a claim under the APPR or EU261. Indeed, airlines are required to record all flight details, from departure/arrival times to the cause of delays or cancellations. The information passed on to passengers can sometimes differ from reality; ExpertFlyer allows you to verify if everything aligns.

This data is also helpful for flight delay insurance claims since most coverage is only triggered after 4 hours of delay. With ExpertFlyer you have the numbers to the minute.

Flight schedule changes have become a norm lately. It is almost certain that your flight schedule will be adjusted, especially if you have booked your ticket months and months in advance.

Usually the airline notifies us of these changes… sometimes we only find out when we log into our account. So make sure you get the information you need as soon as possible, ExpertFlyer can send you an alert for these changes.

This allows you to make decisions, if any, about the change. ExpertFlyer can choose between “any change” or your preference.

This section of ExpertFlyer section contains general travel information such as minimum connection times from airports to details of entry and exit requirements.

Since this information is easily found elsewhere beyond ExpertFlyer we won’t dwell on it too much.

The information categories are:

• Ratings & Delays: the percentage of delays or reliability of this flight
• Minimum Connection Times: the minimum legal time for a connection
• Maximum Permitted Mileage: the maximum distance covered to get from one place to another on a ticket (very useful for round-the-world or sweetspots).
• Connecting Cities: all possible stopovers (1 or 2) between two airports
• Interline Agreements: the list of partners of an airline including those who are not part of the same alliance (e.g. Air Canada and Emirates)
• Visa, Health & Passport: information on entry requirements, vaccination, etc.

Personally, I love using the “Connecting Cities” tool from ExpertFlyer to quickly visualize my options when planning Aeroplan Stopovers.

ExpertFlyer is extremely relevant for any traveller wishing to optimize their points. Indeed, it is sometimes impossible to find award availability without ExpertFlyer in your arsenal.

Without this tool, you’d need to manually search for award availability; I’ll leave the value of your time to you, but at USD 9.99 per month, I much prefer letting the machine do the work while I go about my hobbies. Additionally, there are complementary search tools to ExpertFlyer like Roame, Point.me, and Seats.aero for finding award availability.

What’s more, I can even earn points with this subscription by paying with my Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite card and save on conversion fees!