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Fare Bucket Class and Seat Availability
Special welcome to Flyertalk members!
These resources are provided to assist you in
finding availability of specific fare classes or specific seats -
particularly useful for finding upgrade space or special fare
availability.
Free Tools
- City
Code Help - Provides a handy
guide to the 3 letter airport codes of those hard to reach airports. You
can search the list by pressing Control-F once it has loaded.
- ITA Software
Classic Matrix Tool - This tool allows you to search for fares in
different sales cities so that you can accurately plan purchases in any
city around the world. Additionally it has an undocumented feature that
allows you to specify specific fare buckets. If you want to, for
instance, search for A bucket availability on the HKG-JFK route on Cathay
Pacific you would enter the search as From: HKG:: cx+ / f bc=a and To:
JFK:: cx+ / f bc=a. You can substitute the "cx" with the proper airline
code for the airline you wish to check, and substitute the "bc=a" with
"bc=X" where X is the fare bucket you wish to check. If you wish to check
multiple booking-codes and not place any restriction on the airline format
the request as JFK::/ f bc=x|bc=y|bc=z to check the x, y, and z buckets.
Another undocumented feature is the ability to request multiple segments
on specific carriers (useful for mileage runs). If you want to travel
from Los Angeles to New York and take 4 American Airlines segments, you
would enter the departure city as LAX::AA AA AA AA and the destination
city as JFK::AA AA AA AA. This will search for a 4 segment connection in
each direction on AA. You can also force connections in specific cities.
So, for instance, if you wanted to connect in STL from LAX to JFK on
American Airlines you would enter the departure city as LAX::AA STL AA and
the destination city as JFK::AA STL AA You can find the syntax by clicking
"advanced routing codes" and then clicking on the little question mark
next to the routing codes box. There is also a useful discussion of how to
use this tool to the fullest on Flyertalk.
- SeatGuru -
This tool allows you to get a review of which seat to select on many major
carriers.
- Mileage Monkey -
This tool provides several sub-tools that allow easy construction and validation of Oneworld Explorer RTW tickets, as well as calculate the number of
miles needed for a frequent flyer award. It also provides a very convenient method of calculating total miles for a multiple city trip.
- ExpertFlyer Award Bucket List - Provides the
airline by airline breakdown of award bucket codes to help search for
award space by fare bucket code.
- Air
Fare - Lists mileage run fares from various North American
cities.
- Kayak Explore Map - Mileage run maps with
lowest fares from various departure cities.
- Airport Departure Mileage Run Fare Search - Search for lowest fares from a given departure airport to get ideas for mileage runs.
- Google Flights - Enter your home airport and
get a map of lowest fares to major markets.
- Fare
Compare - Shows listings of best current and historical fares from
your departure point both in a list and graphically on a map.
- Farecast -
Predicts future price changes in specific market pairs in an attempt to
help purchase timing decisions.
- KVS Availability Tool - Downloadable availability
checker that requires registration. Some options are membership based.
Offers class availability, upgrade availability, and other data from the
global reservation systems. Details of registration procedure can be
found on Flyertalk.
- FlightStats - Offers a variety of flight status
data, on time data, etc.
- ExpertFlyer.com - Paid service which provides
class availability, upgrade availability, and other data from the global
reservation systems.
- Milez.biz -
Compares mileage requirements across a wide variety of frequent flier
programs to figure out which award can most reasonably help you grab a
free leg.
- Webflyer Milemarker - Calculate air mileage
between two locations. Includes calculations for elite bonuses, class of
service bonuses, and minimum segment mileage.
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