ExpertFlyer is a paid subscription service for frequent flyers, allowing access to fare class availability, seat maps and award availability alerts. Unfortunately, the website has suffered a setback, making it a lot less useful.

ExpertFlyer loses Star Alliance data access.

Last evening, ExpertFlyer sent out an email to its subscribers, stating that the company cannot obtain award and upgrade data for many airlines. Here are the affected airlines, which is the entire bunch of Star Alliance airlines and Vistara / Virgin Australia:

• Adria Airways
• Air Canada
• Air China International
• Air India
• Air New Zealand
• Asiana Airlines
• ANA – All Nippon Airlines
• Austrian Airlines
• Avianca
• Avianca Costa Rica
• Brussels Airlines
• COPA
• Croatia Airlines
• Egyptair
• Ethiopian Airlines
• EVA Air
• LOT Polish Airlines
• Lufthansa
• SAS
• Shenzhen Airlines
• Singapore Airlines
• South African Airways
• SWISS
• TACA
• Thai Airways International
• United Airlines
• Virgin Australia
• Vistara

Here is how ExpertFlyer explains the situation:

Due to issues in obtaining award and upgrade data for the below airlines, we have removed them from our list of supported airlines in the Award & Upgrade search for the time being. This also means that any active Flight Alerts for those airlines are not currently working.

This has happened before

There is a lot of guessing going around frequent flyer circles that this action was initiated because ExpertFlyer would scrap data. However, that is not the case, as the founder of ExpertFlyer, Chris Lopinto, clarified. He left the company just five months ago (ExpertFlyer was bought by the same company that owns ThePointsGuy in 2018)

Unfortunately, this is the loss of some of the most valuable features of ExpertFlyer, as the ability to set alerts and get award seats was the USP. Chris also thinks that this feature is not coming back anytime soon.

These data supplies are not coming back anytime soon, but either EF has no visibility on the issue or is not letting people on to it so far.

Bottomline

ExpertFlyer has lost access to a tonne of the award availability they had access to a few weeks ago. Star Alliance member airlines, Vistara and Virgin Atlantic, are gone, and this was a big part of the service for the subscription to be paid for.

What do you think of these ExpertFlyer changes?

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