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If you don’t care about flight upgrades, better seats in your cabin, free flights using miles or anything of that sort, click away, nothing for you here. If you do enjoy those things then settle in. There’s much to be discussed here. There’s one tool that almost every travel writer, blogger or wizard raves about and we’re going to elaborate on it. It’s called Expert Flyer.
Give Me The Expert Flyer Elevator Pitch…
ExpertFlyer.com is a one stop shop to find and monitor the things that savvy travelers care most about. We’re talking about upgrade availability, free flight availability, how many cheap seats are left on a flight, if a better seat opens up in my cabin for free or paid, the works. It costs $10 per month, which you can cancel at any point, and if you get a yearly membership you’ll save some money. I find it saves me time and time again…
Let’s Start With Upgrades…
If you book a flight, assuming it’s not already in First Class, you’ll be curious about options to upgrade and there are rarely better opportunities than to use miles. You can use ExpertFlyer to see if any upgrades are presently available on your flight. The beauty of ExpertFlyer is that if they are NOT, you can create an email alert, so that if one DOES become available, you’ll be the first to know and book it. You can set as many upgrade alerts as you wish.
Moving On To Better Seats…
People are indecisive about where to sit on planes and therefore the seating charts change constantly. If you’re looking for a window seat near the front, but there aren’t any available when you go to select a seat, you can create an alert which will email you when a specific seat or type of seat becomes available. You can be as specific as 15A, or as vague as “any window seat”.
Getting The Last Cheap Ticket…
You know how airlines love to say “1 Left” whenever you can’t seem to make up your mind on whether to buy? ExpertFlyer can help call BS on those instances, by showing you how many seats are left in each fare class. If Q is the lowest economy fare class on your flight, it will show you how many Q tickets are let for sale. It will show you this information for all fare classes from a fully refundable first class ticket to a restricted economy ticket. It’s extremely useful when planning last minute travel or vetting options…
Getting That Elusive “Free” First Class Ticket…
Everyone who reads sites such as this one knows that in most cases the best way to maximize your miles is to hit the airline for the good stuff, the first class fancy champagne flights. The problem is naturally that everyone wants the same thing. With ExpertFlyer, you can again create notifications for flights using miles you’re interested in. If you want to fly to New York for Christmas using British Airways (or almost any other) type of miles, you can set an alert if a seat is not presently available. If space opens up, you’re first in line to snag it…
