I’ve made no secret about my disappointment with Delta Air Lines and their knee-jerk, ill-informed, and out of touch decision to prevent their customers from using ExpertFlyer. I expressed that disappointment in this space, and in what I believe to be one of only two critical notes I’ve ever sent Delta. I got the same form reply as everyone else.

Contrast that to this news from ExpertFlyer:

Dear Marshall,

As part of our continued partnership with American Airlines, we are pleased to announce that ExpertFlyer now supports full US Airways Award & Upgrade searching and alerting. The addition of awards and upgrades from US Airways operated flights will complement the existing American Airlines operated award/upgrade data already available to subscribers of ExpertFlyer. In addition Flight Alerts can now be created for award and upgrade inventory for US Airways operated flights.

The newly supported classes are:

O – First – Award/Upgrades, also complimentary Preferred upgrades into First
J – Business – Upgrades into Business using Certificate upgrades for ALL applicable routes
I – Business – Award/Miles Upgrade
X – Economy – Award

Click here for the full list of airlines supported for Award & Upgrade searching and alerting.

We hope you enjoy the new addition to ExpertFlyer.

Sincerely, The ExpertFlyer.com Team

It is very gratifying to see that the new team at American is more in touch with its most frequent flyers (on this issue, at least), and has now made award and upgrade availability searchable for its US Airways customers, rather than moving in the other direction. Bravo American!

-MJ, September 17, 2014