A n e-mail message was received by FlyerTalk member javabytes approximately one hour ago from ExpertFlyer announcing that the service will no longer offer any information pertaining to Delta Air Lines effective immediately as of September 1, 2014:
As a user of ExpertFlyer® with an Active Alert for Delta Air Lines®, we want you to know about a recent change. As of today, Delta has requested that we no longer offer to you any information on ExpertFlyer pertaining to Delta. As such, all of your Alerts for Delta will be set to Expired as to not count against your active alert limit.
Since our inception almost 10 years ago we have accessed Delta information through a GDS where they publish information for the benefit of various travel providers. We have always done this with the full knowledge and tacit approval of Delta. However, there now appears to be a change of thinking at Delta where this is no longer the case. As a result, we will no longer display Delta information in any of our Tools, including Flight Availability, Upgrades, Seat Maps, Fare Information, Flights Status, Flight Details, and Flight Timetables.
To be clear, this action is not unique to ExpertFlyer. Delta has recently been removing their data from many websites, both booking and non-booking, in an attempt to force as many travelers as possible to only use delta.com and their apps for Delta information. In our many conversations with Delta it was made clear to us that their new policy is that any service or website that is not explicitly authorized to show Delta data will be forced to stop, especially any that screen scrape data from Delta.com or any Delta partner or agency website.
Our many attempts to forge a new agreement for the display of this information on ExpertFlyer with Delta have been rejected. We believe, and have explained to them, that ExpertFlyer brought value to Delta’s best customers and by extension to Delta itself. We hope in the future Delta will come to see the net value that ExpertFlyer gives to them as you have already discovered. Should you wish to express your thoughts on this matter to Delta, you can reach customer support here:
You may also send a copy of any feedback you send to ExpertFlyer at testimonials@expertflyer.com and we can pass it along to our contacts at Delta.
On a positive note, we will be announcing the addition of a major new airline for Awards & Upgrade searching and alerting in the very near future. We will make the announcement at the time new airline award data has been added.
Thank you for your continued support of ExpertFlyer.
-The ExpertFlyer.com Team
This breaking news comes after FlyerTalk member and official company representative ExpertFlyer Voice announced on August 15, 2014 that Delta Air Lines has removed all of the upgrade inventory from ExpertFlyer:
Delta has unfortunately chosen to remove all of their upgrade inventory from ExpertFlyer and as such it is no longer available at this time. This is after previously being authorized by and told by Delta that upgrade inventory would continue to be made available. As such all Flight Alerts for the affected upgrade classes will be set to Expired later today as to not count against your active alert limit. We will then email ExpertFlyer subscribers that currently have active DL upgrade alerts to notify them of this change.
To be clear, not only was the data legitimately purchased via our GDS data contracts, but executives at Delta were aware that ExpertFlyer was showing DL upgrade inventory and we were allowed to continue doing so until a recent policy change.
We agree with the sentiments of our customers that ultimately this does more harm than good to their best customers and suggest that you contact Delta and express to them how you feel about the ability to see, evaluate and use these various upgrade inventories and the value it adds to your elite status with Delta. Please use the following link to email them.
As always, thank you for your continued support.
-The ExpertFlyer.com Team
Unhappy FlyerTalk members called this latest development — among other things — “disappointing” and “absurd.”
