The site for your flight
You'’re at the airport, you want to see if there any free seats available for redemption for the millions of bmi miles you’re racked up… and the only way you can find out is by phoning Pune.I can'’t believe that there simply is no site that shows seat availability. Sure, there are a couple of airline sites which will show some availability, but using them is rather like a black art. None of them work on a mobile or without Java, or come to that when you'’re stuck in the Ansett Golden Wing lounge.
It'’s a tough job, but someone had to come up with a better system: and I was determined that that someone should be me.
So, with an iron will and nerves of steel, over a quiet weekend in an airline lounge I coded up Airport Fox, which just performs a simple search of the GDS looking for Star Alliance airlines that have availability in the right seat bucket codes.
Airport Fox is - or was - designed to check Ansett availability, to see what seats were available for Global Rewards. Alas with the collapse of AN - and all our miles, coincidentally - I've changed it so it will now search Star Alliance availability on bmi, Spanair, Varig as well as the old Ansett codes.
If it can't find any availability at all for any of these airlines on any of these routes, it's just poll easySabre and return the available flights. If that doesn't work, it's dial up Amadeus and return details of seats available for sale, but it's pretty rare that all fails. And Amadeus costs real money for a search, so it tries everything to avoid that.
It’ is pretty basic, and you know what, I’d rather keep it that way. As soon as I add frills it’'ll stop being something I do for my own amusement, and become the most frightful bore.
How to use Airport Fox
Just type in the three letter IATA airport code of where you want to fly from and to, or scroll down the list to the airport you want. If the airport isn't there, just type in the three letter code. Select the outbound and return days, hit go, and Robert is your mother’s brother.
If you don’t know your IATA codes, there is a helpful list here:
If you select indirect flights, Airport Fox will show you some often fascinating ways to get to your destination via places that you never knew existed, and which you probably didn’t want to go via anyway.
The way the net disects
To book the flights – well, that’s up to you. I’m just showing if there is any availability. You’ll then have the fight to book the flight with the BD DC or your own frequent flyer scheme. And I’m pleased to say that is something I’m keeping well out of.Note that Airport Fox is optimised for browsing on the latest version of IE, IE6. If you have an earlier version, it won't display very well.
Contact Airport Fox
I really do appreciate all the Emails I get about Airport Fox: Click Here to Email me.
Changelog
v1.1
17th Jan 2006
Now using Airportfox.comv1.04
18th Feb 2004
Now Delta do not want their data shown. I can still show their codeshare however!v1.04
23rd Dec 2003
American Airlines requested their data be removed.v1.03
4st Dec 2003
Added Boeing 73W (a 737 with winglets no less) plus recognition of SGN/KVB/KHV/LED/HNL/RDU/BWI/PHL/DTW/MCO/CVG/PBI/LPA/TFS airports.v1.00
14th July 2002
Removed 'logging on' GDS information.
Label on button Refine to redefine.
Create error if no airports entered or invalid. Added: error if either airport is blank or invalid.v0.22
4th March 2002
Grrr. The end of Ansett. Now will just display bmi, Spanair and Varig availability.v0.17
19th Aug 2001
No longer based at CHT airport. Timezone shifted to relfect this to the mainland.v0.12
22st Sept 1999
First real working version
Version number on main header page.
Bottom page Alpha test message shortened.v0.01
1st Oct 1998
Alpha Launch
First pre-launch version, with all working functionality. Launched in the Qantas Club in Adelaide of all places... well, I happened to be there, and it was the first place to try it out.
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