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The advanced features of the Matrix ITA Software can be difficult to understand, but they can definitely add value in your search for the cheapest flights. We can all search for a basic flight and find out where to book it, but are we really getting the best deal?
Read Part 1: Basics of Using the ITA Matrix >>
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There are many travel rewards credit cards that’ll earn you 2-3x points per $1 spent on travel purchases, but among our favourites (and cards we use all the time) are the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the American Express® Gold Card.
We like these cards because they collect what’s called “flexible points” and this means that you’re able to transfer them to different airline and hotel partners. This flexibility makes them (very) valuable.
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Alternatively, there are also specific airline credit cards if you want to get additional airline benefits and perks.
In general, you want to try to do a few things to find the cheapest flight:
Tip #1: Check a standard trip from your city to the destination (and back if appropriate) using your desired dates (this is what we did in the beginner’s section).
Tip #2: Filter results to figure out what really works best for your itinerary (advanced filtering).
Tip #3: Check flexible dates. Not just +/- 2 days from arrival and departure time, but also a totally flexible trip (both dates and length using the calendar option).
Tip #4: Check a variety of routing codes to get more specific results.
Tip #5: Check a variety of departure and destination options, in case it would actually be cheaper to go MORE places using the multi-city option.
Tip #6: Check to see if another currency or sales city has a cheaper option.
All these tips will be explained below. It’s also important to note that the cheapest airfare isn’t always the one that costs the least amount of money for the ticket. You also have to consider things like time spent traveling, other transportation costs, the value of what you’re seeing, and more.
For instance, say you find a ticket that costs $30 less, but it means you arrive at a time when public transport is unavailable. You might end up spending $50 on a taxi, which makes the cheaper ticket a moot point!
In another example, cheap tickets may mean booking on an airline where you have no status, in which case you may spend more because of baggage fees.
Considering airport options is also important. If you travel into another airport, you may be able to take public transport more cheaply and see more sites while you’re there.
Think outside the box to truly get the best value, not just the best price!
Hot Tip: A better price will almost always be the wiser financial choice, even considering points. Due to the marginal increase in points per transactions, we need to attack it from that end first and then add in our favorite points earning tricks.
Let’s take a closer look at the results screen to see some filtering options. Here is a photo of an example results page, with all the different filtering options pointed out:
Selecting the price filter brings up the following option. You can basically slide the filter to whatever price range you desire, and you can see that the filter itself shows little marks where flights are showing up.
If you choose the “Show price per mile” filter, you’ll simply see that data under each price.
Using the airline feature will obviously allow you to select and deselect any desired airlines for your itinerary.
If you click these filters, you can select the times of day you want to filter by. This allows you to select only times that work for you when considering your schedule and other conflicts.
If you know you have a maximum on-the-plane time before you go stir-crazy, this filter can help choose your flight lengths. Combined with the number of stops filter, this can really help finesse your travel!
This feature allows you to choose which specific airport you want if you searched for all airports in a certain zone. Use it to choose whichever location works best for your trip.
For those of us concerned with the total trip length more than how much time you’ll spend on a plane, you can choose the number of stops: nonstop, 1 stop, 2 stops, etc.
If your itinerary has any advisories, they will be visible here. These are little notifications that help point out some things that may make your trip more difficult.
These filters help you get into more details about your flight and take control of how you want to travel. Take a look at the differences between them below:
Notice that the “Complete trip” bar finds the lowest round trip with all the data it has, the “individual flight” finds the lowest price for each leg, and the “time bar” uses the individual flight model and visually depicts the time of the flights.
Also notice that the time bar displays all the different dates selected in your date filter, which in this case was +/- 2 days. If there were multiple connections, it would show all of those in various colors to show you how your trip will lay out.
The calendar option is a very powerful way to find cheap fares for the more flexible travel. This is less useful if you need specific dates, unless you just want to spot check your prices to see what kind of a deal you’re getting.
Here is how to fill out the calendar option:
In this example, we chose the “calendar of lowest fares,” departing 2/1/2015 with a 5-10 night length of stay and no limit on our extra stops.
We did this because the calendar will show a month of dates after the one chosen, all including anything from 5-10 nights.
Choosing no limit on stops will truly give us the lowest fare we can find. Here are the results returned:
Notice the cheapest airfare options are highlighted in orange. It turns out that the dates we had chosen to fly before were just about our cheapest option overall. To select one of the options, just click on the date of departure and select your flight.
When you highlight the date you want, you’ll also get a subcategory option of how many dates you want to stay, which shows you the price options for each of those.
When you click on the trip length, notice that the line with the dot at the end expands to show which date you’ll start and end on. Then, you can click on the price of the trip to bring up that option.
Once you’ve chosen your desired itinerary, you’ll be brought to a screen with even more options, and it defaults to showing you the results using the time bars.
You’ll be selecting the flights individually. Notice this result has a bit of each of the different pieces of information, so have fun filtering down from here:
Hot Tip: Use the Matrix ITA Advanced Features in order to find your cheapest fares, then book them using your best points-earning cards to ensure you get top value for your trip!
If you’ve used Google Flights, Kayak, or any other travel search tools before, then you know there are some certain limitations to them if you wanted a really specific type of flight. ITA Matrix crushes all of those barriers!
You may have noticed by now that there’s an option to select “Advanced routing codes” when you’re searching for your flight. If you did so before, you would have seen the following two boxes appear:
After opening those, you may have clicked on the radio button with the question mark to learn more, and then been quickly overwhelmed and confused. Don’t worry! It’s a lot to take in, and you certainly don’t need to know all of it.
This is a powerful tool, and these are the most powerful features for making the Matrix ITA software your own travel agent.
Routing codes allow us to set more specific parameters for our flights so that when we do our searches, we don’t have to worry about filtering anything else out.
Some of the options are the same as the filters on the results screen, but many of them are only usable here.
You can do multiple things with it, and you can set multiple filters at the same time:
In this syntax, you’ll refer to airlines by their two-digit code (e.g. American Airlines is “AA”) and airports by their three-digit code (e.g. O’Hare is “ORD”).
Hot Tip: The Matrix ITA becomes an incredible redemption booking tool when you use the advanced routing codes. You can search for all kinds of scenarios, such as potential open jaws, alliance-specific, or airline-specific flights. You’ll have to know some of the rules yourself, but once you do this can be a quick way to find options!
A list of some useful codes follows (taken from Google Support):
| Description | Format |
| Restricting to specific airlines | |
| Direct flight marketed by American Airlines | [AA] or [C:AA] |
| Any number of flights marketed by American Airlines | [AA+] or [C:AA+] |
| Direct flight marked by American Airlines, United, or Delta | [AA,CO,DL] or [C:AA,C:UA,C:DL] |
| Direct flight operated by American Airlines (as opposed to a code-share or subsidiary carrier) | [O:AA] |
| Direct flight operated by American Airlines, United, or Delta (as opposed to a code-share) | [O:AA,O:UA,O:DL] |
| Up to three flights, including at least one marketed by US Airways | [F? US F?] |
| Any number of flights, including at least one marketed by American Airlines | [F+ AA F+] |
| Exclude United and only show direct flights | [~UA] |
| Exclude United and show options with zero or more connections | [~UA+] |
| Search for results with exactly two flights, and exclude United from the second flight | [F ~UA] |
| Search for results with a direct flight excluding flights marketed by American Airlines, United, or Delta | [~AA,UA,DL] |
| Search for results with a direct flight excluding flights marketed by American Airlines, United, or Delta | [~AA,UA,DL] |
| A flight on US Airways followed by a flight on United | [US UA] |
| Restricting by alliance | |
| Oneworld | [/ alliance oneworld] |
| SkyTeam | [/ alliance skyteam] |
| Star Alliance | [/ alliance star-alliance] |
| Restricting the number of stops | |
| Non-stop flight | [N] |
| Non-stop flight on United Airlines | [N:UA] |
| Direct flight (may have a stop, but same flight number continues to destination) | [F] |
| Specifying connections | |
| Any number of connections, each with a minimum connection time of 45 minutes | [/ minconnect 45] |
| Any number of connections, each with a minimum connection time of 1 hour, maximum connection time of 2 hours | [/ minconnect 60; maxconnect 120] |
| One or more connection points | [X+] |
| Connect in Dallas-Fort Worth with no other connection points | [DFW] or [X:DFW] |
| Connect in Dallas-Fort Worth with any additional connections before or after | [F? DFW F?] |
| Connect in either Dallas-Fort Worth or Denver with no other connection points | [DFW,DEN] |
| Connect only in Dallas-Fort Worth or Denver | [N DFW,DEN N] |
| Connect in Dallas-Fort Worth followed by Denver followed by 0 or more stops | [DFW DEN X?] |
| Find itineraries with exactly one connection and exclude connections in Dallas-Fort Worth | [~DFW] |
| Specifying itinerary duration | |
| Maximum itinerary duration of 4 hours (specify in minutes) | [/ maxdur 240] |
| Specifying flight attributes | |
| Exclude overnight stops | [/ -overnight] |
| Exclude both red-eye flights and overnight stops | [/ -overnight;-redeye] |
What a list, right? So how do we REALLY use these codes? This is where it helps to have some ideas about what you want to do with your trip.
Are you just trying to get directly to your destination so that you can start a vacation? Are you trying to see some sites but pay the least amount of money? Are you trying to connect to see a friend on the way?
Using our Austin to Seattle example, I’m going to search for flights that connect through San Francisco airport for at least one night so I can see a friend on the way. Here is what I would have to search for that:
I tried a couple different searches, and many of them had connections that weren’t overnight, which is what I wanted.
There is no code that I know of right now to FORCE overnights, so instead I used a long minimum connection to force the majority of results to be overnights. Here is what I got:
It’ll cost a bit more money to do, so ultimately I’ll have to decide if that is worth it. But I got what I wanted from the search results.
Try playing around with your own ideas, such as booking the departing and return flight separately, since there are so many combinations we can’t cover them all!
The next advanced feature of this online travel agent software is the multi-city search. This option is technically available on most airline sites, but it often goes overlooked and under-appreciated.
You can see more and pay less in many cases if you have a few options of additional cities to see.
In addition, you can utilize the advanced routing codes we just went over to help you specify what you really want.
It may take a few iterations of different searches (rarely can we do only do one search when using advanced features), but it could be worth it.
In my case, I decided that if I’m going to spend extra money, I’d rather stay some extra days to see my friend. So I’m going to look at a multi-city flight into SFO rather than just a transfer.
Here’s the difference: before, I was searching for transfers, but now I want a stopover or open jaw. A transfer is less than 4 hours, a stopover is between 4 and 24 hours, and an open jaw is greater than 24 hours.
First, let’s think about what I want:
I know I can’t get to SFO on an AA or AS flight, so I’ll have to leave that open ended. But I should be able to get one from SFO to SEA, and can definitely can one from SEA to AUS. Since my schedule’s a little flexible, I also chose some flexible dates.
Here is how I input all this into the Matrix ITA software:
In my search, I got a number of results. Remember that in this mode, it defaults to individual flights, but we can still change it to complete trips. I ended up choosing my flights and got the final price as shown.
Note that it’s slightly more expensive than the transfer option, but it also gives me two days instead of eight hours!
So play around with that option to see what kind of great deals you can find!
Hot Tip: Trying to make use of that new The Platinum Card® from American Express? Use the Matrix to search for flights that route through airports with lounges you want to try, while still finding the cheapest fares.
These two options fall under a bit of a sneakier tactic to finding cheaper flights using this search engine. The basic idea is this: currency exchange rates are sometimes favorable for us, and for whatever reason the ticket prices are not always equivalent in various cities.
What this allows us to do is hedge different currencies and cities’ sales prices against each other to see if we can find a better deal.
Changing the sales city is likely more effective when we’re talking international travel. However, we can change the sales city for the Austin/Seattle example to a foreign currency and see what happens.
Here are a few results for London, Paris, Tokyo, and Sao Paulo. Remember that in USD, the standard lowest fare we saw was $196.20.
| Sales City | Local Currency | Converted to USD |
| London | ₤131.90 | $195.86 |
| Paris | €179.52 | $197.03 |
| Tokyo | ¥23,760 | $197.59 |
| Sao Paulo | R$775.42 | $196.16 |
As you can see, there is a bit of a difference between the prices, but nothing to write home about. There have been instances that produce better results, so give it a try.
Not only is the Matrix a powerful search tool with its basic features, but its advanced features can really help expand your ability to find flights.
From filtering to using routing codes, you will find endless ways to research your trip. Even better, while you used to be required to book through the airline website, you can now book through ITA if you use the BookWithMatrix.com site!
That’s all we have for the advanced features of the Matrix ITA. Hopefully you enjoyed learning some new ways to search! Good luck on your next trip!
Part 1: Learning to Use the ITA Matrix >>
For rates and fees of the American Express® Gold Card, click here.
For rates and fees of The Platinum Card® from American Express, click here.
You certainly can by using the advancing routing code features. To do this, you need to put the following code into the advanced routing code box for your itinerary:
/f bc=g (find only G class fares)
/f bc=v|bc=y (find only v or y class fares)
Matrix ITA codes are used in the “Advanced routing codes” section of the search form. Use the Matrix ITA routing codes to find more specific travel options. There are a variety of codes, a few of which are as follows:
| “AA” find only AA flights | “N” find only non stop flights | “JFK” connect only through JFK airport |
| ~AA find any flight except American flights | F+ search for one or more connections (unspecified) | “F F” find flights that have two legs |
| “/ alliance star-alliance” find only Star Alliance airlines’ flights | “/ minconnect 50” find a flight with a connection that has a minimum of 50 min connection | “/ -overnight” exclude flights that have overnight connections in your search |
To search for alliances, you need to enter the following code into the advanced routing code box:
/ alliance oneworld (or “star-alliance” or “skyteam”)
Not a bad question. In fact, some of the fares you find may limit or completely impair your ability to earn miles when you fly. This is because airlines have special “discount” fares, and some of these have rules against earning miles.
However, you will always earn points and miles through your credit cards, so make sure to use your travel rewards card or your airline credit card when booking.
Booking directly on the website through ITA is not possible, but you can use BookWithMatrix.com to easily book flights found through the Matrix.
Well, that depends on what you are looking for. Obviously, Matrix ITA is a powerful search tool. It can do many things that Google Flights cannot.
However, Google Flights is more quick and seamless. A search you do for a flight will show up almost instantly, versus some lag time in the ITA.
Therefore, determine your flight goal to help decide which tool will serve you best!
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It wasn’t until Brian relocated to Dallas, TX, and moved in with an American Airlines employee that he truly discovered how incredible travel could be.
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22 comments
oana
April 04, 2018
Love ITA, have been using it for years. However for international flights that include multi city traveling I can’t get a matrix for the cheapest fares. Any loophole? Also, what code should I use in case I only want a connection in SFO, or at least one in SFO (can go up to 2 connections). For instance returning from CLJ to LAX with a mandatory connection in SFO?
Hugo
April 14, 2018
The clarity of your explanations, and of course the samples that show very well how to do things. I use Matrix after 5-6 years but you’ve showed me more options. Unfortunately the site is too much centered towards the US. I live in Europe and fly normally when I get back home in South America, once or twice a year, so for me the US is more a transit point rather that a touristic destination (although we enjoy staying in 2-3 days each time on an open jaw if we can or if the price is “adequate”) and I find Matrix has difficulties in finding the best deals from European airports to South American ones if we want to go through the US. In fact if I give it a lot of departing airports (in Europe we can find a whole lot of international airports in a very reduced area) and say I want to go through the US it will skip some routes. It looks like there are also “conflicts” between airports: it is difficult if not impossible to find flights departing or arriving that will show Kôln (CGN) an Dusseldorf (DUS) on the same list of results and at the same time. It is just one or the other. Anyway, I find your article very interesting. It would be nice if you post a printing version, this is kinda reference material for me. Thank you for your excellent work!
Hugo
April 14, 2018
Oh – and sometimes I’ve found a better price on the airline website than what ITA shows for the same configuration (airline, dates, flight, schedule) but I think that’s just an airline thing.
Paul
May 07, 2018
Hi, Is it at all possible to search for specific alliance reward flights using ITA? I’ve tried on several occasions to search for “x” or “u” class fares on sample routes LHR-EDI on dates I know these are available, however, it just comes back as no flights found?? Is /f bc=x|bc=u relevant for searching for said reward flights? Much appreciated
Michael McHugh
May 15, 2018
Hi Paul
It is possible to search for specific alliance reward flights using ITA. Click on the question mark to the right of the “outbound extension codes” box. The 9th item in the “Itinerary” tab shows the code format for alliances (i.e. ALLIANCE – star alliance).
Croupier
August 18, 2018
You should add aircraft type to your guide in extension codes, it’s very useful for a more comfortable ride.
Example code:
aircraft t:380
Will only search for flights operated by an Airbus A380.
Joana Cunha
October 22, 2018
Is it possible to add information about baggage allownce? It’ll help a lot!
Alex Miller
October 22, 2018
Hi Joana, I’m not sure I follow. Which airline(s) are you referring to? We have a ton of baggage information here at the moment, and we’re adding to it regularly: /airline-baggage-fees/
David Teitelbaum
March 20, 2019
Looks like you made a mistake on your bookings.
You wanted your second flight to be a flight from SFO to SEA but you booked a flight from SEA to AUS.
Christine Krzyszton
March 25, 2019
Hi David. I think he was stopping in SFO to see a friend and knew he wouldn’t be able to include the flight segment from SFO to SEA on that itinerary so left it out. You’ll see that mentioned in the narrative.
Terry
May 29, 2019
I’m a bit confused. I understand no flight from SFO to SEA but why 2 of the exact flights from SEA to AUS one week apart?
Christine Krzyszton
May 29, 2019
Hi Terry. Not sure, but illustrating the process is the focus and it worked very well from that perspective.
Terry
May 29, 2019
Thank you for your quick response Christine.
It’s just a bit confusing because the 2 same segments are illustrated as part of the same ticket and I don’t think that’s possible. Perhaps they were meant to be 2 different options for the return flight. I’m familiar with the advanced matrix and have used it many times to fly into one airport and out of another, known as open jaw. I was searching for an article for my brother to clearly explain the matrix and found this article and the basic matrix article to be informative.
Kathleen
May 03, 2019
Can you search for multi-class flights? I would like to fly Miami to Berlin business class but econ on connection flight from LHR to Berlin.
Erin Miller
May 15, 2019
Hi Kathleen, one of our contributors states: “On ITA I am not aware of any way to broadly specify mixed cabin though you can specify specific fare codes you are looking for as a partial proxy”.
Maybe there are some other readers that can help out with this question?
jack b
August 05, 2019
I have used ITA Travel Matrix to look for flights with specific booking codes (to redeem a companion ticket) and have found it incredibly useful. However, now I am looking for the lowest cost round trip flight, even if the two legs are on different airlines. What I have found is that when selecting the return flight, the only options are the same airline that I flew out on. I looked through the advanced booking codes and did not see any that seemed appropriate. Do I have to search for two one way flights, or am I missing something? Thanks
Jack
Jarrod West
August 07, 2019
Hi Jack!
Yes, you’re correct. For the best pricing on each segment, regardless of the carrier, you will need to search for two separate one-way flights.
Thanks for reading!
Bill Pope
January 09, 2020
Taking a family of 5 on a vacation requires being able to select their seats a Booking time rather than gambling on finding 5 seats together at Check-in time. Therefore for families, “standard economy” prices, rather than “basic economy” are the “lowest available” prices that can be considered by families.
ATI’s “Cabin” selection field does not appear to provide a way to distinguish between “standard economy” and “basic economy”. Therefore the results returned using default conditions are of no use to families.
Can ATI’s Outbound and Return Extension Code fields (or some other search field) by used to exclude the specific Fare Codes used by each candidate airline for their specific “basic economy” fares?
If so, would someone please show my how to write the syntax to exclude the follow Fare Codes from the following airlines:
American Fare code B
Delta Fare code E
Hawaiian Air Fare Codes L, K and O
United Fare code N
I have tried the following:
-F AA..B|DL..E|HA..LKO|UA..N
but get an error message saying:
” Invalid Command-Line Prefix: -F ”
Thanks,
Bill Pope
Stephen Au
January 10, 2020
Hi Bill,
Currently, you can search for basic economy flights only, but you can’t filter out basic economy flights. This is an idiosyncrasy on Google’s part, but it’s impossible at the moment to filter out all BE fare codes.
You can search on Google Flights or on the airline’s website. It will take more time, but it’ll work.
Austin
March 05, 2020
Hi Bill,
This query excludes basic economy flights for American, Delta, Alaskan, United, Hawaiian, and Jetblue:
F ~((DL&BC=E)|(AA&BC=B)|(AS&BC=X)|(UA&BC=N)|(B6&BC=B)|(HA&BC=L)|(HA&BC=K)|(HA&BC=O))
Tried and tested 🙂
Best,
Austin
Kane
April 18, 2021
This worked perfectly for me, thanks Austin!
Mike
April 13, 2023
For info the old (& vastly superior) ITA Matrix at https://oldmatrix.itasoftware.com/ now seems to be on the way out. I have submitted a request to include routing codes & the like in the ‘new’ version but ever since Google acquired it, depreciation seems to be the order of the day with evermore coercion to use Google Flights. Shame as complex multi city stops seems easier to research on this version.
A message on the old site version displays thus:
DEPRECATION NOTICE
This interface runs on a deprecated web platform. At some point in the near future, we will be forced to shut it down. We unfortunately do not have a timeline on when this will happen. We welcome feedback about features missing from the new interface, we read all feedback and open bugs accordingly.
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