After leveraging employee travel benefits from a previous corporate job, Brian set sail with his buddy around the world and has become a seasoned traveler who maximizes points and miles wherever possi...
Edited by: Kellie Jez
Kellie’s professional experience has led her to a deep passion for compliance, data reporting, and process improvement. Kellie’s learned the ins and outs of the points and miles world and leads UP’s c...
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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