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Old 18 Jun 16, 07:15 PM  
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Cantcook
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Finding Cheap Flights - A Guide

During another thread earlier in the week, posters started asking about the ITA Matrix. In a nutshell, if you’ve ever wanted a months view of prices, wondered about upgradeable fares or trying to find the best boomerang deal, the ITA Matrix could save you a lot of time. It has other benefits but Google Flights is a bit easier and friendlier on the eye if you don’t have huge flexibility with your travel plans.

matrix.itasoftware/

A few things before we start. You cannot book flights via the ITA Matrix, but it’s easier to find the fares and then replicate on the airlines website or Expedia. Charter airlines do not appear in the results apart from Condor – take their prices with a pinch of salt. This tool is great if you mainly fly with the major carriers.

Simple Use

So the first thing we’ll do is just ask for a months worth of prices to Florida. It’s entirely up to you how much information you give it but the more precise you are the better results you’ll get.



A lot of this should be self-explanatory. I’ve told it I’m happy to fly from any London airport going into Orlando, Miami, Tampa or Fort Lauderdale. I’ve asked for the cheapest range of dates starting from September 1st 2016, with a stay of 12 to 16 nights. I’ve selected the economy cabin and non-stop only flights. Only you know how flexible you are. If you want 14 nights with a direct flight into Orlando just omit some of the information I’ve populated.

Once done, hit search and you’ll be presented with an easy to see month view.



The cheapest fares will always be highlighted orange. Those flights for £410 look inviting so let’s click on the day. You’re then presented with this screen and see all the prices for each carrier.



I personally prefer the ‘Time bars’ view so I’ll be using that view from now on.



Unfortunately Aunty Gill had a terrible flight with Norwegian so she doesn’t want to fly with them. So let’s go on to some advanced codes and how to tell it exactly what you want from the start.

Advanced Use

When you first arrive to the site press ‘Advanced Routing Codes’ underneath the destination field and you’ll be presented with an extra two boxes where we can do some pretty cool stuff.

The box directly under the departure airport are our advanced codes for our outbound flight and the box under arrival airport are the advanced codes for our inbound.

Keeping it simple to begin, let’s say we only want to fly VS or BA. VS is the airline code for Virgin Atlantic; do not get it confused with VA which is Virgin Australia. AA codeshare with BA and DL with VS so let’s include them in our search as sometimes their prices can be better.



The results:



Aunty Gill’s boiler just broke so now she’s had a complete change of heart and wants to get to Florida for as cheaply as possible. She’s happy with one connection and a few more departing airports. We have given it quite a few variables now and not been overly precise so the search will take longer and could time out.



The cheapest for all of September turned out to be the direct Norwegian flights.

Boomerang Flights

The ITA Matrix is superb for booking Boomerang flights. You need to get used to using the advanced routing codes. I’m going to use Business class as my cabin for these legs as that’s the biggest benefit of a boomerang flight.

I’m going to tell it I’m happy to fly from Dublin, Amsterdam or Oslo. I’d like to connect in London and then fly with BA, AA, Virgin or Delta. I want a direct flight from London. I’ve also said I’d like a business class seat and I’d like to travel in April 2017.



Hopefully you should be able to work out the advanced routing code but you’re basically telling it that you don’t care who you fly with to London but you do thereafter. If you wanted BA only, you’d simply enter ‘BA LON BA.’ Some more below:

BA only – BA LON BA and the same for the return

VS only – LON VS and then VS LON for the return

Connecting in Manchester or London – LON,MAN BA,VS and then BA,VS LON,MAN for the return.

Anyway, with our original search these are the results:



Not the best of fares but still a whole side cheaper than booking LON -> MCO in Business. To book these flights, simply make a note of your dates and try and get it to match up in Expedia.

For those interested, the cheapest fare in April was BA business from DUB -> LON -> MCO. It was about £1160. BA are selling it for £1700 from London so I’m not sure if it’s worth the hassle in this particular example.

Upgradeable Fares – Virgin Atlantic

If you’re a member of the Virgin flying club, this next section should be beneficial. They can be very helpful on the phone but it can get slightly annoying finding the best upgradeable fares.

If you don’t already know, you need a fare in a certain fare code to then use your miles to upgrade. These codes are: W, S, H, Y, B, R, L, U, M, E, Q and X.

You can no longer price these fares on Virgin’s website.

So, to price an X fare on the outbound and inbound the advanced routing code will be:

VS / f bc=x

You need to put that in both advanced routing codes if you want to upgrade both ways. If you only wanted to upgrade the inbound you’d leave the second advanced routing code blank as per my example below. Obviously, this would then need to match up with reward availability.



Sorry for the long thread and shout if you have any questions.

Edited at 07:42 PM.
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Old 18 Jun 16, 07:37 PM  
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tspill
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Fantastic!
Thanks for posting such a useful guide!
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Old 18 Jun 16, 07:54 PM  
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jimmymc
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thanks for posting! V useful!

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Old 18 Jun 16, 08:08 PM  
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Fab, thanks for post
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Old 18 Jun 16, 08:15 PM  
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2015
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That's brilliant - can this be a sticky?
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Old 18 Jun 16, 09:01 PM  
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Gipsy 4
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That's great thanks. Didn't know this was a "thing"!
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Old 18 Jun 16, 09:03 PM  
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Excellent info
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Old 18 Jun 16, 09:17 PM  
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Brilliant and very informative post thank you!
Off to practise my technique and codes now for flight roulette later in the year 😀👍
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Old 18 Jun 16, 09:51 PM  
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Thanks for this, just been playing on it and discovered it would be much cheaper for us to go to the west coast in April rather than next August like we had planned. Found flights for £2199 to San Diego for 4 of us.
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Old 18 Jun 16, 10:02 PM  
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Cantcook
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Originally Posted by ginger ninja View Post
Thanks for this, just been playing on it and discovered it would be much cheaper for us to go to the west coast in April rather than next August like we had planned. Found flights for £2199 to San Diego for 4 of us.
Forgot to mention that in my post. If you're really flexible with your destination the airports can be all over the place. So in one search you'll be able to see the prices for MCO, LAX, SFO etc.
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