Booking 'direct' from ITA Matrix

Murphy_The_Cat

I realise that this post may only be relevant to very few people, but for the people it is relevant to, it could be a game changer !

Many people use ITA Matrix as their preferred flight search engine. Its one hell of a thorough beast and once you start adding coding, you can really get very specific with your requirements.

Once you've finished, you've then got your perfect flight itinerary.

However, the hard work is now getting the airlines / OTA computer to recognise all the tweaks, bells and whistles that you've added, OR, you could call up the airline directly and a) spend a goodly while on the phone and/or b) then pay them a hefty surcharge for doing the transaction on the phone.

But I've come acrtoss a site that will transfer your perfect ITA Matrix itinerary directly to an OTA (or some airlines) and then create the booking for you to buy.

This link
explains step #1 - and how to use ITAlanguage with hipmunk

and then this link
explains step #2 and how to put into action with other OTA's/airlines

Its not infallible, but on the dummy flights I've put in, it works most of the time (if I book adult tickets, it works every time. It seems to not like adding Junior. Converting Junior into adult cleared the glitch).

I haven't a clue how it all works, but for someone who has a very specific, precise itinerary that they would like to follow, it could make all the difference.

****** As ever, check, check, then check again before clicking the 'buy' button******

DTDfanBoy

The best publicly available tool to do this is the ITA-Matrix-powertools script developed by a few fine folks over on Flyertalk

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-tools/1623427-ita-matrix-powertools-userscript-orbitz-dl-ua-aa-ba-cz-ib-la-lh-lx-tk.html

You do have to be a bit savvy to operate it but it doesn't have the same limitations as Hipmunk or BookWithMatrix, and also allows you to book through numerous Airlines and OTA's.

It's really handy for forcing tickets, especially when dumping YQ is the name of the game :cool:

Murphy_The_Cat

DTDfanBoy wrote: »

The best publicly available tool to do this is the ITA-Matrix-powertools script developed by a few fine folks over on Flyertalk

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-tools/1623427-ita-matrix-powertools-userscript-orbitz-dl-ua-aa-ba-cz-ib-la-lh-lx-tk.html

You do have to be a bit savvy to operate it but it doesn't have the same limitations as Hipmunk or BookWithMatrix, and also allows you to book through numerous Airlines and OTA's.

It's really handy for forcing tickets, especially when dumping YQ is the name of the game :cool:

cheers DTD
That link is the dogs danglies - it took me a little while to get my head around it, but it works very well. It also offers more choices than my original link.