Travel Tools - How to book complex ITA itineraries?

Hi,

I'm not too familiar with flyer lingo, so please excuse my terminology:

I use ITA matrix to find flights for my travels. I usually take six or seven airplanes before I return back home.

This usually means that ITA gives me a fairly complex itinerary, involving multiple airlines. I usually take that itinerary to a travel agent and she books the tickets for me, but I want to start doing this on my own.

What is the correct algorithm for doing the booking of that itinerary? Should I simply visit the website of the airlines and book a single ticket for each flight? Or should I try to find return tickets to reduce the price?

If I sequentially book all the flights with single tickets will I get approximately the same price as ITA, or does ITA has tricks to reduce the price shown?

Thanks!

I am also interested in the answers to these questions.

First off:
Funnily enough, the cost of some oneway flights, depending on airlines, destinations and routes, will sometimes be the equivalent to, or even more, than the cost of a return flight.

I believe this may partly be due to the fact that airlines want you to fly with them, and a return ticket will see you flying more than once with them.

Yet it doesn't always work like this. I sometimes book separate domestic legs within Australia for example.

However, where are you located and are you looking up domestic or international flights? That might help you get a few more answers ;)

You can try the usual 3rd party booking sites.. like Expedia, Travelocity, onetravel,kayak etc etc..

You might find yourself limited however to less segments than you are currently booking through the TA...

I use those sites where possible... everything else goes.. you guessed it!.. to my TA!

If you try to book each segment separately you are most likley to suffer extreme sticker shock!!!

Can anyone recommend a real-life TA that I could send an ITA itinerary too and get them to book it for me? I'd rather do this online/email rather than having to phone someone up and feed 7 segments and a fare construction to them.

Any good enough travel agent should be able to book this for you - they also understand the system and might be able to come up with a better routing/fare than your own searching with ITA. Maybe give some local travel agents a phone call?

In Germany, I use Sky Travel based out of Munich. But Travel Agents are found on nearly every block in German cities.

FWIW I found three options. There was a slightly different itinerary bookable on aa.com. hipmunk.com allows a very primitive form of route specfication and allowed me to find an approximation of the interary I wanted and send it to orbitz to book it. I also emailed my company's TA and asked them if they could price a personal booking. They did but it's missing flights and is incredibly painful. The good thing is that they can hold it for a few days without me having to book it.