Originally Posted by
Concerto
No good. I’ve never been able to work that thing out and it’s just been a frustrating waste of time every time. Even a simple round trip search yields stupid prices compared to those on Expedia. I’ll have to find another way. I know I’m not alone here feeling like this about it.
Even for business class itineraries? For cheapest and simple one-stop routings in economy class, ita can be sub-optimal with the proliferation of hand-baggage-only fares that are not handled by GDSs or the surcharges that are imposed by airlines. For more complex itineraries, especially for those in business class, I still find ITA invaluable. What I do is that I normally start off by un-ticking the "Only show flights and prices with available seats" to give me some idea of the base-line then re-enable it and work to find availability in relevant classes, using routing codes and/or extensions to fine-tune/circumscribe to what I want. The functionality has diminished somewhat by the fact that one can no longer search in a single stroke with alternative departure points in several countries but it is still a very useful tool for complex searches and takes out a lot of the blind work that would be involved when searching on OTAs' or airlines' booking engines.
Presumably, even if you do not use ita matrix, you nonetheless use comparisons sites such as kayak or skyscanner?