Planning and booking tips
There are a few tips and online tools which you should be aware and familiar with, and these will help you a lot when booking Tier Point runs.
- When pricing up comparative routes, Google Flights is by far the most speedy and simple method. Enter origin and destination; dates of travel; select business class; select oneworld in Airline filter; then Expand map to display requested route and comparative fares for nearly destinations.
- If you need greater complexity, the ITA Matrix tool is highly recommended. It displays a wider range of options than Google Flights and detailed fare rules. It’s great for trip planning at a forensic level. Note, the ITA Matrix tool cannot be used to book tickets
- If booking AA runs familiarise yourself with AA.com's Multi-City booking tool. Don't leave more than 24 hours between flights. Use the Sort by schedule option to locate the exact flights you found on the ITA Matrix tool.
- Select city pairs (if possible) in excess of 2,000 miles apart (see charts below)
- It is worth adding a few cautionary words about AA Domestic First where the service shares a flight number with an international flight, as J, D, and I class inventory may be sold before regular F, A, and P inventory is offered for sale on the down gauged domestic flight(s).
- Avoid AA codeshare flights on non-oneworld metal. There is no TP credit on these flights
- More information about using the ITA Matrix tool, planning trips that begin in Continental Europe and Ireland, as well as airports favourable to back-to-back turnarounds, see Ex-Mainland Europe Travel Planning Guide and Back-to-back / Immediate Turnarounds at BA Destinations
How to use itamatrix & booking
itamatrix is a very powerful tool when pricing up fares but it requires a certain amount of knowledge to get really good results. There are a huge number of places on FT and beyond which offer tutorials and tips on how to use itamatrix.
There are some excellent worked examples in this thread from
rossmacd showing how to use itamatrix to get some of the more complex itineraries. For example see these two posts:
Searching for a LAX-PTY run -
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29343459-post858.html and
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29484391-post1325.html
Searching for a OTP-PHX run -
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29240873-post36.html
Guides to using the ITA Matrix tool can be found
here,
and here,
and externally here.
More guides can also be found at the following sites:
Turning Left for Less
https://www.turningleftforless.com/s...matrix-part-1/
https://www.turningleftforless.com/s...matrix-part-2/
Head for Points
http://www.headforpoints.com/2016/03...se-ita-matrix/
The Points Guy
http://thepointsguy.com/2016/06/book...VQs05ZsqvMJDt6
http://thepointsguy.com/2016/02/usin...routing-codes/
Travelcodex
https://www.travelcodex.com/2013/04/...routing-codes/
https://www.travelcodex.com/2013/04/...ting-language/
https://www.travelcodex.com/2012/01/...nguage-in-ita/
Also some specific advice on using some advanced routings codes can be found:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26641095-post943.html - search on aircraft type
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26716122-post2466.html - search on booking class
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26716155-post2469.html - search on booking class and connection time
Although you can’t book trips on itamatrix, there are now a number of tools which will turn an itamatrix quote to a site where the trip can be booked.
Book with matrix -
https://bookwithmatrix.com/
ITA powertools
http://armouredminds.com/dev/powertools/
ITA-Matrix-PowerTools -
ITA-Matrix-PowerTools - Userscript for Orbitz/DL/UA/AA/BA/CZ/IB/LA/LH/LX/TK
I used the method as outlined in the wiki in the ITA-Matrix-PowerTools thread. If using chrome go to tapermonkey and install the plug in
https://tampermonkey.net/. Visit the script on this page
https://github.com/SteppoFF/ita-matr...rtools.user.js - you should be asked whether you want to install the script. That's it. Next time you use itamatrix it should just work automatically and you should see the additional text at the top of the search page, and all the links to take you through to various booking sites on the right of the quote page.
