Originally Posted by
lensovet
Sounds right to me.
in the vein of weird results, I’ve seen cases where searching with a wider scope somehow makes flights show up that should have been shown with a more narrow one.
for example searching for flights from EWR to ATH on SK would only show me itineraries with ridiculous layovers in CPH, but somehow adding JFK to the starting city (like “EWR,JFK”) made it find flights from EWR with quite reasonable layovers. This persisted even if I ran the original search with a MAXCONNECT criterion (which claimed that no flights could
be found).
that said, I was still able to find and purchase a ticket for a price that was probably 30% cheaper over what the airline or any other website would let me find, so I can’t complain too much. But it does make me wonder if I could have found an even better deal somehow (or on dates that worked better for me).
Yeap, kinda annoying that this happens. Like what you said, it requires hard coding to output the more optimised fares.
Recently, I found out that the devices in which we run our ITA matter too. For example, on my mobile, i could find SIN-LHR round trip on fare class O which is quite reasonable, but the same input when being keyed into my laptop, it gave 0 result. I then removed the booking class code in advanced control and it suggested me the least restrictive but expensive econ fare.
Not sure why device plays a part.. afaik it shouldn’t be affected by device specs since it’s an online query but perhaps anyone who knows how ITA matrix works under the hood can explain this :/