Travel agent recommendation for booking ITA Matrix fares
 

Can anyone recommend a travel agent (either OTA or "real") for booking a reasonably complicated fare (multiple carriers, open jaw, some sectors in J, some in Y) which prices out nicely on ITA Matrix?

Book with Matrix gives links for Flight Network and Priceline, but the former can't price it at all when you click through & the latter is significantly more expensive, despite the same classes being shown on each sector.

Propeller Travel (danielbk on here) gets consistently great feedback...

Can also vouch for this ^

Just make sure you take all flights if you book through Propeller.

Another shout out for Propeller and also for Jase76's comment about taking all flights in the booking, i.e. don't dump the last sector of an ex-EU as this can have an adverse impact on the TA.

Personally I would recommend that you do not use Propeller.

Just a word of caution. Sometimes the reason that you can't book a fare from Matrix online is that it isn't actually available. As good as it is, it isn't 100% accurate.

But of course, try a good TA before abandoning your hard work!

Another option may be Matrix Powertools. However, depending on the airline / OTA linked to, might not handle multiple class bookings.

Thanks for the Propeller tip, they've been very helpful and am now all booked (didn't have any luck with Powertools either...)

Initally they couldn't find the fare, but after a second attempt did find it with a US$ point of sale. In fact the price has now come down from the original Matrix quote as the US$ seemed to weaken against the £ yesterday!

Although this is an ex-EU start point (OSL), it's a ticket genuinely finishing back in the UK on the return leg, so no issues about skipping final flight etc.

Is there any Europe-based OTA that you recommend?
Thanks :)

If it's bookable on BA stock, you can usually book by phone to BA or at a ticket desk next time you have a few minutes at LHR.

I find all the positive comments on ITA Matrix quite interesting as I am having difficulty in getting a price seen ex ARN to PER and into OSL on QR metal being realised. ITA Matrix consistently shows this fare sub 2k or just over but X2 TA could not find it and QR say the fare does not exist when I chatted to them on phone and the QR website kicks out the fare after some thought... I class throughout. All other attempts via various sites do not recognise it and worse, pops me into Y for about the same identified price on ITA in Business!! Any current value contacts known that can process fares? Flights are for December and wonder if they could just be phantom fares. Should the sale city be specified? I have used UKP as currency.

As far as I know ITA Matrix has troubles coping with QR's married segments, you can see the real availability for the itinerary with ExpertFlyer.

QR and ITA Matrix don't like each other. Same goes for TK AFAIK.

Other than bookwithmatrix and Propeller, has anyone had luck with using the Amex Travel or platinum concierge services?

Co-op travel, Gloucester was my last success. Nice mix of illogical routing and rarely used (by Brits) codeshares on BA and AA metal. Couldn’t match ITA pricing on any website — but in person at the desk in an actual shop it worked a treat.

Why?

If calling BA, are they able to get to the granularity of booking very specific fare codes/code shares for each segment, etc?

I too am beginning to find ITA frustrating. It's great fun for planning and "what if" scenarios and of course it is very powerful, but I consistently find fares I'm not able to book in reality and sometimes feel like I'm constantly chasing ghosts...

Regards

A lot of the issues people experience can be down to Point of Sale, ITA defaults to the departure country to get Point of Sale, I have seen it in the past where I have had to go to the Norwegian version of Monomdo or expedia to pull back certain fares exOSL for example, Even some AA fares I can only get on the USA site and not the EU / UK one worth checking that too. Usually if you change the Point of sale to London on Matrix and the fare no longer shows that is a good indicator of the above,

I think I've suggested this before, but if you get a BA agent on the phone they should be able to find ITA Matrix routings, if they really exist. There are some limitations with ITA Matrix, relating to Point of Sale differences, which may prevent a BA agent finding that precise fare, though if it is due to going up one fare class on a short sector then the additional cost may be worth swallowing.

If you go down this route you probably want to have it lined up as "BAnnn on [date] in fare class Delta" or whatever, their system allows more flexibility to just put in a schedule and fare classes, then it should auto-price through to a final figure. I don't think they select fare basis, that comes out at the end, but any distinction between codeshares needs to be whatever ITA is showing. This works best on joint business areas if you're throwing in a lot of non BA sectors then BA may not be able to ticket it.

Another option, if it is a quiet day, is to ask the ticketing agent in South Gallery Club to do it (just write it out as above, or perhaps give the ITA print screen highlighting flight numbers, dates, selling class. I wouldn't advocate doing this if there are a lot of passengers with urgent problems, the desk in GC South only opens from 06:00 hrs, but in the evening they may not have much on their plate. There is a £15 charge in theory but if you are nice to the agent, offer to get them a glass of champagne and look like you're going to throw some decent sums of money BA's way then they probably won't charge it.

I'd second this. I had a relatively uncomplicated AMS-LHR-BWI-LHR which I found on ITA (J/I/T) - but which the BA online system couldn't handle. Phoned BA, no problem, and in fact BA came out cheaper than ITA by about $50pp.

I can't see why not! I've never had to resort to this for intercontinental itineraries as I've always managed to book with BA over the phone, but they are a travel agency after all.

I had to book via Amex (online though) an itinerary to and from IBZ that was a mix of BA and IB.

I've booked ex-EU with travel.americanexpress.co.uk and found it the only online site to be able to price that particular Matrix fare correctly in GBP

Thanks very much for the insightful response cws, I appreciate it.

Regards

I had the agent at T5 GC South do my most recent complex itinerary booking. It took more than a few minutes, but she managed it in the end, due partly to very thin availability on some segments of the itinerary. If you're on the way through anyway, this is a reasonable way to do it but make sure you have enough time. You will also, at least for any travel to the USA, need to supply passport details for all travellers to get the ticket issued so make sure you have that available as needed.

Just to add to this discussion with an experience I have just had:

Just phone BA. I just spoke to an excellent agent (Indian call centre via US line for whatever it's worth) who worked through a very intricate itinerary with multiple booking classes, change in point of sale, a non-Oneworld non-codeshare flight on the same ticket etc etc, with ease, and a price just slightly cheaper than that quoted by ITA.

Any updated recommendations on this thread .. I've got a complicated one coming up that I can get to price up on AA.com .. but when trying to pay it pushes you to the AA.co.uk site and doesn't work .. could probably pay with PayPal and stick on the .com site , but would prefer not to use PayPal ideally and also would like to slightly tweak the itinerary in a way that should be possible, but the AA site won't allow. Doesn't actually involve any BA flights ( AA and Kenyan Airways .. long story !) so calling BA probably not an option .. but a UK based agent would be ideal .. I had tried calling AA, but they were totally useless

I would agree with ITA having a lot of trouble with TK. It offers booking classes that exist but are no longer on sale. A proper travel agent seems to be able to see the low fare ITA quoted class but cannot book it.

.

The team at Propeller Travel, recommended higher up in this thread would love to help ...

www.propellertravel.com

Axx

Already emailed you :)

This is a well known issue with TK and ITA unfortunately, they aren't bookable IME

Just to add I regularly use Propeller Travel for this sort of booking and they're always very prompt and helpful with any changes that are needed (or where the availability doesn't actually exist!)

All sorted quickly and efficiently with Propeller this morning !