GCab

OK so fallen at first hurdle - what have I done wrong here? I find the syntax of ITA very confusing...

Geordie405

Error!

Geordie405

This is what I put into Matrix:



The cheapest I could get with that was GBP 2614 but that involves taking the early flight from SYD at 8.50 am

I couldn't find any way of combining the two CX flights unfortunately, not without the price increasing massively.

WorldLux

After entering this ...

... I get BA/QF combos for £2,373 and BA/CX combos for £2,375.

Globaliser

An itinerary using BA between LHR and HKG requires a BA fare.

An itinerary using CX between LHR and HKG requires a CX fare.

A BA fare outbound cannot be combined with a CX fare inbound. Or, at least, that is my strong suspicion as the reason for what you have found (or, rather, failed to find).

That's why you must have a BA flight from HKG to LHR inbound to stay at this fare level. But that may then make your desired CX unavailable to you.

And that is the magic (for airlines) of playing married sector games.

Globaliser

Can you delay your return by one day? CX138 on 30 March may have one seat in I. If you price this by asking for SYD-HKG ON 30 March and then BA HKG-LHR-OSL on a separate line on 31 March, it may price. You'd have to do the phone booking line by line too, to see whether the BA agent can thereby trick the CX system into giving up this one seat.

Globaliser

And now that I can do this, here is a search that demonstrates two things. The codes for flight 1 are ba769 lhr ba27 hkg cx161 to get you your first choice of flights on 22-24 March.

First, the fact that on 30 March you can get CX138 in I class (it's now I2) on a standalone basis can potentially be worked in your favour.

Second, you will see that the HKG-LHR sector does not specify an airline. However, if you look at the results, you will see that all of the results have BA flights on HKG-LHR. This (together with your non-results earlier) seems to confirm that you must have a BA flight on that sector, probably because of the non-combinability of BA and CX fares.

GCab

Thanks for all the help!

Unfortunately the Mar 30th departure option won't work for me due to family commitments on April 1st.
Trying out the suggestion above, is bit odd as I get a Y option on CX 138 even though the options on earlier flights for exactly the same price are I / business cabin.
Obviously this could be an available fare bucket thing, but the odd part is that I ran it again with cabin set to 'business or higher' and the same happens - surely it should just show as not available instead?
Is this just a glitch and these are really business seats?

Globaliser

Some fares will permit booking into a lower cabin if the higher cabin is fully booked. And in these cases, ITA will often return the result together with a warning that there may be flights in a different cabin from that specified in the search.

One of the dangers of ITA is that sometimes you miss that warning ...

The last time I had to take one of these (time-critical travel, like yours), it was LHR-SYD in BA First, then QF economy over to NZ. It was a bit of a shame, having paid the I class fare all the way, but I had no choice because I had to get there. (And I only earned economy TPs for that sector too ...)

GCab

Thanks for all the help!

I've finally booked this:


... In a way it doesn't make a huge amount of sense as it lands me with 800TP (and I was only gunning for Silver) and is very much the long way home, but I get the new QF J seats twice, and reasonable time in SIN which I wouldn't mind seeing (just the airport that is - 5hrs is too short for anything else, I think?). All the other options were rushed connections at HKG or SIN.
Anyway I'm happy with this so thank you!
What LHR-OSL positioning flight is safest? B2B at OSL seems slightly risky and I don't mind going earlier.
Also, if I hop off the plane at LHR on the way home, will my Avios and TPs for the full trip be safe despite dumping the last leg (it's a first offence for me ...)?

ugraag

Im trying to book an economy fare LHR - DXB 15 - 22 Apr 2019 (BA 107 // BA104) that is showing £373 on ITA, but cant book it through ba.com / book with matrix / anywhere really. Heres the link:

Showing £355 on Google flights, but if I click through to BA, the price has changed.

Tried phoning BA, and was categorically told that there were no 'O' class fares available, and the cheapest fare was over £1k.

Any other thoughts, or shall I put this one down to a mistake on ITA? Its been showing this figure since yesterday morning.

Globaliser

It looks like ITA is showing duff information for this one.

ba.com (automatically using a UK POS) books into M and B. This matches EF's availability display for a UK POS.

EF's display for a US POS shows L outbound and K inbound. ITA, when asked to use a US POS, prices using O outbound and K inbound. So for that at least, there is a partial match to EF's information.

Between the two tests, it rather suggests that ITA is using bad information this time. It's possible that Google Flights is suffering from the same problem.