Tools to plan itineraries
Mar 14, 2019, 8:43 am
#17
Original Poster
Join Date: Oct 2018
Programs: BAEC Gold, IHG Platinum, ALL Gold, Bonvoy Gold Elite, HHonors Gold
Posts: 384
I also use Excel for all my travel planning. I have a template. Well, I call it a template, it is actually a copy of the last trip but it means that all my trips are planned and documented the same way. It also means that at any time, either during the planning phase or during the trip itself, I have access to all the info about my train trips to/from the airport, parking, hotels, flights, seats, times, aircraft types, lounges etc... all on the one sheet.
Mar 14, 2019, 8:47 am
#18
Original Poster
Join Date: Oct 2018
Programs: BAEC Gold, IHG Platinum, ALL Gold, Bonvoy Gold Elite, HHonors Gold
Posts: 384
Yes, I did notice that during my research! What I meant is I want an IB ticket - any sensible codeshare is fine with me, especially since it's all short hops in Y, so service level isn't that important - Avios+TP and OW lounge access by status is. I'd imagine both are awarded on an I2 flight booked as IB, but neither is available on I2 flights booked as I2?
Mar 14, 2019, 1:39 pm
#19
Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 7,875
There have been changes since Google bought it, but I wouldn't be so fast to insert the word "thus". There are things that one cannot now do which one used to be able to do, but ITA never did everything to begin with because it was - even from its inception - a project in how to manage the unmanageable. There have always been changes from time to time in what could be done using ITA, and in the comprehensiveness of the search results returned (any complex search always returned limited results), and when ITA was in the habit of accepting more variables at once and returning more results at once, the returns could often be illogically selected. (You could sometimes be shown odd and very complex routings, but not be shown something much more simple, straightforward, fast and cheap.) Restricting how much you can search for at any one time improves the logicality of the selected returns.
The options and filters that you have always been able to apply make it, to me, the most powerful GDS published pricing search engine that I've ever used. But even so, it's not perfect (and it never was), so use it as one tool out of many, and exercise some care in interpreting the results. There is no substitute for hard work.
The options and filters that you have always been able to apply make it, to me, the most powerful GDS published pricing search engine that I've ever used. But even so, it's not perfect (and it never was), so use it as one tool out of many, and exercise some care in interpreting the results. There is no substitute for hard work.
For those who used ITAmatrix before google bought it, I don't think I need to say more.
And I prefer having the choice to put in searches that are too hard, and limit myself if I so choose, than to be unable to search period.
And google is purposely disabling ITA functionality to push people to use google flights
Last edited by s0ssos; Mar 14, 2019 at 2:01 pm
Mar 14, 2019, 4:33 pm
#20
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: London
Programs: Mucci. Nothing else matters.
Posts: 38,644
And those who are proficient in using ITA to search know that for round-trip (including open-jaw itineraries resembling round-trip itineraries, eg "somewhere in Europe - destination - somewhere in Europe"), the inability to search from multiple countries is not much of a hindrance to finding the countries from which low fares may be achievable. If you're seriously hampered by this, you're probably not putting enough thought into how you do the searching.To each his own, but I would rather not see the nonsensical selections (described above) that used to be produced, to the exclusion of much more rational solutions to the query.
Mar 16, 2019, 8:43 am
#22
Moderator: British Airways Executive Club
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: TPA/ABZ
Programs: BA Lifetime Gold. GGL/CCR.
Posts: 13,248