sevastras

I fly mostly DL, please move if not appropriate for this forum.
My question is: When I am searching for a flight, obviously dL.com isn’t going to give me all possible route combinations, so I search an engine or flight matrix and it gives me some additional options for better fares. My question is best with an example-
dl.com gives me routes with best price of $800-search engines best price for all airlines $1079- flight matrix $1079, but when I type in xxx::dL+ I find flights for $469. Why don’t these flights show up when I search all airlines in flight matrix or search engines? At the very least flight matrix?
what am I missing other times by not singling it down to one airline on the matrix?
or am I completely off and when I call dL to book they will tell me it isn’t a valid route?

flyerCO

IME either it will require separate tickets or isn't really an available fare. Sadly the latter occurs a lot. Can be stale fare class availability or problems with using codeshare flight numbers.

Have you actually tried booking one?

xliioper

How about an actual example instead of hypotheticals?? I've noticed that ITA Matrix will often quote broken fare options on domestic tickets that include stopovers of over 4 hours, including overnight stopovers in certain cases. These are legal fare combinations that most fare search engines don't bother presenting -- likely because they assume you don't want to be stuck in an airport for many hours or overnight. Also, calculating all those possible combinations can require a good amount of compute power. When you use DL+ in the advanced options, it reduces the search space for ITA and it can home in on those cheaper broken fare options that other engines will not search for.

If you are using multi-city searches with ITA, be aware that it has issues with married segment logic and will often present a fare where there is no actual bucket availability for the married segments. Doing a multi-city search appears to result in ITA only looking at bucket availability on a segment-by-segment basis. But when quoting a single fare for a multi-segment itin, there must be availability in the married segment buckets, not just the individual segment buckets.

javabytes

Several possibilities:
1) As LBJ noted, ITA and really any flight search engine is going to limit the amount of time it spends searching for flights. If you search all airlines, it can't go as deep as it could if you tell it to search only one airline. If you pick just one airline, the time it saves from not having to search all the other airlines can instead be used to look for additional, less obvious choices on your selected airline. Some search engines are also going to be specifically instructed to filter out choices that many users wouldn't want, such too many connections, or layovers exceeding a certain duration.
2) ITA can also use stale inventory data at times. However it caches the inventory doesn't always seem to be consistent, and I've seen different results depending on how exactly I search. This is not just a DL issue, I've also encountered it on AM - I search one way, and get one price... I search another way, and get a different price for the same exact flights.

sevastras

So the exact example is:
12/28 O/W HAV>MIA>MSP>SLC>BOI FC $459, I called to book it and she said it doesnt show up on her end and wont book that many on a multi city. Do I HUACA or do all of these different flights really not able to book?

RealHJ

Check the box on ITA to only show available (not only theoretical) fares.

Then go to bookwithmatrix.com to book online.

GoAmtrak

Relevant piece in Cranky Flier today: Why is Delta Hiding Lower Fares On Its Website?

DL.dumb doesn't like circuitous (i.e. MQM-rich) routings, even if it's the cheapest, most convenient, and allowed per end-to-end fare rules. We should all be more vigilant about this on a daily basis than supposed discrimination based on being logged in or not.

3Cforme

I'm finding $588 on that date and routing on ITA in First - with a single fare component. There's no end-on-end game here. It books into Z, P, P, P.

sevastras

Went through bookwithmatrix and was able to get into delta.com. Went through the entire booking process including seats and payment and get:
Uh-oh! We're sorry, but the {{REVENUE_AWARD_TEXT}} for the flights you selected is no longer available. Please search again to view and select alternate flights. #100503R

xliioper

Are you talking about the flights that arrive on the same day, or the next day arrival with layover at MSP? For the same-day arrival, ITA is showing a $587.60 ZNNL0NFZ fare.

sevastras

I was able to book flights that arrive next day by calling back and getting another agent. $531.59 I,A,A,A . I think that I was getting the error because it was trying to book me into Z,G,G,G at $469 but I decided to just pay the extra $60 and be done with it. I am not sure as though G is a bookable fare. Thank you guys for all of the help, I dont think I would have got it all figured out. I think I learned a couple of things to make this easier along the way.