Finding the cheapest flight
 

Hiya, my gf and I would like to visit familiy in LA next summer, and I was wondering how you Flyertalkers find the cheapest flight?

I've searched through http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch but that doesn't always seem to work.

Our needs:

depart somewhere in July or August
stay for 2 or 3 weeks
departing from AMS (or any driveable airport in the neighbourhood)
arriving at LAX or SNA
the less stops the better
preferably a Skyteam airline (for picking up some FB points)

So any tips : please let me know! Any pilots flying there themselves who don't mind hitchhikers : even better :)

What was the specific problem with ITA?

I can't say that I know of any LAX- or SNA-specific means of searching. Honestly, I'd probably just go through ITA and check with my preferred airlines if I were you.

Alternatively, you could check to see if there are any cheap flights into one of the Skyteam hubs and book a separate flight on WN (WN flights don't come up on ITA). That combination might be cheaper. But, it might not be worth the hassle.

Sometimes you can get a deal from one of the package providers like go-today or gate1 that price out a little cheaper if you're going to rent a car and stay in a hotel anyway.

Otherwise I would see what prices looked like for the last couple of summers and start monitoring prices to see how they now compare. At least you would then have a baseline to compare summer prices with. Then when (or if) you see any sort of sale you buy.