Found something on ITA - cannot seem to book it
 

I have read the stickies and have gotten as far as finding the right combination of flights, but cannot figure out how to book them. I've tried using united.com and travelocity/expedia (though I am forced to use the Canadian versions).

I've printed out the booking details page from ITA - can I just take it to a travel agency (like Flight Centre) and can they book it?

The routing is:
BUF-CLT-SFO-LAX-ONT-LAX-ORD-PHL-BUF
Leaving Buffalo 20-March and returning 21 March, laxing the red-eye LAX-ORD.

I work it out to 7252 miles. All in cost (according to ITA) is $270.20 so it is 3.75 cpm.

So, my questions are how to go about booking (or if there is another sticky other than the 'how to do a MR' one, pointing me the right direction). And, is this a good MR? My first attempt wasn't (thanks for steering me clear of it).

The best way I found to do this sort of thing is to use Expedia multiple cities option and input all/almost all segments one by one and then build a trip using the flights shown on ITA, in the end the price usually matches

Aha! So that's how it's done. Thank you!

Make sure that you have the fare basis codes from ITA and call the airline directly. With UA it will be the ICC. Tell the res agent the exact flights, times and fare basis and it should go through. You may have to pay the associated fee because you did not book online buy you can try to get it waived saying that it was impossible to book online. I succeeded with this once.

Good luck.

Tried that for BOS-CDG, AMS-BOS on AF+NW. According to ITA, price was $1145. Turned out to be $1300 because the fare basis codes ITA came up with were not allowed together. :td:

try the website of the airline.. some airline sites are a lil more generous than others.

I guess nothing can ever be straight forward. I guess that I just got lucky.

Good luck to you as well.

Believe it or not, I actually booked a UA MR over the phone using the automated voice system. It took a little while, but probably not any longer than dealing with the ICC - I booked ATL-ORD-SNA-LAX-SFO-ORD-ATL....with the exact flight times pulled up from ITA, I just read the cities and exact times to Mr. Automated, and he put the itinerary together perfectly. [The reason I did it over the phone was to put it on hold so I could mail in a paper voucher, but it might be worth a shot to try!]

Expedia is a good tool since they give you 5 "segments" to input, which lets you find sometimes odd segments. I've (a Canadian) also had luck booking with Orbitz, since their multi-city search lets you input multiple cities as well.

Often it's well worth the $5-7 premium to book with them rather than through the airline's site, where you can't possibly get the connections you want.

Good luck!

Thanks.

Had no luck with Expedia/Orbitz. I tried it in little segments (so that I could see which places I needed to enter) but the total price was way more than ITA said.

I'll try the automated UA centre - the 'real person' at UA wouldn't allow me to 'direct' my booking (kept insisting on fewer connections).

It looks like I'll have to change my dates anyway, so I'll try again when I can square the dates.

Thanks again for your help.

Interestingly enough the route that I booked through the ICC was BWI-OAK as follows - BWI-ORD-SNA-LAX-(OAK-LAX)-SFO-CLT-BWI. Going to OAK forced me back to LAX to come back through SFO. I really liked the SAN-LAX flight.

Enjoy your trip

I'm not sure if this was said earlier, but try to cut out hub cities while booking the multi city options. For example, ORD-IAH-DEN-OMA should be tried as ORD-IAH-OMA. I think this will get past some routing tricks because for example AA and UA will look at it as IAH-OMA where there are only either DEN, OMA, or ORD as a reroute point.