AA_EXP09

Neither could I.

jteezy

first off.. I strongly disagree with all the ita bashing... now I understand many have been unhappy with certain unsubstantiated changes and the demise of m1, though I would truly believe itas and others’ statements implying its still fundamentally the same.. keep in mind it’s the same platform that’s widely used in the travel industry, just with some limitations..

coming back around to the routing madness I mentioned a couple days back using c2 short hops, it was none other than ita that a) led me to the discovery and b) allowed me to extrapolate on my findings to systematically determine the potential of those fares.. then exhaust the majority of possibilities, all with minimal effort..

now I know some had questions about the orig/dest of some of these fares as well as the routing possibilities and the "no yq zone"... though I did try and provide some hints earlier, I will elaborate a bit as this can be a bit of a wild goose chase if you don't know where to start (c2 does have many an airport ).. also if you don't understand the fare and routing construction, which aren't all that straight forward in this case..

it originally seemed like it was just one country's domestic short hops, though I have since found similar results with other countries' and carriers’ intra-c2 flights as well... they seem to fall along these lines: validating carrier (and most often the first flight segment) will be a country's flag carrier.. the fares to look for are either domestic or intra-c2 short hops (100-1000mi)...

the ones I've come across thus far originate in countries facing "economic uncertainty" (ok, that doesn't narrow it down too much)... stick within a 500mi radius of the neutral zone and you should be good.. as for the routing there are both one-ways and roundtrips (a bit far fetched, I know..) and some fares carry a restriction "travel must be direct", while others, appearing quite similar state "travel must NOT be direct"... that's the one to go with...

it seems most major transit points in the majority of c2 countries can be used to construct the routing on many carriers big and small (adding in codeshares definitely makes the list even larger).. I was able to get 5 stops stretched all across c2s corners on a one-way fare (from around $100ai).. I listed just a few of the major connection points in the other post (though a couple countries hubs were conspicuously absent.wink..)...as for the no yq zone.. the region is detached from the country’s mainland by barely a few miles (still requires proper routing to avoid yq, but pretty consistent results)

back to the ita ramble, I was looking to break a c1-tlv fare (no, not the $85 one, that would just be silly) in c2 so I was just taking a quick look from major c2 transit points (hint, hint) to tlv when I noticed one that seemed a bit of an anomaly being both less money than most results within the search as well as having an odd routing, transiting through the same point twice in one direction..(it can be quite beneficial to take notice of such details) I took a glance at the fare details as I would in most "strange" cases, (ahh, curiosity) and wouldn't ya know...the fare was a one-way (search was roundtrip) within the originating country and just happened to use tlv as a transit point as well as going through the same city twice.. c2a-c2c-tlv-c2c-c2b with the fare being c2a-c2b for around 1eur... I was a bit stunned, but this is just another testament to itas continued usefulness.. even if I by chance came across this elsewhere (which I imagine to be highly unlikely) I wouldn't have understood the c2-tlv roundtrip was in actuality a one-way domestic fare...

depending on originating country/city/carrier sometimes it's a flip between 1 ways and roundtrips/ojs for greatest routing possibilities and lowest cost.. however its probably far easier to search roundtrip first as the one ways only show up when being rather specific in searches... that brings me to my final point in this essay on ita and fare construction, which is that yes, ita has suffered some deficiencies compared to the "good ol days", but it remains as powerful as ever in most circumstances... to give a bit of insight into methods I employ I would suggest reading any threads on various advanced features of ita... while in the past I hadn't found it necessary to use them, I’ll now often utilize 100+ character search strings, many times (as with the c2 hop story above) even specifying the exact fare basis (as I mentioned many look the same with maybe the last or second last character being different..) as well as mixing in some of the other advanced features... once I saw what was going on with that fare I could go back to the month search and only get the good results... even for dumping most other fares I have been getting very good results by constricting my searches in various ways.. for reference I sometimes check without the advanced options and often get no flights found or higher prices..

/ end lecture

..also, figured It might be worth mentioning that there are 162.50 base fares from upper and lower canada - c3 (tsukiji) on all alliances.. if you've had issues with dumps ex-c1 or lack in your repertoire, these should be pleasing to play around with as many many 3xs will reduce your load by 50-80% with little to no effort.. one carrier in particular is using a higher (still deep discount) fare bucket than the usual for these fares losing 70-80% with many simple classic 3xs and even some normal fares which wouldn't usually make a dent (or even be considered by those with good 3x arsenals), so the 3x can certainly be usable..

Dieuwer

C1-C2-C1, $55 ow base fare /w $476.00 YQ on the Royal Blue Bird. Working on it...

Dieuwer

Ok, found one 1x that dumps 100% the husband of the Royal Blue Bird (same base fare). But I don't think the 1x is very useful. Still the FD carrier is good to know: "Twinkle Twinkle..."

sparkzone

Very good post for newb!! better sticky it somewhere

fanger

That thing's been available for much longer than that (months), or it's gone away and come back.

For many reasons, it's an interesting case study, not least because it doesn't price on ITA.

I don't think most of the power users have really claimed that they've messed with the matrix engine, just that the new interface really does add some and remove other options, and that this sometimes has real consequences for the results, e.g. 0 night stay vs. same day trip.

It's 100% clear that the depth of the combinatorial search is less now, which renders brute force searching relatively unproductive and requires more finesse in which variables to constrain to get the results you want. This of course does not require any change in the basic logic/engine and has not been denied by any ITA rep.

I realize that's probably what you're saying in your post, so I agree, just wanted to add my 2 cents.

WingedWorldExplorer

NO I did not miss a digit AND I have not been drinking.

IrishRed

WWE, I want to marry you and have your little fuel droppin' babies.

jteezy

I hear the shakes can happen from spending too much time in BOG..

WingedWorldExplorer

First we need to do a few horizontal exercises.

I now have screenshot from a major booking site at $ 173.91
taken from last step before actual purchase.

So far I have only found two cities of departure for this price.

janetdoe

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milea...ion-forum.html

gplates

I signed up for this one:

http://www.sabretravelnetwork.com/ho...elector/remote

Remote Individual User Plan. Cost $ 45 a month. You can do all stuff like a TA, but you can not issue tickets.

Shadownite

$29 each way from NYC-FRA on stylized bird, multiple dates.

rizwank

Do you get console access to the GDS from this?

TheGrandDuke

Is the 1x in C2?