iandi

Sorry, a little confused with the flying blue points on Air Mauritius. I booked via Air France for 2 weeks in late sept early Oct. Will I only get the YYZ-CDG or also the CDG to MRU points w flying blue? We would actually like to spend a few days in RUN, any way to MacGyver this?

sxc7885

flying blue shows you will earn for Mauritius flight I think most are point out the issue for those that credit to delta sky miles where they will only earn the YYZ-CDG segment as you don’t earn anything with air Mauritius for sky miles

stephem

Just a note to say that even with advanced controls I’m having a tough time getting ITA matrix to get certain routings, particularly ones leaving Vancouver that transit through the US in both directions. What I’m finding works best is finding the routing on a tool like expert flyer and then plugging in specific flight numbers. It’s odd because many of these come up with OTAs like momondo but I’ve been having a tough time finding them on delta.com.

cheltzel

If you can reproduce the fare on GF, it might work on the book with DL deep link out of the GF interface.

iandi

I'm about to book my 3rd trip on this deal to Spain this time (already had YYZ to AMS booked in May, but was able to hop over on this deal and use the savings to get a YYZ to MRU trip). I currently have only about 30K in flying blue points (I generally use AC/SA). Would it be beneficial for me to abandon flying blue and get on Delta/Skymiles for my 3 upcoming trips (what are the main benefits over FB)? Would I lose out on the CDG to MRU portion if I did (I'm not able to find RUN stop over routing on matrix)? I generally avoid US travel and pref Europe/Asia/South America if that helps.

stephem

iTA matrix actually allows you to specify specific flight numbers and then with the power tools chrome extension you can pass through to various places to Burke, including very often delta.com. Google also owns matrix and it’s the technology that serves up flights from Google flights, but matrix has advanced controls that allow much more finer tuning of what results actually show up.

cheltzel

I understand. I was just responding to use the GF deep links as I have found it easier to get airlines to book some of the flights found rather than reconstructing the itinerary using the airlines booking UI or via the links that are part of the powertools scripts.

This was all based on your posting "but I’ve been having a tough time finding them on delta.com" and I was responding with hopefully something that works and get something booked for you that was otherwise unbookable.

stephem

But why would I even bother to search on a tool like Google Flights (or momondo or other aggregator tool) that doesnt let me specify exact flight numbers and just hope the tool pulls those flights?

stephem

Here is a bit more detail about finding space for these fares, especially helpful if you are trying to book 3 or more pax on the same flights.

The lowest fare in the market I am looking at (YVR-LHR) is a Z bucket fare with a fare basis code of ZN1X72D1. That is $363 base fare RT ++ taxes and fees (YQ looks to be about $900 or so total depending on carrier and if you fly back out of LHR the APD is $244) and this nets out to around $1600 RT all in. If you do an open jaw returning out of say AMS to dodge the UK APD, the base fare for YVR-AMS-YVR is slightly higher so the half RT fare is higher for the return, and the YQ goes up about $100 so you wind up with an all in price of $1575 (so same ballpark).

There are slight higher fares, with a "T" in the space of the "X" (so ZN1T72D1) and the all in price on YVR-LHR-YVR of about $1900. The "T" variant is really easy to find, the X variant not so much. I did some digging and it looks like the X variant is dependent on there being space in the X bucket of the economy cabin. Any day I find X space in the economy cabin plus Z space upfront, I can get the cheaper fare to price out. The odd thing is that KL doesnt list an X bucket for code shares on DL metal, so you have to look at the underlying DL prime flight. Anyway, fairly complicated, but if you have EF it is fairly straightforward.

Also, once you find those dates, if you want to book for about $100 off, plug the dates into Momondo and there should be a link through to Kiwi $1446 vs $1600 for YVR-LHR-YVR) on KL coded DL flights.

PCBIII

Fares look like they have jumped...what I was seeing yesterday for 9/15-9/24 YYZ-BLQ has increased from ~$1700 to $5000+

Are others seeing the same? Seems the fare may have come and gone

stephem

chances are it’s just availability of the specific fare buckets that are necessary to get the lower price. See my post immediately above yours, it’s admittedly complex but these fares are not just tied to business class Z bucket but also a cheap economy class fare bucket. if you have access to a GDS and look in there and see the fare has been withdrawn, by all means post that, otherwise it’s probably a good idea to dig around a bit more before you post that the fare is gone based on a specific set of dates.

I looked in the GDS and the city pairs that you mentioned are still in there at the same price. So your options are to look for different dates or to simply look for different flight segment combinations via a more powerful tool. The reality is that very few OTAs return even a quarter of the options that are possible.

flytoeat

Nope.

foxyankee

Thanks to the OP!

Booked after some long nights working on Google Flights, the new matrix and the old matrix in combinatipn with the Powertools (and a little bit of bookwithmatrix.com - which hab continously errors as the first leg was always showing one day later as in the matrix, the arrivaldate of leg no. 1 "+1" must have confused the system).

YVR-AMS-CDG-MRS (KL/AF/AF)
MRS-LYS-CDG-MRU (AF/AF/MK)​​​​
MRU-CDG (MK)
CDG-AMS-YYZ (AF/KL)

total about 18xx EUR/20xx USD
Edit: booked at the end via Delta-Homepage, all legs under AF-flightnumber.

zaibii

Looks like Morocco has joined the party as well, both Marrakech and Casablanca

ranskis

I am not sure where you get this theory from, this is not an up-fare which would be coded as X***** or T***** that would then book into a different bucket (Z) as long as the X or T bucket is available. Here we have pure Z fares, that only require Z to be available on the long haul segment, the fare basis with an X is not refundable whereas the one with the T is refundable, with same routings and fare rules apart from the Penalties section.