MatthewLAX

Duh. Thanks!

DevilsX

Ooops wrong thread.

zencat

The ITA wiki shows how to specify booking code/airline pairs, as follows:
But this syntax is rejected. I'm not surprised, it's very strange to have two dots like that.

What's the correct way to do this?

ITA Hacker

I guess we don't support the comma anymore, but this works if you replace the comma with a vertical bar:

zencat

Thanks. That's accepted - and also I can replace the bar with an ampersand to logically AND them. Although it does not seem to be getting correct results. E.g. The AA classes: G,Q,N,O,S are only worth half the miles traveled, so I tried excluding them:
ITA accepted this syntax, but then it still shows flights with booking code "O" anyway. (edit: my mistake.. AA class O flights appeared, but they were not operated by AA, so it looks correct).

Edit again (sorry).. It's really not working. I tried the following:
That should eliminate all the UA booking codes that award 100% of the miles (so only flights that award 125-200% should be found). However, this results in "K" class flights that are operated by United. Why didn't "~ua..k" work?

Thinking that the ampersand doesn't work, I simplified the query:
Still, class K United flights are found despite the negation.

ITA Hacker

These are the fare basis codes, not the booking codes. So you're prohibiting fares called "N" and "K" and so forth, which actually don't exist, so the restriction doesn't do anything.

If you want to control booking classes, you want something more like "/f !bc=M&!bc=E..."

You can also use wildcarded fare basis codes; the industry uses a dash to indicate "any sequence of characters", and usually (but not always) the first letter of the fare basis corresponds to the booking code that will be used: "/f !ua..M-&!ua..E-&..."

zencat

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I don't know the difference, but it seems it's booking codes that are of interest.

What you're suggesting would seem to negate booking code "M" and "E" for all airlines. But they have different meanings for each airline. E.g. class K on UA is worth 100% of the mileage, but class K on LH is only worth 50%.

So suppose I want the search to be open to all airlines, but I want it to exclude the booking codes M and E of LH, but allow M and E for all other airlines. How would that be written?

(edit) I'm quite confused about the difference between "fare basis codes" and "booking codes". The UA link in my post calls them "fare classes", and shows fare class M and E as being worth 100% mileage credit. "Booking code" is not in the FT glossary, but "fare basis" is, and fare basis is described as what I thought a booking code was.

joespo

I don't think this is possible... I'd like to do the same thing, e.g.

Airlines: Air China OR United Airlines
Booking Class: Exclude N from Air China, but allow N for United Airlines ...

Slitty

I only have a surface understanding of these matters, but will share what little knowledge is at my disposal. An example if probably the best way to illustrate the difference:

Suppose we search a one-way itinerary between Vancouver (YVR) and Xiamen (XMN) on December 11th, 2013. One of the itineraries available to us is AC3 to Tokyo (NRT), followed by NH935. The fare basis for this itinerary is T7HXCNO. This is Air Canada's rules and restrictions governing this fare - since they are the carrier effectively selling you passage between YVR and XMN. As generally is the case, the first letter of the fare basis code corresponds to the booking class for flight AC3: T. However, the booking class for the NH935 leg is K. And as far as frequent flyer programs are concerned, it is the booking class that matters. So in determining how many miles you would be awarded for flying this itinerary, you would consider YVR->NRT on AC booking class T and NRT->XMN on NH booking class K.

sokolov

How do I exclude a booking class from a specific multi-leg-itinerary?

I know I want to fly from ORD on UA with two stops to ATL, and I want to exclude booking class N.

If I search with "UA UA UA", I get the required routings, but many includes a leg in N. If I search with "/ f ~bc=N" I only get direct and one-stop routings.

How do I combine the two restrictions? I've tried many variations, but all result in "bad specification" error messages. TNX

hillrider

I am not sure what you're entering, but specifying "UA UA UA / f ~bc=N" returns exactly what you're looking for when I use it.

BigWilly

Is it possible with ITA to search on the textual contents of the fare rules? fi if i'm looking for flights for add-ons i'd need something like "add-ons permitted" in cat 10..

Category 10: Combinability
FARES MAY BE COMBINED ON A HALF ROUND TRIP BASIS WITH ANY
FARE FOR ANY CARRIER IN ANY RULE AND TARIFF TO FORM
SINGLE/DOUBLE OPEN JAWS/ROUND TRIPS/CIRCLE TRIPS.
ADD-ONS PERMITTED.

sokolov

Ah! Thank you. According to the official descriptions, "F" specifies a single flight. I don't want a single flight, so I tried without the F. And that didn't work.

LHR*G

Hello

I think this should work, but it doesn't:

/ f os..y|os..b|os..m|os..u|os..h|os..q|os..g|ca..y|ca ..b|ca..m|ca..h|ca..k|ca..w|ca..l

(I am wanting to restrict to 100% earning on OS or CA - but no results are returned - not an error)

Any ideas?

Thanks

LHR*G

CabinCaptive

Is it worth making this thread into a WikiPost? There is a lot of useful stuff in here, but it's rather difficult to pull it all out. It also seems that ITA doesn't really keep their own page updated correctly...