Nov 20, 2013, 7:48 am
Last edit by: Pat89339
Do not call the airlines under any conditions! This is the fastest way to kill the trick and bring unwanted attention to your itinerary! And do not post precious deals in this thread, this is by far the fastest way to kill the trick!
************************************************** ******
This is NOT the right place to ask: "Can you help me with a low fare for AAA-BBB?" This is not the beg-it thread, but the trick-it thread.
This thread deals with unique combinations of routes and booking tricks in order to lower prices on airline fares. Prices that would astound the general public are often achieved by the posters in this thread.
Many people, including airline representatives, monitor this thread. For that reason, it is unorganized, very content heavy, often lacking details, and written in shorthand. It takes patience and effort in order to understand the conversation and be able to participate as an active member.
We encourage you to read the entirety of this thread if you would like to get started and to experiment as soon as you understand the gist of Trick It. Lots of time spent reading, practicing, and learning is the only way to be able to reproduce our tricks and discover new ones yourself. There are many, many people who ask for advice here, so productive members are only able to help those who have shown a concerted effort and progress over a long period of time (months).
If you have no idea what this thread is about, a good place to start are various blogs' posts on the subject. At the very least, read the Rules for posting in this thread. They're also listed in the very first post, below.
Older portions of the thread have been separated into archive thread by year. They are listed below
2008 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2009 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2010 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2011 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2012 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2013 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2014 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
************************************************** ******
This is NOT the right place to ask: "Can you help me with a low fare for AAA-BBB?" This is not the beg-it thread, but the trick-it thread.
This thread deals with unique combinations of routes and booking tricks in order to lower prices on airline fares. Prices that would astound the general public are often achieved by the posters in this thread.
Many people, including airline representatives, monitor this thread. For that reason, it is unorganized, very content heavy, often lacking details, and written in shorthand. It takes patience and effort in order to understand the conversation and be able to participate as an active member.
We encourage you to read the entirety of this thread if you would like to get started and to experiment as soon as you understand the gist of Trick It. Lots of time spent reading, practicing, and learning is the only way to be able to reproduce our tricks and discover new ones yourself. There are many, many people who ask for advice here, so productive members are only able to help those who have shown a concerted effort and progress over a long period of time (months).
If you have no idea what this thread is about, a good place to start are various blogs' posts on the subject. At the very least, read the Rules for posting in this thread. They're also listed in the very first post, below.
Older portions of the thread have been separated into archive thread by year. They are listed below
2008 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2009 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2010 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2011 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2012 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2013 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2014 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
Trick it / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
Jul 13, 2016, 4:52 am
#6661
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: NY
Programs: AA: ExPlat & 3MM; UA: 1k; KL: Plat 4 Life; Hyatt: Plat; SPG, Marriott, Hilton: Gold
Posts: 2,708
What do you then have time for?? At 75 posts, you're clearly still a newbie and don't remember you ever posting anything insightful. Till you do, pl just chill and keep your color commentary to yourself. Just because you don't understand what is being written, doesn't make it silly...
Jul 13, 2016, 5:26 am
#6662
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: AMS
Posts: 589
What do you then have time for?? At 75 posts, you're clearly still a newbie and don't remember you ever posting anything insightful. Till you do, pl just chill and keep your color commentary to yourself. Just because you don't understand what is being written, doesn't make it silly...
Last edited by maxvor; Jul 13, 2016 at 5:39 am
Jul 13, 2016, 5:27 am
#6663
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 205
What do you then have time for?? At 75 posts, you're clearly still a newbie and don't remember you ever posting anything insightful. Till you do, pl just chill and keep your color commentary to yourself. Just because you don't understand what is being written, doesn't make it silly...
use some immagination
Jul 13, 2016, 5:51 am
#6664
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: c2c
Posts: 136
It is nothing but a rookie mistake to draw inferences from ones number of posts to his skill level.
I know many people with less than 10 posts - some do not even have an account here - who have greater FD-skills than FT-members with 3,000+ posts.
I know many people with less than 10 posts - some do not even have an account here - who have greater FD-skills than FT-members with 3,000+ posts.
Jul 13, 2016, 5:55 am
#6665
Suspended
Join Date: Jul 2016
Posts: 68
OTA Quirks
You can probably classify these OTA quirks into 2 types:
(1) normal itineraries with multiple carriers – OTA picks the carrier with the least or no YQ to misvalidate the ticket causing a dump. This includes OTAs which shop around for POS locations for optimal IATA BSPlink quirks.
(2) You add a strike flown by another carrier leading the OTA to misvalidate the itinerary’s ticket causing a dump.
Since the GDS user won’t ticket these himself (due to fear of getting an ADM from airline), you only use the GDS to analyze what is going on and learn more from the misvalidation. Chances are you cannot use ITA Matrix because you cannot force it to misvalidate.
The interesting thing about this is that misvalidation on some OTAs are quite repeatable.
Have fun finding your own quirk.
(1) normal itineraries with multiple carriers – OTA picks the carrier with the least or no YQ to misvalidate the ticket causing a dump. This includes OTAs which shop around for POS locations for optimal IATA BSPlink quirks.
(2) You add a strike flown by another carrier leading the OTA to misvalidate the itinerary’s ticket causing a dump.
Since the GDS user won’t ticket these himself (due to fear of getting an ADM from airline), you only use the GDS to analyze what is going on and learn more from the misvalidation. Chances are you cannot use ITA Matrix because you cannot force it to misvalidate.
The interesting thing about this is that misvalidation on some OTAs are quite repeatable.
Have fun finding your own quirk.
Jul 13, 2016, 5:57 am
#6666
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: NY
Programs: AA: ExPlat & 3MM; UA: 1k; KL: Plat 4 Life; Hyatt: Plat; SPG, Marriott, Hilton: Gold
Posts: 2,708
I am not drawing inference just from that. Also from the content and commentary...
Jul 13, 2016, 11:23 am
#6667
Join Date: Jul 2009
Programs: M&M
Posts: 997
You don't need multiple carriers for BSP quirks - on the other hand I've yet to see any OTA automatically going around looking for advantageous locations for dumps. The most I've seen were US portals using UK availability (and thus POS) for flights, which is great for the customer (and for them since they can undercut the competition) but this has everything to do with availability, not dumping.
Jul 14, 2016, 5:05 am
#6671
Suspended
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: New York Metropolitan Area 45 km from JFK
Programs: UA,AA,AS,BA
Posts: 4,607
Longhaul 1Xs
C2 ( several airports but especially Italy) - SIN/BKK/HKG can now be used as highly flyable 1Xs if constructed correctly.
Same for several "Mediterranean Coast Airports " ( but not Italy) - Central Asia Kyrgystan which drops C1-C3 R/T itinerary to $ 323.40.
A much shorter 1X can bring price to $ 244,50.
For medium-long usable 1X use CPH/LON/TLL/RIX-Asia Minor and get C1-C3 for $ 295.77 All-in R/T.
Same for several "Mediterranean Coast Airports " ( but not Italy) - Central Asia Kyrgystan which drops C1-C3 R/T itinerary to $ 323.40.
A much shorter 1X can bring price to $ 244,50.
For medium-long usable 1X use CPH/LON/TLL/RIX-Asia Minor and get C1-C3 for $ 295.77 All-in R/T.
Last edited by WingedWorldExplorer; Jul 15, 2016 at 6:27 am
Jul 16, 2016, 6:32 am
#6672
Join Date: Jul 2016
Programs: QFF
Posts: 3
Like so many before me, I'm just a newbie with a question after reading hundreds and hundreds of pages here. I'm C6 based, which seems less common with posts.
Is it possible to FD/trick a 1W trip? Only see RT's mentioned generally.
Heading SYD-CMN 1W in Feb17. Not begging, just asking if possible to save good money on 1W tickets. If not, guess it's my bad luck.
Thanks in advance.
Is it possible to FD/trick a 1W trip? Only see RT's mentioned generally.
Heading SYD-CMN 1W in Feb17. Not begging, just asking if possible to save good money on 1W tickets. If not, guess it's my bad luck.
Thanks in advance.
Jul 17, 2016, 1:49 am
#6673
Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Midwest US
Programs: SW-A list preferred , Alaska -MVP Gold , Marriott - Platinum , HHonors - Diamond , Hyatt - Diamond
Posts: 67
Hope I dont get flamed for asking this ques:
Found a 1x for C1e-C3 which is in the middle of nowhere . Can it be skipped ?
Found a 1x for C1e-C3 which is in the middle of nowhere . Can it be skipped ?
Jul 17, 2016, 2:37 am
#6675
Join Date: Jul 2016
Posts: 2
That's proper FT paranoia. I wonder how many people hold back sharing their questions and findings purely because they are not keen to have a bunch of anonymous strangers ridiculing their efforts.
I wouldn't skip the 1x; there is a small chance that skipping it will go unnoticed and a large chance that it will not.