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 30, 2018, 5:27 pm
#9106
Moderator: Budget Travel forum & Credit Card Programs, FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: YYJ/YVR and back on Van Isle ....... for now
Programs: UA lifetime MM / *A Gold
Posts: 14,427
Jul 30, 2018, 8:39 pm
#9107
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: BNE / LHR
Programs: QF Gold
Posts: 1,601
This doesn't seem to be the trick here.
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So I'm thinking the key clue here is that the flight should be priced in pounds, but is provided in euro in the discussion.
Hence, my approach first was trying the euro based booking pages in power matrix. However ... "Search on ITA not so easy to price on a OTA". Seems to indicate I should see the lower price on ITA before I click through.
So back, to the euro sign. I have tried focusing on Sales City.
- Firstly tried the 4 countries that don't have YQ, these came back as not allowed.
- Tried a number of cities across mainland europe (with the Euro). All capital cities (not sure if different cities in the same country would price differently? Can anyone advise please?), however no hits yet out of Spain; Germany; Belgium; Poland; Latvia; France; Ireland; Italy; Spain
What was interesting is that Belgium got the same error as the Japan/Korea/Thailand/Philippines cities BRUSSELS, BELGIUM is not a valid value for x.salesCity. However ANTWERP is, however still at the ~770 euro rate. (I get the same issue with Milan Vs. Rome)
Trying some other regions with the Euro (i.e. Reunion) also not fruitful.
Jul 30, 2018, 11:10 pm
#9108
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: BNE / LHR
Programs: QF Gold
Posts: 1,601
I mean this doesn't necessarily look like a trick, most of the examples are not even OJ tickets. This just seems like a mistake keying? (or a self dump with SAS, which I assume is now fixed as I can't see it on momondo or other OTA)
So it doesn't seem there is anything crazy going on here that you would need to force in the OTA/ITA?
EDIT: I removed link to the blog after reading rule 7.
Last edited by davem4; Jul 30, 2018 at 11:23 pm
Jul 31, 2018, 5:44 am
#9109
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 19
I am able to cut almost all YQ from an appropriate LX tariff, but unfortunately only with appetizer which is too far for me. Is there a relevant dessert as well (for LX)? It is obvious that I am not expecting the solution but I will be glad for any hint. ;-) THX
Last edited by Posheidon; Jul 31, 2018 at 9:27 am
Aug 2, 2018, 6:32 pm
#9110
Suspended
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: New York Metropolitan Area 45 km from JFK
Programs: UA,AA,AS,BA
Posts: 4,607
Has Anyone Noticed
.. that each time anyone posts or does anything innovative - that such an initiative is quickly quashed by "Nay Sayers" and all further progress is stymied ?
Aug 3, 2018, 9:41 am
#9111
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: NYC
Programs: DL ✈️
Posts: 638
Fun fact, I helped a friend of mine book a *A dump on a different alliance airline site as OTA, dump worked.
Two months later, airline OTA calls him to ask how did he price that out, as it seems an error to be able to book *A on their site, and one of the flights was cancelled.
He said "i clicked on google flights", ended up being moved to that specific airline in a Y fare, as the airline couldn't re-book him on *A.
Not really contributing much here, but keep it in mind, sometimes the risk is worth the reward.
Also for noobs still figuring out from a couple days ago, it is UA from LON on a $80 bf.
Two months later, airline OTA calls him to ask how did he price that out, as it seems an error to be able to book *A on their site, and one of the flights was cancelled.
He said "i clicked on google flights", ended up being moved to that specific airline in a Y fare, as the airline couldn't re-book him on *A.
Not really contributing much here, but keep it in mind, sometimes the risk is worth the reward.
Also for noobs still figuring out from a couple days ago, it is UA from LON on a $80 bf.
Last edited by tomasdev; Aug 3, 2018 at 10:15 am
Aug 5, 2018, 10:24 am
#9113
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Florida
Programs: UA 2MM
Posts: 1,917
The Freedom ride as a 3x started working again last month on LX (and it worked on LH before that) but when I checked today, it was not helping anymore.
Last edited by BangkokTraveler; Aug 6, 2018 at 9:51 pm
Aug 8, 2018, 3:00 am
#9114
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: BNE / LHR
Programs: QF Gold
Posts: 1,601
I have a list of the suspected city pairs, but unless the trick is live they wont show anything.
Aug 10, 2018, 6:55 am
#9117
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: BNE / LHR
Programs: QF Gold
Posts: 1,601
Can you share what zones you were looking at, I have some free time to do some searches.
Aug 10, 2018, 12:32 pm
#9118
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: NYC
Programs: DL plat
Posts: 316
TRY bookings
Trying to take advantage of the currency move today. Does anyone have an idea whether it's best to book flights/hotels tonight or tomorrow (eastern daylight time)? Visa exchange rate is 5.35TRY per $ for transactions posting today. Not sure how long it'll take for the transaction to post, but obviously the longer the better. Does anyone have a better understanding of the specifics of posting date vs currency lag from visa? I've seen instances where the currency adjustment by visa lags the spot move by 2 or 3 days depending on weekends etc.
Aug 10, 2018, 2:56 pm
#9119
Join Date: Oct 2013
Posts: 639
Trying to take advantage of the currency move today. Does anyone have an idea whether it's best to book flights/hotels tonight or tomorrow (eastern daylight time)? Visa exchange rate is 5.35TRY per $ for transactions posting today. Not sure how long it'll take for the transaction to post, but obviously the longer the better. Does anyone have a better understanding of the specifics of posting date vs currency lag from visa? I've seen instances where the currency adjustment by visa lags the spot move by 2 or 3 days depending on weekends etc.
But you also want to book with an OTA that issues the tickets automatically and charges your card at the same time, if they charge your card on Monday it could be possible that all saving is lost again.
If you have GDS access, do the booking yourself and override the POS to Turkey, this way you can be 100% sure your card gets charged at the right time
Aug 10, 2018, 3:15 pm
#9120
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: NYC
Programs: DL plat
Posts: 316
Honestly it all depends on your bank. If you use a prepaid card like Revolut, you can see the exact exchange rate at each second. They freeze it at midnight Friday UTC and add 0.5-2% to lose any money for currency fluctations.
But you also want to book with an OTA that issues the tickets automatically and charges your card at the same time, if they charge your card on Monday it could be possible that all saving is lost again.
If you have GDS access, do the booking yourself and override the POS to Turkey, this way you can be 100% sure your card gets charged at the right time
But you also want to book with an OTA that issues the tickets automatically and charges your card at the same time, if they charge your card on Monday it could be possible that all saving is lost again.
If you have GDS access, do the booking yourself and override the POS to Turkey, this way you can be 100% sure your card gets charged at the right time
However one thing I do know is that it'd be really nice if you could lock in a price in TRY today and perhaps not have to book the ticket and pay for it for a few days. Then maybe at a later date, you could evaluate whether it makes sense to purchase the ticket at the forex price that was set a a few days ago
maybe a mispriced currency put. Perhaps this is not what such a feature would be specifically designed for