Tried it yesterday. Major step backwards. It's obviously intended for "the masses" - I don't think it's useful for anyone of FlyerTalk caliber.

Is this going to be a replacement? Nooo!!

It seems to be a step backwards. Not only horribly slow it lists flights, times etc but then going to the DL site to book a DL flight they sez the fare is not available. It happened 2 times outta 5. Kayak.com is far faster, has far more booking parameters and seems more accurate as to the fare availability.

MisterNice

At this rate, one more "upgrade" and we can forget about ITA syntax - instead, we'll have one box with a drop-down menu to "Select My Preferred Airline".

You too, ITA! :)

Am I being dense, or does matrix2 not provide a way to view the actual fare rules? :eek:

All this being said, the new website does state pretty clearly that things like graphical view and multi-city option will be added. So perhaps we're only seeing a small subset of the intended functionality.

Some clarifications from ITA
 

Hi everyone,

I am new to the forum and work at ITA in the team responsible for the new Matrix 2. Thus, I'd like to thank you all for your feedback so far. As a group of highly competent travelers and flight shoppers, we do take your input very seriously. Since we see a few recurring themes here and in the other feedback we get on our new site, I wanted to clarify a few points:

- Matrix 2 is currently a limited functionality test bed that will be significantly enhanced in the coming months. We do not intend to shut down our existing flight search (Matrix) until Matrix 2 provides all of the features of Matrix and more. This will definitely include multi-segment searches, slice-by-slice shopping, color bars, and the ability to manually enter multiple airports. All of those things are already in the pipeline.

- We are aware of two speed issues: month-long searches are substantially slower, and a problem with JavaScript performance on older versions of Internet Explorer. We're working on these issues and we won't stop until the performance is at least as good as the current Matrix. If you see performance issues that you can't attribute to one or the other of these things, please send us some feedback.

- Although it's a poor replacement for the ability to specify multiple airports or a radius, there is one feature of the geographic lookup on the new site that can be used to achieve similar results: when you type in the name of an origin or destination, the list includes not only airports but also geographic locations (cities, towns, parks). If you select any of these non-airport locations, we will consider the nearest 5 airports, and you will be able to filter by airport on the results page.

Again, thanks for your comments. Feel free to also use the feedback form on
the new site.

ITA_PM

ita_pm: Welcome to FT! We value ITA greatly as a tool and anyone representing them, formally or informally, is most welcome here. What happened to "ITA Hacker" by the way?

We do understand that Matrix2 is in early beta and most of us would be perfectly happy to wait and see how it evolves. The "ouch!" response you see here is just our way of conveying what we appreciate about Matrix1 and how much. :)

There is one feature that some of us have wanted for a long time and should be trivial to implement: a cost/mile column (sortable) in flight results.

If you think most non-FT people wouldn't want cost/mile info or that there are too many columns anyway, then displayed columns including $/mile can be made optional.

Or, to be really ambitious, you can have a dedicated page, lets call it Matrix-MR, just for mileage runners, :) and the rest of the world need not be bothered with it. Have a command to come up with most torturous routing in order to maximize miles/$!

WELCOME!!! So glad you are taking our input. Here's my take:
Glad to hear the features in matrix will be coming back.
Agree on the CPM feature - Farecompare has this, and it's useful. If you add it, would also request option to add a "500 minimum" for each segment

Most important for me, ITA about a month ago seems to have lost the ability for backtrack routing. For example:
From sjc:: sba lax sfo
To iad

gets me an error message that there are no flights. about 2 months ago, it worked fine, and one day, it disappeared. The routing above is legal, but since ITA won't let me force that connection, i have to build a multi city itinerary, even though the fare prices it from sjc to iad. can you PLEASE bring this back. most of my flights start in SJC and route back via SFO

day of the week problem ...
 

That was actually an interesting one. It turns out to be a localization problem since the week starts on Sunday in the US but on Monday in some other countries. While the calendar header was aware of that, the content was not :(

Thanks for the feedback, we try get the fix into the next patch ASAP

ITA_PM

Fortunately for ITA, he is still around but he is not directly involved into the Matrix 2 project ...

There are two problems with that one:

One is the one you guys already mentioned - it is a feature for a small group so we have to make sure it does not create usability problems for the majority. However, personalization is a major feature in the industry so we might be able to come up with something.

The other one is the fact that "miles earned" is become less and less proportional to "miles flown". There are minimums (e.g. 500 miles) that depend on carrier, market, and flyer status. There are bonus ratios and dependencies on the booking class that are different from carrier to carrier. I am sure I am preaching to the choir here ... Thus it will be a significant data gathering and maintenance effort to keep all these rules for all carriers up-to-date. Of course, "miles flown" per dollar/euro/whatever is simple

ITA_PM

That would be adequate and greatly appreciated. I don't expect you to bother with different airlines' ever-changing rules for miles earned (which are subject to fare buckets and minimums).

Why not host both versions? Call one "Expert Mode" and hide it in an obscure place for us FTers to find.

This 5 surrounding airports thing is a bit of a joke. I'd like to have my good old 300 mile radius. I do hope you'll see that the majority of us here would prefer to have our lovely old ITA interface for years to come.

Can Matrix 1 just be left online for FTers and Matrix 2 can be used for the masses?

The current "matrix 1" site was launched in November of 1999, and the software technologies behind it date from around then. At the time we had to roll a lot of our own software that is now commonly available. The site also uses an interface to our airfare search engine that predates all of ITA's customers, and was never used by any other application.

As we upgrade hardware and operating systems and continue to develop our search engine it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep the old site running. It's just not something we can keep doing forever, especially for a site whose sole purpose is a free demonstration to the public.

That said, we are very open to feedback about the new site, and we're dedicated to keeping the old site running until we're satisfied that the new one has all of the performance and features (and more!) of the old one.

Because the new site is based on real products that we sell to our customers, it will be better supported, more frequently upgraded, and include new experimental features as we develop them.

Let us know when it gets up to at least 25% of the current feature set and I'll try it again. So far, it's nowhere near that.