zebranz

My ticket is "Z" for LH. If you can get it to work on Matrix did you trip to book with power tools? My 2 tickets booked with UA. If GF shows same pricing with UA might try that. However use as guest to pay in Euros as UA's conversion to USA (my home currency) was $100+ higher.

Agree that both nufnuf77 and Quail have been helping others and would trust them before using the OTA's Xkopj mentioned.

tomsundstrom

Thanks for all this. The LH legs are Z and the NZ are J according to ITA. It's showing up in ITA at 3434, which is reasonable to me. Is there a way to share the fare construction with them? I'll try LH again, but may move to the next step of contacting one of the people you recommended. FYI, I just finished my first RTW, which I had booked on the UA website, but I'll do better with PQPs if I can book this as a partner ticket (plus it's pricing on UA as more than 2x the price).

zebranz

This is a published fare for a while and not a "promotion." You can try giving LH the Fare Basis and flights and ask them but if a no go better to deal with the 2 travel agents mentioned.
Issue is probably there are no "Z" fares left on your flight and ITA incorrect showing available. Did you have the box checked showing "available seats" on the bottom of the ITA page?

RatherGhastly

A fortnight ago, I booked FCO-ZRH-YVR-SYD-PER-SIN-ZRH-FCO directly with LX at a price of €3,602 for travel in Aug/Sept, and it was a bit of a PITA to get ticket, so I thought I might share my experience for the benefit of others. Note that this is not a true round-the-world fare, but rather two half-round-trip fares joined together to form a circle, as per the fare rules.

I began by working with Google Flights and ITA Matrix to identify an itinerary with availability that suited me, and my first attempt was an open-jaw FCO-ZRH-ORD-YVR-SYD, AKL-JFK-VIE-FCO. None of the links offered by Powertools worked, so I tried to book the itinerary directly by phone with OS, only to be told that the ticket would be €16,000 because there was no Z class availability on JFK-VIE-FCO. The agent, however, did seem competent and able to construct the ticket. Realising then that ITA Matrix showed incorrect availabilities, I signed up for a 5-day free trial of ExpertFlyer, which confirmed that ITA was incorrect.

I then set about trying to identify an alternative itinerary, working with GF and ITA in tandem, a painstaking process because the latter would in many cases only show a fare if you fed it the precise details of what you wanted. I did get very good at using the routing and extension codes, though. Just by way of an example, I was trying to find an alternative to AKL-JFK-VIE-FCO, and if I just specified AKL-FCO for the return trip, ITA produced no useful results at all. Specifying connections through JFK and VIE got me my original routing, and specifying instead NZ OS+ (which means one flight on NZ followed by one or more on OS) gave me IIRC alternatives via PDG, NRT, SFO & LAX, etc., but relaxing the constraint any further gave rise to only options costing over €15,000.

At length, I settled on FCO-ZRH-JFK-SYD-PER-SIN-ZRH-FCO, which I tried to get ticketed by phone with LX (since there was no longer any OS segments). I had carefully read the routing rules, minimum-stay requirements and verified bucket availability on EF before doing so. The agent I got, however, would only offer routings via Asia, telling me that ‘the system’ wasn't showing any routings via the Atlantic and Pacific. Essentially, she was reproducing what I could get by myself through the LX website. I asked if escalating to a supervisor would help, but she said ‘no’, that the system would still offer only those routings.

This left me at something of a nonplus, and I contemplated going with an OTA, which I very much wanted to avoid, but, in any case, I couldn’t reproduce the itinerary on any of them. (Matrix Powertools offered a long list of OTAs, and I didn’t try every single one, but none of the five or six I did worked.) I then posted a question on the SWISS forum here asking whether phone agents could in fact construct arbitrary itineraries, or whether they were truly limited to the same offerings as the website, and the suggestion from several FTers was to go with a traditional brick-and-mortar travel agent.

At any rate, I decided to try LX one last time, and rang again. This time, I got through to a more competent agent, who explicitly told me that she was something at an expert on more complex itineraries, and she was indeed able to construct the ticket. The sticking point was that JFK-SYD was pending regulatory approval, and therefore couldn't be booked. I was prepared with an alternative routing, as ITA had suggested that JFK-SYD on QF would add an extra €800 in YQ, so I asked for FCO-ZRH-YVR-SYD-PER-SIN-ZRH-FCO instead. I had verified that there was P class availability for all the outbound segments, and Z class availability for all the inbound segments, with turnaround at SYD. I had to go up a fare-basis for the inbound, as I wanted stopovers in PER and SIN, and PNCIA only allowed one stopover (at a cost of €75), whereas ZNCIA allowed two (one free and a second for €75). Alternatively, I could have made PER the turnaround point, with one stopover in each direction, but the base fare on LX PNCIA ROM-PER was around €400 more per half-round-trip, making turnaround at SYD cheaper overall, and going up to ZNCIA for the inbound meant that I wasn’t constrained by P availability.

The second routing was available, but I was quoted a price of €4,350 when I was expecting €3,550. I asked what fare bases this was on, and I was told ZNCIA-DNCIA. I asked whether I could be booked into ZNCIA-PNCIA instead, and the agent said that the SQ PER-SIN and QF SYD-PER segments were preventing it. I pointed out that there was availability in U on SQ and I on QF, which the Z fare has to book into according to the fare rules, to which she responded that the problem was with LX segments inbound. She then said that, since I seemed to know what I was talking about, she could explain the problem in more technical detail, to which I responded that I would appreciated it. Apparently, when she removed the SQ segment, SIN-ZRH-FCO showed Z availability, but with the SQ segment, there was only D availability, and therefore I had to be booked into DNCIA. I said I wasn't aware that availabilities could be interdependent like this, but she said that it sometimes happened. She then said that she wanted to make the reservation for me, as the itinerary was “a little complicated and another agent might not be able to reconstruct it if I rang back”, which I readily believed, given my prior experience, and I would have a day or two to think about it before paying.

After giving my personal details, the agent then said there was something she would like to try, if I wouldn’t mind being put on hold while she worked, and she would call me back if the line dropped out. After 25 mins or so holding, she came back on the line to say that she had managed to construct the itinerary on the fare bases PNCIA-ZNCIA instead, for €3,602, but the itinerary would have to be ticketed through LH. She said she would make the reservation for me, and I had a day or so to think about it before ringing LH to pay. I said I didn’t need to think, and that I would take the fare. I had already been thinking about this for a long time, and moreover I was leaving for Seattle the next day, so I didn’t want the hassle of trying to pay en route. Then began something of a comedy of errors.

She took my credit card details and send me the itinerary via e-mail for a final check, but when the e-mail took some time to get through, she got me to check online instead with the PNR. (I was sitting at a computer, so that I could verify everything she told me on EF in real time.) As it turned out, the itinerary was fine, but my middle names were in the surname field. Apparently, she couldn’t simply correct this, but had to reconstruct the entire itinerary—“I’ll have to remember what I did”, she said—and, this time, she was able to ticket through LX rather than LH, but my middle names came before my first name on the reservation. So we had to go through the whole thing a third time—it was quick, since she had already constructed the ticket twice before, although I was a little worried that the fare-bucket availabilities were being used up by all these failed attempts—and, what do you know, third time lucky!

So I ended up confirmed on FCO-ZRH-YVR-SYD-PER-SIN-ZRH-FCO with on fare bases LX PNCIA ROM-SYD and LX ZNCIA SYD-ROM with stopovers at PER and SIN for €3,602 on the lowest fare class, which is non-refundable but allows for changes for a charge. And, as it turns out, there has already been a schedule change (just a few days after the booking was made) on the ZRH-YVR segment, which is a WK codeshare. The e-mail I received said that I had to acknowledge the change by May or risk losing my ticket, but I am going to save the change for a while, in case QF4 gains regulatory approval in the interim, in which case I shall try to switch to the JFK routing.

Just a few thoughts by way of a conclusion, then:

1. One cannot sit on the phone to explore possible routings, dates, etc., so do your research beforehand and come armed with alternatives. (On my first attempt to book with OS, I basically had to terminate the call, even though I had a competent agent, because I was unprepared.)

2. ITA Matrix is very much constrained by search time, and, for complex itineraries, can really only find them if you already know they exist; it’s useful for exploring small variations, e.g., date & time changes or minor rerouting options, but use GF to identify possible itineraries first, as, if you begin with nothing, you’ll generally get nothing. Learn to use the routing and extension codes!

3. Fare-bucket availabilities on ITA Matrix are often incorrect, even if ‘only show available seats’ is selected, and it may not always produce the cheapest option if the same itinerary can be ticketed in more than one way. For instance, my itinerary could have been ticketed on PNCIA inbound, but with turnaround at PER instead of SYD, although that would have priced out to around €4,200. Right now, ITA Matrix is coming up with a price of €19,141 for exactly the same routing, constructed as a series of five one-way fares.

4. Therefore, get an ExpertFlyer subscription. EF is useful for verifying fare-bucket availability and what the published fares are. Read the fare rules, especially those pertaining to permitted routings, fare classes on other airlines, stopovers and minimum-stay requirements. Be aware of the concepts of point-of-sale and married-segments, and search accordingly.

5. Not all phone agents are created equal, so HUACA. Sit at a computer with access to ITA Matrix and ExpertFlyer when you call, so that you can verify what the agent is saying in real time, and also explore minor variations to the options you have come armed with, if there are small details that don’t work out.

Wow, the above basically took me just under an hour to write, so I hope that somebody finds it useful!

Polytonic

I want to chime in and say this was a very entertaining and informative read. I wish Flyertalk had some way of bookmarking posts because this is definitely one I plan to keep stashed away in a bookmark for whenever I inevitably get around to trying something like this.

I'm surprised you didn't try having one of the many TAs on FT try to ticket this on your behalf.

jbalmuth

I concur about the use of a FT recommended TA for such an itinerary.

I'm not surprised that after all the time your invested on the call with the helpful LX telephone agent that you decided to pursue the ticketing with her (3 times, no less), but I wonder whether she provided you with a method to reach her directly for when the inevitable schedule changes begin to pour in over the next 6 - 7 months before you travel. Each alliance that offers RTW fares typically has a "liaison" desk that can assist when partners' schedules are adjusted such that you can no longer make a connection, etc., but I wonder how easy it will be working with random LX telephone agents on a fare such as this when involuntary changes are imposed on you later this summer. (ime, HUACA works brilliantly on a simple itinerary or a miles ticket on a specific airline, but I wonder how well it will work when the telephone agent has zero training working on anything other than LX or its Star-Alliance partners....).

luist

Hi all,

Just found this post and hoping to get it to work for an upcoming trip.

Ideally would like to go Europe-Australia(stop over)-USA (stop over)-Europe. What is the best way to put together an itinerary with flexible dates? I've been trying google flights, but can't seem to get anything near the rates mentioned and indiviually modifying dates for each segment seems to be very time consuming/inneficient. When I use Matrix I can't get anyting useful to come up at all, but that may be because I'm pretty rusty as I haven't used it for a few years (2 kids + COVID basically killed my travel!) so am missing something.

Anyway, if anyone has some useful hints to get started or suggested stopover points (have been parsing the thread to see what others have done, and have been trying EWR, YVR, LAX etc..) that would be much appreciated.

Also just signed up for EF so will start playing with that as well.

Thanks!

LT

zebranz

Matrix was updated- old matrix.com no good anymore.
Look at fares rules- need 10 days if I remember correctly. GF will work.
You will need Z on LH to get best rate, J on NZ.
As I said in my post only found MXP works as origin,

luist

So found an itinerary that looks good:

MXP-SIN-SYD,SYD-EWR, EWR-MXP

Prices at Euro 3500 which is about right on Matrix. When I plug into GF, I get about the same price displayed, but once I go through the flight selection process it jumps when I try and select the last leg.

Any advice on how to make GF show the right price/flights?

Thanks

zebranz

You can try to use Power Tools with Matrix to book.
If only last leg is the issue on GF suggest you just change dates or last airline (a different *A carrier -UA,LH,LX,OS). Maybe Z/P not available. I found price difference on GF depending on dates.
You are close!

RatherGhastly

All right, first of all, note that this thread has not been discussing a single fare, but a collection of related fares, and the very oldest posts are discussing fares that no longer exist, so it is unrealistic to aim for sub-€3,000 fares, for instance. The most recent fares are all on the LH group, so you want to be looking for trips that start and end with a connection in MUC, FRA, ZRH, VIE, etc. It also matters where the turnaround point is, and AKL seems to be producing the lowest prices. The problem, though, is that there is usually a 10-day minimum stay requirement, which is a pain unless you actually want to visit New Zealand. Open jaws Australia/AKL are permitted, still with a 10-day req., but then you have to make your own way between the two, which adds to the cost.

As for how to go about finding a workable itinerary, it is a process of trial and error that works best on Google Flights, since you can change the dates of individual segments relatively quickly using the arrows. The first segment tends to have the most effect on prices, so my suggestion would be to start with all Wednesdays, perhaps two-weeks apart, and change the date of first segment until you find the lowest fare, and then repeat with the remaining segments. Here is an example to get you started, which is bookable on United for €3,692: FCO-VIE-NRT-SYD-YVR-ORD-ZRH-FCO. This basically uses the LX/OS PNCIA ROM-SYD fare bases, which I mentioned in my long post above, in both directions.

This is the wrong way to go about things. ITA Matrix is more reliable on prices and availability than Google Flights, but the latter is faster, so use GF first to identify potentially-workable itineraries, then plug into ITA Matrix to check availability and explore minor variations to the itinerary. Once you have found something that seems to work, read the fare rules and verify fare-bucket availability for each flight on ExpertFlyer. Knowing the fare rules, especially the routing rules, minimum-stay requirements and fare classes on other airlines will help you to know what is possible and what isn’t in terms of variations to explore on ITA Matrix. Note also that ITA Matrix is not infallible about bucket availabilities and may also not show that best price-construction for any given itinerary, so a price it gives may not actually be available, and, equally, a lower price may be available than what it gives.

As for booking, many of these fare are not bookable online, either with OTA’s or directly with the airlines, so you’ll have to book directly with LH/LX/OS by phone, or go with a brick-and-mortar travel agent. Read my long post above for suggestions. If you include a segment on United, you might be able to book online with them, as in the example I give below.

When are you looking to travel? Can you share the itinerary you have identified?

luist

RatherGhastly thanks for the helpful and detailed reply!

I'm actually aiming to spend 6 weeks in Australia so the 10-day is no problem for me. Understand that it may be more not to open jaw in AKL but travelling with family prefer to get directly to Aus even if a little more.

Thanks. I'd found an itinerary that seemed to work on Matrix, but powertools was giving me nothing so was trying to reproduce in GF. Probably a case of what you mentioned in that the price matrix was showing was not avaialble.

Travel dates are sowewhat flexlible. Hoping for end of June-ish to Australia for about 6 weeks. So far found this:



I'll also play around with the itinerary that you linked as well. If possible will try and avoid AC 737 from YVR to EWR...

notsosmart

I don’t think I can fly this fare this summer due to health reasons.

Does anyone know whether it is bookable into 2024?

zebranz

End of schedule is mid-Jan. My last flight is Jan 10th.

luist

Anyone else have trouble booking these through Amex Travel?

Found a couple of itineraries that would work but both are showing a message saying "your flights are no longer available" or similar...