ITA Software: Bug?
 

http://matrix.itasoftware.com

From: YYC (or any airport within 275 miles)
To: HKG (or any airport within 300 miles)
September 1 (or the next day) to September 8 (or the next day)

If I run this query, the cheapest flight is YLW to HKG for $628.


Now, if I change the above to...

From: YYC (or any airport within 275 miles)
To: QVR;HKG (or any airport within 300 miles)
September 1 (or the next day) to September 8 (or the next day)

So basically all I've done is add the airport QVR.

Now the cheapest flight showing up is $692, from YYC to GRU.

It seems to completely miss the YLW to HKG flight for $628.


Just wondering if anyone knew why that would be?

I think there is a limit to how many different flights ITA will consider in a given query. The narrower the parameters of a given search, the more likely it is to find the cheapest flight with those particular parameters.

I was thinking that too, so I narrowed the search parameters:

From: YYC
To: QVR;HKG
outbound: Aug 29 (on this day only)
return: Sep 11 (on this day only)

Result: finds the $639 fare

[the previous date I was using no longer has this cheap fare]


now, if I merely change ...

To: QVR;HKG or any airport within 75 miles

...it can't find the $639 HKG flight.

Surely there can't be *that* many combinations of airports within 75 miles with only these two cities to search on a single date ?

Now, if I lower it to 50 miles, it can find the deal.

I used to think ITASoftware was giving me a powerful tool to use, but if the extent of it's combination search is two cities with a 50 mile range...damn.

I am not seeing the $639 fare at all, though perhaps it is no longer valid, though it seems that when you have such a large radius that it only returns the first 500 flights. I am not sure how it gets to those 500, though from you data it does not seem to do it by price.

Yeah, that date is gone now, Sep 4-13 is one that's still showing the $639 price.
Same result, as soon as you change the radius to 75 miles or greater, it no longer shows the YYC -> HKG price.

I was always under the assumption that it would compile a list of every airport within the specified radius, and cherry pick the lowest fare for every combination of those airports.

Maybe someone from ITASoftware can give a better idea of what method it uses. I think one of the developers is on this forum.

What's strange to me is that if you do a search like...

From: YYC
To: QVR;HKG (or any airport within 200 miles)

Sep 4 - 13

It still finds a YYC -> HKG fare, but it's just not finding the *lowest* one. It finds a $940 fare as the cheapest.

It seems to go against the theory that it's just searching for the first 500 results between YYC and QVR first, and then HKG next.