jh321

Hello, I'm really hoping someone can help me with a search - I was sort of ok before Covid, but I'm out of practice and struggling to read the guides for this. If anyone can help me with how I can set it up so I can look for best fares I'd be so grateful!. The parts that are hard are that I want to fly BA (or AA now), with a BA GUF, paying for Premium Econ but upgrading to Business with the GUF. So I need to look for availability in the upgraded cabin, but price the PE (I assume that's two separate searches). So I think this is the hard part, what code do I need to show 'upgradeable' PE?

We also want to fly from London/Dublin/Amsterdam (ie happy to depart from various positions) to SNA/LAX, and return from MIA/TPA to Barcelona, so I assume I need to do various searches with each country?

Thank you for any quidance you can give me!

ChocolateFactory

You need award space for that and ITA Matrix can’t show you that. Use the BA reward flight finder (or whatever it’s called) to find award space. Then check if any of those days have ok PE prices.

jh321

Thanks ChocolateFactory I think it's reward availability, plus I class on BA and C class on AA, that's why I was hoping there might be a code to find that availbility on ITA? Then I can check the price of PE? I think?!

ChocolateFactory

No, I is paid business class, as far as I can tell. That’s not relevant here. As far as I know (I’ve never used such upgrades myself, but I’m assuming it’s similar to upgrading for Avios).

Globaliser

If the availability checker is on, then ITA will not return a result where the applicable booking class has no zero inventory.

If you're seeing a result that uses a particular booking class on a flight on which you think there is zero inventory, then it's very likely that something else is going on. There may be point-of-sale issues, or married-sector issues, that mean that you can see zero inventory for that booking class on that flight using some sources, and yet there is inventory in that booking class for the itinerary that you are asking ITA to price.

As always: availability is not like tins of baked beans on a supermarket shelf. There is not always only one single answer to the question "Is there any availability in M class on this particular flight?"

But without more details as to what you're seeing and what you're asking for, it's difficult to be more specific.

In addition, one of the difficulties with "a minimum of H" is that on some airlines, that could be asking for a large number of booking classes, but with other airlines, it could be very few. That may be why there is no single shortcut to such a specification.

What is upgradeable? I think that what you need to do is to find the price for the upgradeable PE itinerary, for which ITA is great, and then entirely separately looking (probably using some other tool like EF) whether there is inventory in the booking class you need to upgrade into. If there are some PE itineraries/fares that are not upgradeable, you simply have to specify your ITA search so as to exclude them. But first of all, you need to find out what PE fares are upgradeable.I'm a bit rusty on BA GUFs, but I think that there are circumstances in which I class can be used. (Similarly, there are now circumstances in which some I class inventory can be used for straightforward award flights using an Amex companion voucher.)

ChocolateFactory

I don’t know anything about GUFs, but as far as I know, all PE fares can be upgraded to business class, at least for Avios. But you need award availability (which I believe is U class). I can’t imagine an upgrade cert would give you a revenue booking class, even if it’s the lowest one (I). But I don’t know for sure. To find U class availability, BA’s reward flight finder would probably be the best tool.

Globaliser

See BA Gold Upgrade Voucher Discussion and Wiki Thread

ChocolateFactory

Wow, I had no idea. First time I’m seeing an actual benefit with being BA Gold over BA Silver…

synergistic

I'm still having a heck of a time getting the matrix to spit out the real options the way it used to - the way Google flights does for flexible dates, except without the one/two week limitation. This time it's especially frustrating:

So we want to fly to JNB or DUR this September. We're good with repositioning, so I always check WAS/NYC/CHI on Google flights. It finds a ton of $727 rates (actually $755 direct, no problem) on Ethiopian IAD-JNB, including our preferred week at the end of the month . I go to ask the same WAS/NYC/CHI-JNB/DUR for 24Sep-1Oct but with +/- two days, set it to no limit x2, and get... Some $849 flights on Kenya from JFK, but no sign of the $727/$755 Ethiopian flights from IAD.

Ok, fine, I'll list the usual suspects individually: JFK,LGA,EWR,IAD,DCA,ORD. That adds some $842 Delta flights out of various NYC airports (where were they last search?) but still no sign of the Ethiopian flights. Ok, fine, let's try to find JUST the actual flights - IAD-JNB. There's Ethiopian finally, but they start at $845. I take off the +/- 2 days - still just the $845. I'm massively confused at this point, and just for the heck of it, I try WAS-JNB. There it is at the $755 price! But I'm back to the $845 flights again when I add the +/- two days back in.

What is going on? If it's a matter of too much to search, why aren't these flights showing when I search for JUST the IAD-JNB on 24Sep-1Oct option? It does find it just fine if I add ET+ as a routing code, but that's not particularly helpful - I want to be able to use the matrix like I used to, to find options without already knowing the exact flights I'm looking for!

hugolover

Thanks for your replies .

I'll try explaining it another way. I want it to return flights where only higher RBDs are open (in the case of fares, they match the RBD hence this command is OK). For example in the context of say BA. Business inventory is J/C/D/R/I. If I is open, R is open, and up the chain. I want it to show me only flights where C is the lowest RBD available and exclude flights where D/R/I are closed.

Using the F ~bc=D& its not excluding RBDs that are closed, its just pricing the trip higher, just like if I were to ask for only C fares. My results are presenting flights where even I is open.

Is there anyway to do this?

ChocolateFactory

You can’t do that (as far as I know). The best way would be to use the calendar view and look for days with higher prices.
I have used that when I wanted to book a higher booking class on SN - since you can then rebook it for other dates for free and keep the higher booking class.

Globaliser

Splitting the post up into bits so that the reply is clearer:1. This is not true. If you book an I class fare for (eg) AMS-LHR-JNB-LHR-AMS, the AMS-LHR and LHR-AMS flights will book in to J and the trip will price and be bookable even if I is closed on those flights.

2. This is not universally true, either. There are times when (say) D may have zero inventory but R will have some. It's rare, but it can happen.

3. If you specify F ~bc=D, then ITA will return itineraries that use J, C, R or I class fares (assuming that you have also restricted ITA to returning business class results). You have excluded only D class fares and nothing else. To get closer to what you want, you may want to try F bc=j|bc=c, which will include anything that uses a J class fare or a C class fare, but excludes every other kind of fare. (But see 1. above concerning the fact that individual flights may yet book into a different booking class even though the fare is a J class fare or a C class fare.)

ChocolateFactory

That’s not what he wants though. Specifiying f bc just means you want to include or exclude fares. So if there’s availability in all booking classes, you would still include or exclude those booking classes (so if you remove the filter, the prices for the same dates would drop). But what he wants is to see dates where certain booking classes aren’t available for booking.

Globaliser

I know - but those are some of the reasons why their approach won't work on ITA.

I agree with you that it's not easily possible to do this on ITA.

If confined to a single airline (eg BA) and a reasonable simple routing, then the easiest approach is actually to start with ExpertFlyer to find out which flights have zero inventory in (say) D, R and I classes, and only then go to ITA to price the remaining acceptable flights (perhaps specifying the flight numbers of the acceptable flights).

Using ITA alone, one approach might be to use the individual flights option. For each part of the journey searched, there may be a discernible price break between (say) D class and C class. Then the cheaper flights can simply be ignored (or excluded in the next search), one of the acceptable flights chosen, and then the process repeated on the next screen for the next part of the journey. But this is likely to work well only on relatively simple itineraries with few true options on each screen.

What I don't understand - it may just be me being thick - is why a flight that is J9 C9 D0 R0 I0 would be acceptable when a flight that is J9 C9 D9 R9 I9 would be unacceptable. If they are prepared to pay a C class fare to get C class conditions, it's bookable on either flight. If that could be explained, then we might have some other bright ideas about how to search for the acceptable flights.

Calchas

What are you actually trying to do here? My guess is trick a work booking system into booking you into a ticket earning more Avios