ISTFlyer

To be exact, AA doesn't publish some discounted fares to the GDS and ITA Matrix isn't compatible to search fares only available within the NDC.
Most expensive and full-priced fares are published to the GDS and show up on ITA Matrix.

golfmad

Which makes ITA Matrix fairly useless on AA when searching for the best deals with the lowest fares.

JMN57

Thanks - that explains it - I'm a pretty savvy itamatrix user and I thought I was losing my mind when I was getting ridiculous prices from ITAmatrix. Well, RIP ITAmatrix, it was fun while it lasted.

SugoiHikouki

It's more that PE fares have always been tricky to search for on ITA Matrix compared to other cabins. How it seems to parse and search when you only use the dropdown for PE does not align with people's normal expectations of a PE trip (PE as available, with shorter hops in Y). Instead, it will frequently fallback on at-least-PE and end up booking into J cabin for parts of the trip where it can't find PE.

If you include the PE dropdown as well as "+cabin premium-coach 3" in each of the extension codes fields, it'll likely find the PE-with-Y fares you're looking for. I was able to find 1267 euro PE trips all on AA code by doing that.

JMN57

Thanks - I have tried all permutations of PE - PE dropdown alone, +cabin premium-coach (or +cabin pe, +cabin premium-coach 3) alone and it combination. I'll give it another shot to check but I'm thinking the fares I am seeking/buying aren't in the engine.

scubadu

I've been in denial for awhile, but I'm coming to terms with the fact that ITA Matrix is just dying on the vine and will likely be killed off at some point. I can't really begrudge the founders for selling out to Google, but when that occurred I think the fate of this tool was sealed. Once Google has sucked all the IP and talent out of it they'll kill it off like they do so many tools.

The unfortunate thing is that, at least to my knowledge, there is just no equivalent tool out there that allows "power users" the type of granularity and control we've enjoyed with ITA Matrix. There is just so much power in this tool for those that take the time to learn it. I found deals over the years that I just would never have found using "Google Flights" (which I don't much care for). The ability to dial in exactly what you wanted and then use something like BookWithMatrix to purchase an itinerary that you just wouldn't find on a carriers website directly was just awesome...

I don't know what kind of non-compete the founders had to sign when they sold to Google, but man, I hope they go off and create another tool that provides similar functionality.

Regards

JMN57

Similar experience - found a lot of very good deals (particularly for premium cabin) using itamatrix. I did try combining dropdown PE & +cabin premium-coach 3 and it returned some competitive (but not lowest) prices.

Schwann

Unfortunately still yielding "server time out" messages when doing multi-city searches.

lensovet

narrow your parameters to restrict the queries. Multi city searches work just fine for me.

lensovet

Non competes are illegal in California, where Google is based.

However, how exactly do you propose this other tool is financed? Matrix was a software demo that worked off an infrastructure that was used by other OTAs, which paid for the product. Who’s going to pay for this Matrix clone?

thewillienelson

Hi,

Wanting to find what routes that Delta's A330-900, and A350-900 are flying from U.S. on 9/15, and back from Europe to U.S. on 10/2.

I know how to add many cities into origin/destination, but I would like to understand how to input the Aircraft Type into the extension code?

Goal: Find Delta's newest Delta One Suites which are on A330-900 and A350-900 to and from Europe. Dates aren't flexible, but origin and destination are.

I tried "T:359;T:339;MAX DUR 20:00" for a route, plan, date, and availability that I know exists and I keep getting an error.

Thanks,
Willie

ChocolateFactory

“Aircraft t:350 t:339”

I’m not sure if 339 will work or if you have to go with t:330…

timol

Lufthansa (with SQ codeshares) has really attractive F fares to SYD in the A booking class from some European cities (xxx-FRA-SIN-SYD) such as AMS. Unsurprisingly, seats for these A fares are most (if not all) of the time not available.

However, Matrix (even when "Only show flights and prices with available seats" is ticked) seems to look at the "normal A availability" of the FRA-SIN and SIN-SYD segments, without knowledge of the origin (ie AMS) related tight restrictions. Therefore, practically all cheaper flight alternatives presented by Matrix are not there. Interestingly, lufthansa.com on its multicity booking tool, also shows these flights as bookable but then returns an error message when proceeding to payment.

Is there a way to search the really bookable A flights on LH?

Example: AMS-SYD, 1 pax, cabin First class, dates 6 - 20 May 2024 +/- 1 day, routing codes "LH+", "Only show flights and prices with available seats"

JanoSicek

If there are just codeshares, LH revenue management will return 0 availability, because they just don't want to sell a ticket that is just for other airlines. If you have at least one longhaul operated by LH, then probability of seeing non-zero availability goes up a lot.

FlyingFilmGuy

I am having exactly the same issue! (Well, Auckland rather than Sydney.)

Matrix shows VERY attractive fares that don't show up with any OTA.

On Lufthansa.com or Swiss.com, very similar fares show up, but I have to use Multi-City search to force it to find the routing. But then, when trying to book, I get an incredibly vague error message and error code. I've talked multiple times with Lufthansa technical support, but nobody can tell me what the error code means, and the only advice I get are obvious attempts to just get me off the phone ("try a different web browser because we don't support Chrome" or "there's a problem with the website, try again in a few hours", etc.).

My absolute favourite was, "You can't book multi-city flights on the website. You can only book multi-city flights over the phone."

The only possible solution I've found, is to add an overnight at the European hub (e.g. FRA or ZRH, depending on your routing). It does alter the fare, but seems to then allow you to book. And a night in Zurich is never a bad thing, in my opinion.