I hate change. This week, two of my favorite airfare searching tools either went away or previous versions were disabled. I’m of course referring to the trusty FareCompare Flyertalk page being taken down and ITA Software’s Classic “Matrix 1†being totally removed. I feel sort of naked without them. The FareCompare site was bar none…
ITA Software
Tag Archives for ITA Software.
Booking airline tickets online: Easy or irritatingly difficult?
As a blogger I bookmark and follow a huge amount of travel-related websites that feature news and reviews in the airline and travel industry. One of them is Tnooz.com whose tagline is “Talking Travel Tech.” It really is a fantastic site and they frequently cover global distribution system (GDS) issues and stories for which I…
Test-driving Google Flight Search: A total disappointment
As widely reported and reviewed, Google launched their much-anticipated Flight Search feature after having completed the acquisition of ITA Software. ITA’s Matrix Airfare Search tool is bar none the most robust and user-friendly way to search for airfares – everything from simple roundtrips to complex multi-city combinations – and it’s my go-to website where I…
Follow up on my review of Everbread’s Haystack airfare search engine
A week and a half ago I posted a review of Everbread’s Haystack airfare search engine that provides functionality similar to ITA Software’s Matrix Airfare Search. I noted its similarities to ITA and also called out some glaring shortcomings, such as its inability to search for flights with flexible days (+/- x-days, month long, etc),…
Competition for ITA Software? Review of Everbread’s Haystack airfare search engine
I recently posted some videos put out by UK-based Everbread showing a humorous yet accurate description of how Global Distribution Systems came into being and their evolution to present form. Those videos were admittedly a selfless plug for the company’s Haystack airfare search engine, whose underlying technology is marketed as a business-to-business solution with greater…
Videos: Airline Global Distribution Systems explained, with a bit of humor
Eventually I’ll get around to posting a detailed description and history of Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), but in the meantime check out these videos from Everbread. The UK-based travel technology company put these together in part to explain the method by which airline reservations have been booked since the 1950s, but also to expose the…
Airfare pricing buckets & airline fare basis codes REVEALED!
In this post, I will shed some light on how airlines assign fare basis codes to the various “buckets†of inventory available for sale on any given flight. If you’ve ever wondered what pricing “buckets†are, or just what your fare showing as WAGT14GS means, read on. My recent Mileage Run 101 posts (Part 1…
Finding better airfares than those published in Sunday newspapers
Many newspapers publish a list of airfares to popular destinations throughout the country and world in their Sunday travel sections, and I’ve always been curious as to their accuracy. Two Sundays ago, the footnote from the Los Angeles Times list of fares read, “Restricted round-trip airfares as researched Thursday, the day before the Travel section…
Mileage Running 101: How I construct a mileage run – Part 2
As I mentioned in Part 1, I was asked recently about how I construct a mileage run, and although I provided a brief version back in January, I fully detail one of my methods in this two-part posting. Continuing from Part 1: Now that I know the date range, days of week, and fare basis…
Mileage Running 101: How I construct a mileage run – Part 1
Every mileage runner has a tried and true method for finding the best combination of fares, routings & flights when constructing a mileage run, and I’ll share my most frequently used process in the next two posts. I made a similar posting in January, but with less detail, and have been recently asked to expand…