I’m a creature of habit and when I find a tried and true method to book multi-segment mileage runs, I stick with it. Too much so that when it doesn’t work, I fluster around with it far longer than I need to.

Having recently moved from Los Angeles and accepted my fate that I’ll no longer see mileage runs in the ultra low cents-per-mile range below 4.0, I’ve only casually been on the hunt lately. But yesterday I found one sole run with one departure date available at 3.64 CPM from my new home airport, Reno.

It’s on United and I found the fare on ExpertFlyer using ITA Matrix’s Airfare Search Tool to find the sole itinerary with availability. [Here’s my updated guide on how to find mileage runs these days in the post-FareCompare tool world.]

After finding a valid itinerary on ITA, I’ve always had success in piecing it together directly on United.com using the multiple destination feature. And given this run was too good to pass up, I was determined to book it.

Try as I might, United.com would simply not display the 5^th of six flights I needed to get the fare. I knew it had availability and it wasn’t a married-segments issue, so I tried everything – modifying the time, adjusting the city codes and more. I almost think United was deliberately not showing me the flight, forcing my hand at purchasing a higher fare. That’s a subject for another post.

But then I remembered a post from Seth at Wandering Aramean about how Hipmunk uses ITA’s advanced syntax and with a simple click, it’ll dump you right into the airline’s booking engine ready to take your credit card. Definitely read through his post as it contains more specific details than my summary below.

Using Hipmunk for Faster Booking of Multi-Segment Mileage Runs

It’s really quite simple if you know ITA’s advanced routing language. You plug in the exact same search parameters in the from and to fields, followed by the exact departure and return dates you found on ITA.

Hipmunk Booking Engine

Then you’re presented with a time graph showing outbound flight itineraries and their respective prices. My particular itinerary/price combo immediately showed up at the top (the one below isn’t what I booked… that itinerary and fare is no longer available).

Hipmunk Search Results

You simply click the appropriate bar with your desired itinerary, then click the “select this leg” button and Hipmunk will show you the return options.

Hipmunk Search Results

Again select the appropriate bar with your desired itinerary and Hipmunk will then display a pop-up with a button reading, “Buy on United.”

Hipmunk Book Now

Clicking that button dumps you directly into United.com, ready for you to enter traveler information and proceed to purchase.

United.com Booking Page

It worked brilliantly for my itinerary – such a time saver. I haven’t experimented with other airlines yet.

Thanks, Seth, for your original post… I’m glad I remembered it. And yes, while I’m sure I could have called United to make the reservation, I generally prefer to abstain from booking these on the phone simply out of desire to avoid the mileage run conversation with the agent that usually ensues.

Related posts:

How to Find Mileage Runs – 2013 Edition

Finding Mileage Runs Without the FareCompare Tool

I’m Off on a Weeklong Mileage Run… In Style

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 the easiest and fastest way to find which markets had the cheapest fares from your origin city or region. The tabled list provided a quick snapshot of city pairs, (nearly) all-in fares and although often inaccurate, a cost per mile column. It was particularly useful to quickly see which markets had truly lowball fares ideal for mileage runs.

It’s still listed as a tool on the website, but with a “coming soon” disclaimer. Flyertalk user “gbryan84” received an email from FareCompare’s CEO Rick Seaney stating, “… we are in the midst of a massive rollout of new backend software to comply with new DOT regulations in January. Getting the FT app back up is on the list, but I don’t have an exact time yet.”

They left another feature active that displays fares from an origin on a global map called the Where-To-Go: Getaway Map that can be found here.

It, then, is probably the next best thing at the moment to not-so-quickly see what fares are out there in the markets presently. Kayak has a similar Explore map tool and it, too, requires manual manipulation of the map to view the fares and further details.

I found a potential mileage run fare for Los Angeles to Columbus on both the FareCompare and Kayak map, so made note of it and checked out the routing rules on ExpertFlyer.

Kayak Explore map

FareCompare Getaway map

United Airlines has pretty generous routing rules on their fare in the LAX-CMH market, so I went to ITA Software’s Matrix to check out availability. I’ve used the “new” tool previously and it does eventually get you to the same information, but it takes more click-throughs and I find it slower than the classic version. The routing I wanted was from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Washington Dulles to Columbus for a one-nighter and I plugged in the following:

A calendar appeared showing the fares available each day and the month of February looked to have plenty of availability for the cheapest fare. Once selecting a date, it will take you to a list of flights and their respective fares. Clicking through gets you the same detail as the classic version.

It’s not an efficient method to find mileage runs presently, but at least there’s still a way beyond just plugging in random markets to display available fares. This run, by the way, nets 6,838 EQMs (I can’t bring myself to call them Premier Qualifying Miles yet) at an all-in fare of $258.20, or 3.78 cpm.

My fingers are crossed the FareCompare tool comes back sooner rather than later. I know I’m not the only one truly missing it right now. Does anyone have other tools they’re using to find mileage runs?

[Coincidentally, Ben, too, wrote a similar post at the same time and his method uses ITA Software to find runs. Check out his method here.]

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 build all of my itineraries. The only thing it lacks is the ability to purchase directly on the site and we’ve all been expecting Google to come out with an industry leading booking engine packed with bells and whistles. The product they launched, however, is anything but revolutionary and is completely underwhelming.

I’ll get into my thoughts on why they launched it as is later, but first let me take you on a mini tour. My very first time plugging in an itinerary was met with a rather unfriendly error message. I searched for a simple Los Angeles to Chicago roundtrip leaving this Saturday September 24, 2011 and returning October 9^th.

Image courtesy Google

I was surprised to see the current restrictions requiring the itinerary to be shorter than 15 days along with the other notifications mentioning a minimum one-night stay and a maximum six-month booking window. Very un-ITA. I revised my booking dates and played with the map feature, which is actually pretty cool.

Image courtesy Google

It shows the rates to other cities in the United States for the same travel period, something useful if you also have your eye on another destination. As you can see from the map, only limited destinations are currently available and all within the U.S. One of the filtering tools allows you to set maximum price and duration (total travel time), but I think Google will confuse the average passenger here on how to manipulate the inputs, as well as what all those dots refer to.

Image courtesy Google

It looks more confusing than it should and I think they need to take away the “hit” points and just focus on the key inputs of price and duration with a better explanation to click on the “sliders” to adjust the filter. Would everyone know what the “sliders” are in this graphic? I think not. Continuing on below, I found several unfiltered (didn’t use the left-hand pane delimiters of # of stops, airline/alliance selection, connection points and times) flights from which to select my outbound.

Image courtesy Google

Nonstops were highlighted, but I think they need to do away with the confusing notification of result pulls. When you hover over the question mark next to “18 of 37 results,” it reveals “Longer and more expensive flights are hidden by default, increase the Price and Duration limits to see more results.” Okay, but then the notices next to each roundtrip price makes it seem like you’ll find 19 results, for example, if you were to click on that first American flight showing a $239 fare. That’s not the case and Google should remove those notifications. I selected a United flight and went on to pick the return.

Image courtesy Google

What’s incredibly strange here is the display of American flights for the return having picked United for the outbound. I’m at a loss why that happened, but played along and picked one of the flights. Notice here, though, that those pesky result notices, “XX from” have disappeared next to the price points. Google currently steers you directly to the airlines’ website to complete the booking, so when the “book” button appeared, it advised me I’d be ticketing the reservation with American (probably due to the fact it was the last segment on the itinerary). Shockingly, when I clicked through it did indeed setup the itinerary as selected.

Image courtesy American Airlines

How unfortunate for American had I continued to purchase with a United segment. Here, though, I finally get to see the aircraft type, something totally lacking on the Google side and while it might not be important to most people, I’m keen to know that during the selection process. I played around a bit more and was thoroughly disappointed at how lacking this initial incarnation was. I will give credit to its speed and correct transfer of data to the airline’s site, as well as being able to see nearby airports with ease via the dropdown option from the default airport based on your IP address (I assume).

Image courtesy Google

The obviousness that you’ve selected an outbound and return just isn’t there, however, so Google absolutely needs better and deliberate notification to the user that you’ve actually selected one or the other. There is a ton more I could criticize, but for now I’ll leave this post as is knowing Flight Search is an ultra-early deployment.

So why did Google release such an inferior and restrictive product? My guess is they wanted real-world load testing and who better to “employ” as beta testers than you and me? Our initial searches will do wonders for their analytics. Also, I’m certain they wanted these types of critical reviews before releasing what I’m expecting to be the leading search and booking engine. They know what they have with ITA and I’m certain we’ll eventually have a tool used as frequently as you would use native Google for any other search.

For further insightful remarks well beyond my simplistic example, be sure to check out Henry Harteveldt’s guest post on CrankyFlier. He takes you a bit deeper into the pros and cons of this immature release and correctly states “Google launched the product too soon.” Have you tried it out? What are your comments?

P.S., Be sure to check out my review of a more advanced tool available now: Everbread’s Haystack Flight Search. No, I have not been paid by, nor have any stake in Everbread or Haystack. I was just as critical of their preliminary public release, but have seen true innovation for what the future holds by way of a preview of its actual functionality that is light years ahead of this Google embarrassment.

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 efficiencies and processes than that of traditional GDSs. Sounding very reminiscent of ITA Software’s Matrix Airfare Search Tool, I was even more intrigued because it claims to also search off-GDS low cost carrier fares and schedules, something ITA lacks. I signed up for an account and took it for a test drive last night.

I decided to search for a basic roundtrip ticket in a market I knew Southwest Airlines flew along with traditional carriers, so I plugged in Los Angeles to Denver leaving September 16^th, returning September 20, 2011:

The expandable options below the basic search fields open up to allow customization for preferred carriers, number of stops, class of service and other “standard” parameters. It also has other selections available for more advanced fine tuning, including the ability to select interline specificity and types of fares (refundable, upgradable, changeable). Wanting to keep it simple, I selected the option to show fare information with the results leaving the other defaults in place, and hit search:

Hmm, where’s Southwest? Anyway, it’s sort of a similar response to what ITA would give and very curious to compare their pricing against ITA’s, I popped over there to get nearly identical results:

The listings returned are in ascending order based on fare and for sake of space, I’m showing the top four below:

You have the ability to further sort and modify the results with a toolbar appearing at left. Included here is the option to filter by alliance (Star, oneworld, etc), airline, virtual interline, stops, flight time and more. First I decided to deselect Frontier Airines and it returned the following result:

Hmm, Frontier remained. It appears that if you keep “multiple airlines” checked, deselecting specific airlines will only chop off itineraries from the results wholly comprised of the deselected carrier. I played around with it for a while, then decided just to leave United checked as the carrier with nonstop flights only. Here were the top three results:

Ugh. Burbank got in there, so it seems they’ve set the logic to include nearby airports (city code logic vs. simply airport code). That definitely could be useful, but I wasn’t expecting it. Deselecting the “airport changes” option didn’t make it go away either. What was more surprising, though, is how few options in total appeared: 24 total combinations and since there are eight nonstops daily in each direction LAX-DEN, it should have returned 64 possible combos. The default search option returns 500 results (max seems to be 1,000), so when I later searched for just United flights on that route, it seemed to pull in the full schedule (plus Burbank).

For now, I decided to move on, make a selection, and was able to reveal class of service and a partial fare breakdown, but no fare basis codes or fare construction detail:

As Haystack isn’t a booking site like ITA, you can only “share” the itinerary you’ve selected by sending it to an email address or to your Google or Outlook calendar. I chose the email route:

Notice the email left off fare details (fare buckets & price breakout)? It does provide a link for the results, but had I forwarded this to my travel agent, for example, the link requires a sign-in back to Haystack. If I provided my login credentials to my travel agent, they would be redirected to the entire screen of results wherein this selection was made. A bit cumbersome, in my opinion.

Let me make it clear that I acknowledge this is a demo version and isn’t intended to be a consumer search engine, but at the same time I was expecting advanced ITA-type functionality and detail. Having the ability to only search for specific dates without being offered “flexible dates,” month-long or “+/- 3 days” for a better fare seems so 1999. Perhaps that’s what they’re developing now and will be part of Haystack 2.0. It didn’t seem to return results quite as fast as ITA, but maybe only by three or four more seconds. Also, I have to throw them a bone and while Southwest Airlines flights & fares didn’t appear, I didn’t try routes with European low cost carriers, their specialty (likely).

I’ll be following their progress with interest and in the meantime, it might not be a bad tool to bookmark and revisit once in a while. Learn more about Everbread and Haystack here, including signing up for a free account.

[Updated to add: Please be sure to click-through to my follow-up post here. After posting the above review, the company's Deputy COO contacted me directly to give a preview of current functionality not included with the demo version out there live at the moment. VERY impressive stuff!]

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 shortcomings of legacy GDSs and humorously plug their next generation airfare search engine. I’m excited to give their Haystack system a test-drive and signed up for an account. Sadly, while the confirmation seemed immediate when I registered online, the email I received stated:

[Update: Had I checked my email again prior to posting this, I would have seen that I've been fully activated. Stay tuned for a future post where I'll take Haystack for a test drive.]

The videos are accurate in that they give a high-level snapshot of GDSs from their creation to present day form and function, but quite a bit of detail is left out. Still, though, I have to give Everbread props for summarizing the highly complex nature of GDS functionality into an easily understandable framework. Their Haystack system to me sounds like an enhanced ITA Software-type of search tool that additionally captures “off-line” low-cost carrier data (i.e., Southwest Airlines, for example, whose limited subscription in GDSs leaves them off ITA’s Matrix search).

Be sure to note the rather hilarious caricature of Sir Richard Branson in the second video. American Airlines certainly agrees with their statement, “Airlines pay truckloads of money for the global distribution network.” Enjoy!

(Hat tip: Gulliver via Tnooz)

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 code, I want to know the routing rules for that $184 base fare from Los Angeles to Kansas City. Meaning, where and through which cities am I allowed to travel on that fare. Unfortunately, there isn’t a free method to get that information, but two popular services exist that are available to the general public. The service I use is ExpertFlyer, a web-based platform with a couple of subscription levels. To get fare information, the Premium Plan at $9.99/month is required, also available at a discounted rate of $99.99 for an annual membership. The other method is via the KVS Tool, although it isn’t Mac friendly and requires a Windows emulator should you sign up for one of its plans. The Diamond level is required to see routing rules ($75 annually, but add in the cost for an emulator if you’re running Mac OS X and don’t already have one).

I’ll skip the process within ExpertFlyer to view the routing rules for now making the assumption you might not have a subscription, or already know how to view them if you do. The same fare rules I found under booking details using the classic ITA Software Matrix Airfare Search can also be viewed in ExpertFlyer. Here are the results for that GAP14CS fare from Los Angeles (LAX) to Kansas City (MCI; MKC is shown in ExpertFlyer as city codes are used for routing rules in lieu of airport codes).

1. LAX-CHI/CLE/DEN/HOU-MKC
2. LAX-DEN/HOU/LAX/SFO-CHI/CLE/DEN/HOU-MKC

Reading line 1, this fare allows me to travel from LAX through Chicago, Cleveland, Denver or Houston to Kansas City. Line 2 is also a valid routing showing I can make two connections. For example, I can fly on this fare starting at LAX and make a connection in Denver (within the first set of slashed cities (‘/’), and make another one in Chicago (in the second set of slashed cities separated by a dash (‘-‘). Keep in mind only one airport within each “slashed city set” is allowed as a transit point.

Since the point of a mileage run is to maximize miles, and particularly elite qualifying miles to gain status, I’m looking for the routing that will give me the biggest mileage for the fare. In this case, using Line 2’s routing, I want to fly from LAX through Houston and Cleveland to get to Kansas City. Crazy way to get there for most everyone else except mileage runners, I know.

Awesome, I now know the best routing to generate the largest amount of miles, so I’m ready to return to the classic ITA Airfare Search and find some availability. Back using the month-long search feature, I plug in the following coding inside the FROM field: LAX::IAH CLE, and this in the TO field: MCI::CLE IAH. This strange looking code basically means I want to fly from LAX, connect at IAH and CLE to get to MCI, and back the same way. To become versed in this coding, check out the helpful section at ITA Route Language.

Sticking with September 1^st as the start date, and 1-night as the length of stay, I press Go to reveal several dates appearing for $245 (a slight increase due to additional taxes (PFCs) by flying through additional airports).  I’m going to pick Tuesday, September 13^th as my preferred departure and find a couple of options on Continental from which to choose.

Clicking into the first one, I find a full itinerary mapped out generating a fare of $245.20 all-in. Notice there are a couple of quick connections, and one more than 3 hours, but this is all part of a mileage runner’s life. When you calculate the mileage earned for each segment, it works out to a total of 6,330 for the roundtrip. Dividing the fare of $245.20 by 6,330 miles generates a CPM (cents per mile) of about 3.87. While I’ve had fantastic luck earlier in the year getting runs for less than 3 CPM, they’re harder to come by this time of year.

You can’t book flights directly with ITA Software (yet! Google now owns ITA, so we might see that capability in the future), so I print out the results and head over to Continental’s website set up the reservation. Here, I have to use the “Multiple Destinations” option when performing the Flight Search, which requires you to add each segment separately. Pretty easy since you have the ITA printout.

I was able to duplicate the exact flights & exact fare, so to complete the reservation I would simply enter my full traveler details, credit card information and purchase the ticket. Bam, I’m done.

While it can be a bit time consuming at first, it becomes second nature after doing it a few times. This method is definitely my favorite way to find the best mileage runs. Want to go global? Use the same methodology and select a region of the world in FareCompare other than North America. It’s that easy.

Want to learn more? One event is this weekend in NYC, although long sold out, called Frequent Traveler University. The other (where I will be in attendance) is at the Chicago Seminars 2011 at the end of October. I hope this tutorial has shed some light into what many find a mysterious (and crazy) hobby.

Happy travels!

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 on it.

[IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please note many of the sources below are no longer available due to changes in the third-party websites. Here's my updated post: How To Find Mileage Runs - 2013 Edition]

First, I start with a handy feature offered by FareCompare that lists the lowest fares from any departure city in the United States and Canada. It initially defaults the search from an airport nearest your recognized location, but you can change the city to your liking. The chart lists the lowest fares from the origin city to destination points you select, be it North America, Europe, etc. For domestic runs, I only check the North America box, and further filter them down to United Airlines, for example, under Carrier Filters in the left-hand column.

That first page of fares usually has some gems to work with, but there also might be some mileage run candidates on later pages, and today’s example is one of those. There’s a United Airlines/Continental fare that’s been out there for about a week now showing a base of $184 from Los Angeles to Kansas City (it’s on page 3 if you’re only showing United fares).

(Please note: If you’ve come across this post after my example fare is gone, the process continued here still applies, but you won’t be able to match my results. This fare seems to have stuck for the week, so I feel confident using it as my example as it should survive for a few days, at least).

Additional details used to be available by clicking the “More” link to the far right, but they’ve disabled those, as FareCompare is a free service. Also, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the “Distance” or “PPM (pennies per mile)” fields, as those are calculated as if you were going to fly nonstop.

Once I see a potentially attractive fare, I want to find out the fare rules. The free method to finding out the rules involves using ITA Software’s handy Matrix Airfare Search tool. I use the classic version, simply because that’s where I started a few years ago, but the same functionality can be used in their newer aesthetically attractive version here. If you don’t have an account for classic Matrix, you can log in as a guest to proceed to the search screen. [Edited 12/12/11: It appears the classic version of Matrix is no longer available.]

In the classic version, I will select the “Month-long search” radio button on top, and enter in the airport codes for Los Angeles (LAX) and Kansas City (MCI) in the from and to fields. I’ll leave the starting date as it appears, but change the “staying” entry to 0 or 1 night. For this example, I chose 1 night. You’ll get a calendar showing the lowest available fares each day once you press Go, and since I’m only interested in United/Continental, I uncheck the other airlines.

This reveals only one date as of this posting that has a fare showing for UA/CO for $239 on June 7^th. Not unusual since it’s the busy summer travel period, so let’s look in September instead. I’ll use my browser’s back button to return to the first search screen and change the date to begin as September 1^st and 30 days later, pressing Go once again. Ah, that’s better. Lots of dates appear showing $219 fares, but those are for Frontier and Delta, and I’m only wanting to see United/Continental, so again uncheck the other airlines.

Several dates now appear showing $239. Clicking into September 12^th, for example, I can then open up one the pre-selected itineraries with the $239 fare. I’m here at the moment just to find out the rules, so I’ll click into the first one & this example has a Continental itinerary showing. I’m not so worried about the flights at this point as I am about the fare & rules, so I’ll click on “Show booking details” near the upper left and scroll down to reveal the booking details which also displays the fare basis code (GAP14CS) and a link for the rules.

Clicking into the rules brings up a screen that many will find painful to read. Not to worry… we’re only looking for a couple of important tidbits and can quickly leave. Here I want to find out any “day/time restrictions” (permitted Monday to Saturday for this example), “advance reservations & ticketing” requirements (14 day advance purchase), and a bit further down the “blackout dates” (revealing this fare is good for travel starting on/after 6/6/2011, but the latest you can begin travel is 11/13/2011).

The rest of the rules fully detail change, cancellation, rerouting, and endless other ticketing items that can basically be summed up by the statement, “this ticket is nonrefundable & changes or cancellations will result in fees.”

So now I know the all-important date range and days of week this fare is valid, and can continue from there. Stay tuned for part 2, which I hope to post later today or first thing tomorrow. My fingers are crossed that this airfare lasts so you can duplicate the results above!