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 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 enjoy and geek out on given my previous work history in the industry.

One article last week entitled “Six myths of air travel search on the web” caught my attention and I clicked in thinking I’d once again agree with their normally accurate reporting. Some of the conclusions in that article completely took me by surprise and I have to share my disagreements here.

Myth 1 – Air search is simple and easy. They claim, “Invariably, it is difficult to find prices and routes, and there is a bewildering array of options.” What? Go to any Online Travel Agency (OTA) or airline website, plug in your dates and to & from cities, and you quickly get a selection of routes and fares. I just don’t understand why they think it’s so hard to find this information.

They continue, “Users can spend hours looking at different possible options… (often finding a) bewildering array of options.” Yes, when you search for a ticket many pairings of flights appear, but they’re generally sorted by time-of-day and price. Is it really that difficult to comprehend the search results?

Myth 2 – It doesn’t matter where a user searches (the results are the same). In my experience, yes, I’ve occasionally found different hotel prices on different sites. It’s not very often and it’s normally due to the fact that the OTAs aren’t quick enough to pull down availability when a hotel reports expired rates. On the airline front, however, OTAs generally pull real-time availability and this article claims, “The results, regardless of search site, are inconsistent and generate little trust for the user.” When you actually click through to book a flight at a quoted fare, the OTA immediately confirms real-time pricing and will display a “We’re sorry, this fare no longer exists” message when warranted. Okay, maybe I’ll give them a little leeway in the “trust” issue, but they shouldn’t claim inconsistent results when OTAs do in fact pull actual pricing.

Myth 3 – Air search works. They claim, “Frankly, it doesn’t. For something that looks like a commodity product, an airline seat is complicated.” I’ll give them credit there as ancillary fees create a lot of confusion and inconsistency when searching across all carriers, but they continue on saying, “(some websites) often powered by ITA generate a result, but this is no longer dynamic. Meanwhile, the internal price from the call centre agent is dynamic and can be different.” Nope. ITA is by far the most powerful and accurate airfare search tool I’ve ever come across. If anyone has real-time availability and fares down, it’s ITA.

The remaining myths discussed do have their merit and I’d encourage you to read the full article. Maybe I’m being too critical because of my “expert” travel experience and abilities, but I do feel this writer misinterprets the ease we have in searching and booking air tickets today. Google Flight Search needs a huge amount of improvement to become a leading tool for flight bookings, as he acknowledges. He also notes the inability to book flights after having found an ideal itinerary on Kayak. His claim, though, that finding flights “should be a heck of a lot better than it is,” seems ridiculous in my mind. Don’t you find booking flights pretty convenient today?

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.

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), not pulling in the full schedule of outbound & return pairings, lack of fare basis codes, tax breakout and more. I closed by acknowledging the fact it is a demo version and greater enhancements would likely rollout with the next release.

The day after that post, Everbread’s Deputy COO Filip Filipov sent me an email commending my thorough review and agreed with some of my criticism, but offered to show me a preview of additional features and functionality through a WebEx screen sharing conference call. I was thrilled for the direct contact by Everbread and scheduled a time the following week for the call.

After our brief introductory conversation, Filip logged in with his development credentials and took me on a tour of Haystack’s actual current functionality. He mentioned the reason for the limited capability public release version currently out there is in part to avoid revealing the highly proprietary successes they’ve developed behind the scenes. What he ended up showing me is indeed the next generation of airfare search engines and confirmed in my mind that Haystack is perhaps more than just competition for ITA Software, but also a front-runner integrating booking abilities into social media.

Believe me in that I really wanted to be taking screen captures during our call, but out of sincere respect for him taking an hour out of his day I refrained. Here are some of the highlights:

• On my initial test drive, Southwest didn’t appear in the results and I was curious to find out why. It was partly my fault, but partly not. There is a filter item I didn’t include (low cost carrier) that isn’t pre-defaulted. That was my error, but attempting it again also left Southwest off. They’re still developing worldwide connections to low cost carriers, but have had success with many European LCCs. He mentioned it can sometimes be challenging to get the appropriate API access from certain carriers to make this happen (think Ryanair, for example).
• Total breakout of taxes is shown and fully itemized by tax code.
• Full fare basis information is shown.
• Haystack validates its own fare construction against that of GDSs to ensure a consistent 100% match.
• The system can be easily modified to accommodate agency-specific programming needs.
• Expanded date range searching is a reality, currently up to +/- 15 days, which effectively gives a 30-day view and will be further developed to go +/- 30 days.
• Charter flights are included in search results, which can be a very significant advantage over published schedules in some markets.
• Private fares, bulk fares, and other non-published fares are fully supported.
• Delta Air Lines and Malaysia Airlines currently have Facebook integration that allows ticketing, but what he showed me is the absolute future of integrating social media and travel. Want to go see one of your long-distance friends on Facebook next weekend? Based on location data saved in profiles, Haystack will show the lowest fares for you to take a quick trip to see them and a link for booking the ticket.
• Haystack will return every possible combination of airlines and schedules well beyond what the demo version currently shows and that of ITA.
• Haystack has been proven to be faster than ITA in most search comparisons.

It’s an incredibly impressive technology and the company has secured many well-known clients across Europe. The demo version out there now has a sidebar ability to provide feedback, so if you’d like to offer your own suggestions, sign up for an account here. ITA Software hasn’t released new functionality, but I’d have to be certain they’re also developing enhanced capabilities that Google will eventually rollout live. It will be fun to monitor both companies and while they duke it out for market share, the products they release will do nothing but enhance we travelers’ lives.

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)

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 and Part 2) got me to thinking about demystifying these rather unfriendly looking codes, and I draw upon my experience working in Inventory Management (IM) at United Airlines, as well as my personal fascination with codes and logic in general, for this tutorial. The middle “Fare Class” column below, as shown using the FlyerTalk tool of FareCompare, is what I’m referring to:

Image courtesy FareCompare

Since I’m most familiar with United’s fare basis structure, and some of the logic & sequencing hasn’t changed in decades for domestic fares, I’ll discuss those here. Keep in mind for now that other airlines have slight variations to their coding logic. To start, it’s important to first look at that leading letter of the “fare class.” The second line of the chart above shows a fare basis of GA14CS as the fare class for the $160 base price from Los Angeles to Nashville. G, then, is the “bucket” this fare falls into, a way the airlines categorize fares based on their yield potential. (That first fare to St. Thomas is out of scope for purely “domestic” fares, but I plan to decode international and other outliers in the future.)

There are presently almost two dozen revenue buckets at United, namely F & A (first class); J, C, D & Z (business class); and Y, B, E, M, U, H, Q, V, W, T, S, K, L & G (economy/coach class). Each represents a level of revenue contribution to the carrier, and all fare bases are not created equal. Basically meaning that you can’t arbitrarily assume the fare and/or yield of a ‘S’ fare, for example, carries the same weight across all routes.

Within each bucket, there exists a range of contribution levels depending on the origin & destination (O&D) of the ticket purchased. This simply means that a ‘S’ fare might generate a better yield to the airline if flown on a ticket purchased from Seattle to Chicago to Atlanta, versus a ‘S’ fare flown from just Chicago to Atlanta. Since the airline wants to maximize the higher earning buckets and overall yield, they may restrict S-class from being sold on that Chicago to Atlanta flight, but offer it on the Seattle to Chicago to Atlanta connection combination. For an excellent summary of this “married segment” concept, take a look at this current article by Ben Schlappig, an indefatigable mileage runner well beyond his years.

Now here’s where the airline yield management systems really come into play. Those systems, such as the one I worked with during my tenure in Inventory Management (IM) at United in the 1990s, optimize literally more than one hundred combinations of buckets across every O&D market to determine how many seats to allocate within each range and bucket. This process is constantly running in the background, but analysts in IM do go in to make adjustments, as I did for my assigned markets.

How to determine the amount of seats to authorize within each input area is highly proprietary, but the basics include using historical flight data, seasonality, market demand, and competitive considerations. So, the reason the lowest fares you’re searching for may already be sold out is because the airline thinks they’ll be able to sell those seats at a higher value & will assign them accordingly.

Okay, back to fare bases. Now that you know about buckets and why there are so many of them, let’s look again at the rest of the alphanumeric characters following that leading identifier. The second letter usually determines if it’s a one-way or roundtrip fare. Without exception, an ‘A’ domestic fare on United means it’s one-way, and an ‘E’ means roundtrip (excursion). Mileage runners like myself aim for those one-way fares since we know there aren’t any minimum stay requirements and can then turn right around and continue flying without a stopover. Using that L.A. to Nashville fare basis again (GA14CS), we know it’s a one-way fare since the second letter is an ‘A.’ Great, let’s move on.

Most of the time, the numbers contained within the sequence refer to the advance purchase requirement of the fare. Using the Nashville example again, GA14CS, the 14 here represents the advance purchase (AP) required to qualify for that fare. Pretty simple. However, there may be some other fare bases out there with more numbers.

For example, there was a fare out there yesterday from Los Angeles to Newark showing a fare basis of WEG143GS. We know it’s assigned to the W bucket, but what does the 143 mean? In this case by reading the fare rules (via ITA Software or ExpertFlyer), you’ll see the fare does have a 14-day AP, but also has a minimum stay requirement, generally requiring a three-night stay, hence the ‘3‘ attached directly to the end of ‘14.’ You can easily break out what might be the advance purchase by knowing the most frequent ones are 7, 14, and 21 days. I’ve also seen 0, 3 & 10-day APs out there, too, as of late.

The next letter in the Nashville fare (GA14CS), for example, is a C. Most of the time, but not always, it represents an internal pricing strategy the revenue management (RM) department wants to assign to the fare, and generally has no correlation to an element of the fare rule. But like I say, that’s not always the case, but I’ll come back to that after I shed some light on that last letter of ‘S.’

Also without exception and unchanged for years at United, if a ‘S’ or ‘N’ follows anywhere after the advance purchase & minimum stay numbers for a domestic fare, it means the fare is non-refundable. It is commonly the last character in the string, but may not be always, as in the case of the Los Angeles to Augusta fare of LA21N6K appearing in the list above. It’s my assumption that the -6K is also a unique RM identifier not correlating to a specific fare rule element.

So, we now know the GA14CS L.A. to Nashville fare is a one-way (‘A’), non refundable (‘S’) fare in the ‘G’ bucket requiring a 14-day advance purchase (14), while ignoring the ‘C‘ for our consumer-centric purposes. What about that WEG143GS fare from L.A. to Newark I mentioned above? We know it’s a roundtrip (‘E’), 14-day advance (14) fare with a minimum stay of 3 nights (3), is nonrefundable (‘S’) and the second ‘G’ is unimportant to us, but what about that first G?

Reading the fare rules, we know (via my IM experience) that ‘G‘ denotes the fare is valid only on nonstop flights. Sometimes United will use that same letter, or perhaps a two character combo, but I guarantee there is something specific in the fare rules that letter refers to. And it will always appear before the numeric portion of the fare basis. Another similar fare basis was out there yesterday from L.A. to New York (all airports) of WAG14GS. Again, this fare is valid on nonstop flights only as denoted by the G.

As you can see, there actually is logic to the rather cryptographic looking fare basis codes, and each airline has their own practice with which to assign codes. American has a totally different combo of letters and numbers, but with a little research into the rules, you’d be able to figure out a general sequencing as I’ve done above for United.

I actually have one more nuance to reveal. Assuming the fare stays live here for the next couple of days & the fare rules don’t change, I’m referring to the L.A. to Washington DC (all airports) fare basis of WAGT14GS with a base of $296. Anyone want to take a guess and decipher the ‘T’? Hint: The answer definitely lies within the fare rules, and it’s not simply a two character way of denoting the fare is valid on nonstops only. I’d enjoy it if one of my few readers commented with their answer, but if no one does, I’ll post the answer in a comment during the next couple of days.

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 goes to press.” So, I decided this past week to do my own version focusing on domestic flights, and researched fares using ITA Software’s Airfare Search, one of the most powerful & well-respected tools out there. Here are my results from this past Thursday as compared to what was published in yesterday’s Times:

With the exception of Phoenix, San Francisco and Washington DC where I matched the fares (okay, mine were $1 higher), I was able to find lower fares in each of the other markets. The LA Times doesn’t reveal which date range it searched, but I would have to assume it being near term. I searched all of May for about a week’s stay (6 to 8 nights), and my fares are the all-in prices inclusive of taxes, as are the ones quoted in the Times.

Yes, airfares do change constantly and the LA Times does acknowledge this fact, but my point of this exercise is to show that better deals can still be found, and some pretty significant ones like Chicago & Seattle where I found fares $136 and $75 lower respectively. (Note: the Chicago sale by American only lasted 48 hours, however). To their credit, the listings in newspapers do provide a good ballpark of what you can expect to pay, but it’s always a good idea to check fares even if you think the price points listed are out of your budget. Deals ARE out there!

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.

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!