ITA Matrix - Can't find anywhere to book the flights.

[lobo76]

Hey guys,

Got a bit of a pickle. I've found a couple of fares on ITA that I need to book but can't seem to book the fares anywhere!
One is for 2 pas NYC-PER & BNE-NYC and the other is IST-PER & BNE-IST.

ITA is telling me Emirates have the flights I need at a reasonable price. I have confirmed the buckets are available at a Flight Center, but Emirates won't let the Travel Agent book an Ex AU departure and when I try and book on the Emirates site it keeps swapping one of the legs for Business at the last step and bumping the price x3 :/

Any ideas how I can book these fares?

 

[futaris]

ITA is wrong most of the time, when it comes to Emirates. The buckets aren't available. Recheck on FlightStats - Global Flight Tracker, Status Tracking and Airport Information or emirates.com.

 

[lobo76]

ITA is wrong most of the time, when it comes to Emirates. The buckets aren't available. Recheck on FlightStats - Global Flight Tracker, Status Tracking and Airport Information or emirates.com.

Flightstats says there's plenty of availability for the fare buckets NYC-DXB-PER E(7) and BNE-DXB-NYC R(9) :/

 

[Moopere]

I have confirmed the buckets are available at a Flight Center, but Emirates won't let the Travel Agent book an Ex AU departure

I don't understand that bit at all? flightcentre is not allowed to book overseas departure with EK via Australian TA???? I never use TA's so perhaps this is normal, seems counter intuitive though.

Whats the fare basis of the Matrix flights you have found?

 

[lobo76]

I don't understand that bit at all? flightcentre is not allowed to book overseas departure with EK via Australian TA???? I never use TA's so perhaps this is normal, seems counter intuitive though.

Whats the fare basis of the Matrix flights you have found?

Leaving JFK it's a Economy (E) (both flights) and returning BNE-DXB-JFK it's Economy (R) both flights... Flight Center sait it was 'some kind of currency thing where EK had tightened up the rules in the last year or so'...

 

[Moopere]

I must admit, I find it difficult to use the fare basis code from EF or Matrix to actually book a ticket. Its more useful to me as a guide that I'm on the right track as I nail down the fares I'm after. Probably, if you end up using say Zuji, or expedia or whomever, the flight numbers are going to be of more value.

Matrix will tell you the flight numbers of interest against the fare basis. I'd note both.

Off to Expertflyer next to verify availability of buckets.

If the airlines own website is giving me trouble I'll now go to one of the aggregators, zuji, expedia, whathaveyou, and not necessarily the Australian based web page (as pricing can sometimes vary), track down the flight numbers I'm wanting and off we go. Its usually a pretty quick process as by now you know the airline you want and the rough price you are expecting, so you can narrow down and find the right flight numbers on the aggregator sites without a lof of effort.

I had a problem recently which I posted here at AFF whereby I completely failed, using an airlines own website, to book a KUL-BKK ticket (sales city of PER), I even rang them, it was just impossible, so I went to Zuji and had success, on the flight I wanted, at the price I wanted within about 10-15 minutes.

The aggregators don't seem to care where you live, they just want to sell stuff. The airlines, most of them, do really seem to care about this and are a lot more focused on revenue raising via imposed market segmentation.

 

[richie9x]

You might have come across one of those point of sale quirks. Where the airline will make seats available for in a fare class for one market, but not make them available in another market. Try a foreign travel site like expedia to see if you can get the cheaper fare through them.