Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Travel tip: How to search tickets based on fare basis or class?

Checking ticket prices for air travel is very easy these days, particularly when you are paying cash. However, if you are trying to use an airline miles bonus or a travel certificate, like the sky bonus, which has some ticketing restrictions, it becomes very difficult. I received two free ticket vouchers for travel to Delta. (I won them at the company Christmas party ;) ) The tickets have a fare basis of T or lower. These are very restrictive tickets. I would find some available tickets on Delta.com but it would not let me use the vouchers for most of them. Delta service reps told me that I would have called to see availability and to book again the vouchers. After googling, I found a way to do the search myself!

Here is how you can also search plane tickets by fare basis or class. www.google.com/flights is one good alternative for searching for flights across airlines. However, Google would not allow you to search by fare basis. For that, you will need to visit the Matrix system on the ITA Software website.

  1. Visit matrix.itasoftware.com
  2. Select Airport code or name in Departing From and in Destination fields.
  3. You will see two more boxes below the airport field. In the first one, end the airline that you want to search for. For Delta, the code is DL
  4. In the next field enter "f bc=T". This will limit the search to fare basis of T or lower.
  5. Enter other parameters as needed. Once done, click on search!



Search air line tickets by fare class
ITA Software 


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