October 11th, 2012
Using ITA To Find Cheap Airfare When Your Dates Are Flexible
Google’s ITA Software is the most powerful airfare search engine out there. It won’t sell you any tickets, but you can use it to find tickets and then book the tickets from another site, like from Orbitz or directly from the airline.
There are endless commands you can use to customize your search on ITA, but if you are a beginner just take a look at the calendar option.
When I search for valid dates on deals, such as for tickets to Israel, I’ll always hop onto ITA to help sniff out the cheapest dates to fly.
For example searching from NYC to Cleveland. You can click “nearby” to add other airports like Akron/Canton.. Click on “See calendar of lowest fares” and enter any date. Then enter a length of stay for up to 7 days, for example 5-12.
Searching like that it’s easy to find dates for as low as $90 round-trip including tax:
I limited a search to nonstop flights only from Cleveland to Los Angeles and found results for just $211 with tax, an incredible price:
There are lots of other codes you can use as well. To use them click on “Advanced routing codes” on the search page.
Say you only want to fly on Delta flights, just enter the following the field for advanced codes: DL+
Only want to fly on OneWorld airlines: / alliance oneworld
Don’t like connections shorter than an hour but don’t like to stay in the airport longer than 2.5 hours: / minconnect 60; maxconnect 150
Want to connect in Paris on the way to Israel: CDG
More codes can be found on this DDF thread.
For example here I use / alliance star-alliance ;-redeye to look for only Star Alliance operated flights and to avoid searching for any redeye flights. the ; allows you to add another code and the - sign negates all redeyes.
Here then are prices for flights from NYC to Los Angeles and all surrounding airports on Star Alliance airlines that are not overnight flights:
And by clicking on a date the exact flights are shown:
1
October 11th, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Awesome. Sure beats Kayak!
2
October 11th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Kayak does all of this, if you know how to input the request (or how to modify the URL). But this may be more noob friendly
3
October 11th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
@anon:
Let me know how to search Kayak for dirt cheap hidden-city tickets or how to limit Kayak searches to search an entire month for only United flights in fare classes that will earn full miles when credited to Aegean for easy Star Alliance gold status…
4
October 11th, 2012 at 3:14 pm
Tonight again, Alitalia %15 off promo coming…
5
October 11th, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Last I checked, ITA wasn’t working for flights to Israel. Thanks for the heads up, Dan!
6
October 11th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
@Dan: I was reacting to Matt’s response based on your post. Kayak does everything you described in your post, though I don’t doubt there are more advanced features with ITA.
7
October 11th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
@Dan: Where is the best to transfer Amex NOW?
I need to close a card
8
October 11th, 2012 at 4:13 pm
how about where is the best to transfer chase sapphire preferred points, i need to close card as well.
9
October 11th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Just wanted to know- if I am holding a United ticket from TLV-EWR, already ticketed, and found it cheaper thru this search engine, will UA refund the difference?($1223.00- $1068.00)Thanks!
10
October 11th, 2012 at 6:26 pm
@DG:
They will not if you bought the ticket more than 24 hours ago. You can always cancel and rebook but then you’ll be paying a change fee.
11
October 11th, 2012 at 6:34 pm
@Dan: @Dan: Right. Thanks for all those future savings on my TLV outward bound flights. (more money to spend in the Duty Free??)
12
October 11th, 2012 at 8:10 pm
how come I am finding Expedia etc cheaper than any price on ITA and its calendar fare calculator?
13
October 11th, 2012 at 9:00 pm
What’s the best way to book a flight that I see on ITA but can find on any other website?
Thansk
14
October 13th, 2012 at 9:13 pm
Dan, United seems to have something similar (exclusivly for united flights obviously)
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/apps/booking/flight/fareCalendar.aspx
15
October 14th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Can I use this to search for an award ticket?
16
October 15th, 2012 at 12:31 am
this was one of the best kept secrets why did you have to share it with everyone?
17
October 15th, 2012 at 5:38 am
I am new at this, until now I’ve used Kayak, Orbitz, etc. How do I actually buy a ticket using the codes they provide for the flights I want? To clarify the question, if I want to use Kayak, etc., where do I plug in these codes so I can take advantage of these fares? I’d appreciate any help with this. I often book online for my family and neighbors here in Yerushalayim.
18
October 21st, 2012 at 8:48 am
is this deal still going on?
19
October 23rd, 2012 at 3:47 pm
How do I search a 3 month span?
20
October 23rd, 2012 at 11:29 pm
trying to book ticket to israel on italia usa – they say they do not have any flights from jfk to israel – even with flex dates…am i missing something?
21
October 28th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
@booking: am trying to book alitalia with their 25% off special and getting nowhere. any suggestions?
22
December 5th, 2012 at 2:25 am
Dan,
Here is an example of something not workin on the ITA:
I checked the ITA for an itinerary I already booked (found on Kayak), but it seems the ITA doesn’t show this option.
My itinerary is:
between March 16th to March 27th (2013) – TLV -> JFK (return trip).
Kayak found for me the option of flying with Transero airlines (Russian carrier), through Moscow, for a great price of 800$ (and this trip is during passover when prices soars!), and the ITA doesn’t show at all Transero as an option…
It seems that the ITA misses some options and doesn’t show 100% results… Unless I missed something in operating the ITA, but I don’t think I did…
Can you tell me if this is a real false\bug\error of ITA?
23
December 6th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
When I search Expedia or Kayak I get cheaper prices from Tel Aviv to Toronto. Example: On Feb 12 return Feb 17 there are tickets for $775. Doesn’t exist on Itasoftware.