Google Flights …. slowly becoming interesting

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• Wade says:

  26 Sep26 September 08:29

  One reason I prefer ITA to Skyscanner is that you can get more complex with the routings – unless I’m missing something (entirely possible), you can’t book open jaw flights on Skyscanner.

  The big thing in favour of Skyscanner is that you can book flights directly – if ITA linked up with a travel agent to do this, that would be massive!

• James67 says:

  26 Sep26 September 09:51

  I have become very frustrated with it. I used to find google very useful in that you could simply search an airport code pair and it would return direct and connecting schedules for airlines operating between them. Furthermore, you could click on the airport code and it would return schedules for all airlines for all origins and destinations serving it with direct flights. I found this great, especially in BMI days when the sky was pretty much the limit for multisector redemptions. It was also good for searching outh fifth freedom flights offering great value. Now when I google airport code pairs I get a frustratingly random return, most commonly showing flights and prices to those airports from my local airport bookable on same day which is largely useless. I have tried slightly more sophisticated search strings to no avail. For me, google is going backwards on this, not forwards unless I am looking in wrong place.

• JQ says:

  26 Sep26 September 10:34

  This does not apply to the ex-EU stuff, but for all but the simplest itineraries, ITA returns flights that BA.com is never able to book. I’ve also tried real travel agents and they can’t find the flights I want at the same prices that ITA says is available.

  Once I thought I’d made a huge APD saving as ITA found a stopover in Europe on LX for exactly 24 hours which it said was exempt from APD. Turns out that it is not exempt, but ITA read the fare rules wrong so it was quoting a higher base fare than the airline.

  I’ve been getting ITA quotes for under £1000 to SYD via HKG but these are again never bookable and seemingly from some FT threads this is because it shows standby availability from CX.

  So for me ITA is really only useful to identify trends such as the cheapest European destination or whether some days have sold out all the cheap buckets.

• richie says:

  26 Sep26 September 10:55

  not in business, only economy

• richie says:

  26 Sep26 September 10:57

  off topic, there are plenty of ba vouchers on ebay if someone looking to save £100 off a ba flight.

  • Rob says:

    26 Sep26 September 20:58

    Probably all compensation vouchers from old First!

• Manuel Gonzalez says:

  26 Sep26 September 12:05

  The only thing it does not and ITA did is open jaws.

  Is it only me or is ITA recently working really bad?

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