Flight search tools

Flight Search Tools

I wanted a good reference for travel tools that can be very helpful in planning trips and finding deals.  I will follow up in the near future with tips on how to get the most out of these tools See below with my hints on best uses:

Flight Search Tools

ITA Matrix
This is a great tool under a few conditions

• The destination is known, but want the optimal price for the trip.  This can be acheived with the month-long search
• The destination is known as well as approximate dates, but have a bit of flexibility on arrival/departure (using the +/- 1 or 2 day searches)
• Specific airline is requested (Using advanced routing codes)
• You're really looking hard for cheap fares to anywhere on your airline (Multi-city search)
• Many other conditions too

This is a favorite tool of many frequent travelers because of how open to suggestion the tool is.  There are a number of parameters that can be customized to your exact specifications.  More to come on this wonderful program.

The biggest disadvantage of ITA Matrix is that you cannot book travel directly from them, but it will provide you with all the information you need to get your trip booked

Bing Travel

This is my favorite tool for when I know exactly when and where I want to go, but want to ensure I'm getting the right price (or reasonably close to it).

Bing uses complex algorithms to predict whether or not your trip will be significantly more or less in the future, and I have found it to be generally a good tool on those necessary personal trips

ExpertFlyer

ExpertFlyer is a more advanced tool that can be used to search for the following things:

• Award seats available
• Specific seats on a flight
• Upgrade inventory
• Filed (but perhaps not yet available) fares for a certain route
• Current inventory for specific flights (can help guide you towards/away from oversells)

I will provide more detail on the advantages of this tool in the future, but it's best for knowing if award seats or upgrades are available.

This is a paid service, and it costs around $100 a year for the most advanced subscription.  

There is a similar tool available called KVS, but I am not as familiar with this particular program.  I know that it offers functionality for finding award inventory, flight inventory, and other features but cannot comment on it in any depth.

As a note, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I will post additional information on each tool in the future!

Thanks for reading!

- Tim