Specifying a Round Trip
Each of the numbered areas are explained below (note that this is what the trip request form looks like with the "more options" link clicked at the bottom left of the form).
-
Origin and destination. This is where you tell our system your desired
departure and destination locations. The location typed into the first text
input field, the "from" field, doubles as both the origin of your trip as well
as the place to which you will ultimately return; similarly, the location typed
into the "to" field doubles as both your desired destination and the departure
point of the return portion of your trip.
You have several options for what can be typed into the "from" or "to" text input fields:
- City names. Simply typing the name of a city is usually sufficient (for example, "boston" or "oklahoma city").
- City and state/country names. Sometimes, typing just the city name does not uniquely identify a city (for example "portland" could mean either Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine); in these cases, we will display a set of possible locations that match what you supplied, and ask you to further specify either the state or country name as well. So, typing "portland, ME" (or "portland, maine") would tell us that we want to go to Maine, not Oregon. Similarly, typing "Rome, Italy" helps us to distinguish between Rome, Italy and Rome, Georgia.
- State names. Simply typing the name of a state will display many of the larger airports within that state from which commercial air travel is possible.
- Airport codes. If you know the three-letter airport code for a
particular airport, you may also type these into the "from" and "to" fields
(for example, the airport code "LAX" to indicate Los Angeles International
Airport).
- Specifying more than one origin or destination. If you want to
specify more than one location/airport to consider for a given origin or
destination, you can do this by typing in the names of each location/airport,
separated by semicolons (for example, "Boston, MA; Manchester, NH", or
"BOS; MHT", or any combination of city names and airport codes).
Alternatively, you can use the "any airports within" feature, discussed next.
-
Considering alternative airports near your desired origin/destination.
This feature allows you to include airport within a specifed distance from
the location specified in the "from" or "to" fields. So, for example, you
may specify "boston, MA" as the departure location, but specify that airports
within 75 miles of Boston should also be considered. This can often result
in cheaper answers.
Note: We currently compute the distances between airports as the crow flies, and not by driving distance, which of course does not take into account natural features such as lakes, mountains, etc. So, occasionally, the airports that we include, given the distance specified by the user, may in fact be farther away by car than we indicate them to be.
- Dates of departure and return. This allows you to specify your desired dates of departure and return. You may plan trips as far out as 330 days in the future (this is an airline industry limitation and has nothing to do with our search engine).
- Considering alternative travel dates around your desired travel date. If you are willing to consider alternate travel dates near your specified dates, you may select an appropriate choice here (for example, instructing our search engine to also consider the previous day before your desired departure date, etc).
- Scheduling by departure or arrival. This feature enables you to focus on returning flight options which fit your time constraints. For example, if you don't like early morning flights, you can specify that you want to depart in the afternoon, but no earlier. On the other hand, if you live in Oklahoma City and are flying to Chicago one morning for an 11:00am meeting, you might want to instruct the search engine to find all flight options which arrive in Chicago by 10:00am, which would leave you enough time to get from the airport in Chicago to your meeting.
- Time of day you want to travel. Enables you to specify a time range for when you would like to depart or arrive (depending on the "scheduling by departure or arrival" feature discussed above).
- Number and types of passengers. It's important to be as specific as possible when specifying the types of passengers, since the airlines often have cheaper fares available for seniors, youths, children, and infants.
-
Maximum number of stops to consider. This instructs our search engine
to ignore any travel options which contain more than the indicated maximum
number of stops for each portion of your trip (for example, outbound
or return). You may know, for example, that you won't consider anything but
a nonstop flight, or perhaps a trip which does not contain more than one stop
on any portion of the trip.
Be careful here, however. By choosing anything other than "no limit" for this option, you run the risk of the following:
- You may miss the cheapest travel options. The cheapest travel options may contain more stops than you instructed the search engine to consider.
- The search engine may return no options, when in fact options exist. For some trips, it may not be possible to fly commercially between two points without making a stop, or even two or three stops. So, for example, if you've instructed the search engine not to consider more than one stop, but two stops are required to get to that particular location at all, then the search engine will report that no options exist.
-
Sales city of the ticket you're buying. "Sales city" refers to the city
in which a ticket will be sold (for most trips, this will be your home city).
For trips within the United States, or for trips which originate from the
United States, it is generally fine to ignore the "Sales city" field and leave
its value of BOS (Boston, MA) as is.
When planning international travel which originates outside the United States, however (for example, a round trip from Paris to New York City, or a round trip from Rome to London), it is very important to supply us with the city in which the ticket will be sold (for most trips, this will be your home city). Providing the correct sales city affects the fares and currencies used when pricing such international trips.
A second way that the sales city can be relevant (for both domestic and international trips) is when advance purchase restrictions apply. For example, if you live in Los Angeles and it is 11:00PM there, entering "LAX" as the sales city will enable you to view fares that are set to expire at "midnight" tonight. By contrast, if you entered the sales city as BOS, those fares would not be displayed because it would already be 2:00AM in Boston.
- The comfort and convenience of the seat you sit in on the planes you travel
on, and
- Whether or not your tickets are refundable if you decide not to go on your trip, and whether or not you are charged a penalty if you decide to change your trip in some way.
- Cheapest available: Seats in the coach class cabin (if we find first class or business class options which are cheaper, we will also return those options to you). These tickets usually have a number of restrictions (nonrefundable, penalties for changing your trip in some way, blackout dates, etc).
- Business class: Seats in the business class cabin, which might actually be the same as first class seating, if there are only two cabins on the plane. If we find first class options which are cheaper, we will also return those options to you. Unless otherwise stated, these solutions are refundable and have no ticket change penalties (though they may have other types of restrictions).
- First class: Seats in the first class cabin. Unless otherwise stated, these solutions are refundable and have no ticket change penalties (though they may have other types of restrictions).
-
Whether or not to check seat availability. This feature is only available
after clicking on the "more options" link at the bottom left of the trip request
form.
Normally, the ITA search engine ensures that the travel options it presents to the user are actually available -- that is, that the airlines have told us that there are seats available on all of the flights that make up the trips that we present to you, the end user. However, there are sometimes cases when a traveler might want to know what trips are possible, even if there are no seats available (for example, travelers who might be traveling on a standby basis, etc). In these cases, one may uncheck this checkbox to search for flight options, without limiting the search to flights with available seating.
Below is a description of what each of these classes of service means on the
ITA website: