Choosing Flight-by-Flight: A Tutorial

Suppose we want to plan a round trip from Boston, MA to Oklahoma City, OK. We specify our query using the trip request form, submit the query, and get the results back. We then click on the "Choose flights (text)" radio button on the upper left corner of the page. At this point, the page looks like this:

Looking at the matrix display, we can immediately see quite a bit about the possibilities for the first segment of our trip from Boston to Oklahoma City:

• The airlines offering service from Boston to Oklahoma City are American, Delta, Northwest, United, Continental, and US Airways (as well as flights from Boston to Oklahoma City which involve more than one airline).
• American and Delta are offering the lowest priced whole trips, available for as low as $373 round trip
• None of the carriers listed above offer nonstop service, and in fact, all of the trips found by our search engine involve one stop (we know this because there is only one row in the matrix labeled "One stop").

Since the cheapest possible prices on American and Delta are the same, and we nearly have enough frequent flyer miles on Delta Air Lines for a free ticket, we decide to focus in for the moment on the Delta flights. To do this, we click on the "Delta Air Lines" link in the matrix. The page now looks like this:

Now, only flights on Delta Air Lines are listed below the matrix, which makes it easier to see what our options are on that airline. Since the flights are sorted by price by default, we immediately see that there are in fact only three flights on Delta which we can take which would allow us to construct an entire trip for $373; taking any other flight means that we would pay at least $400. By looking at the information in the three $373 Delta flight rows, we decide to choose the 11:25am flight, because it doesn't leave too early in the morning, and it is only takes 30 minutes longer than the 7:35am flight. To select the flight, we click on the "Select" link in the 11:25am flight row. The page now looks like this:

Note that three major things have changed:

1. The flight we just chose has now been filled in at the top of the page for us, next to the "Boston to Oklahoma City:" text
2. We are now being prompted to choose a flight for the Oklahoma City to Boston return trip, and flights for that portion of the trip are now displayed below the matrix
3. The matrix has changed, now reflecting the airline and price possibilities given that we've chosen the 11:25am Delta flight. Note, for example, that US Airways is no longer in the matrix, because the search engine did not find any particularly cheap or compelling flight combinations involving the 11:25am Delta outbound flight and a US Airways return flight. Also, we see that if we want to take an American flight back to Boston, given that we've chosen the Delta 11:25am flight, it will cost us at least $780.

Looking down the list of the cheaper $373 flights, we decide to take the 11:30am flight back to Boston; it's both as cost-effective as possible, and the duration of the flight is also faster than any other flight at that price. So, we choose that flight by clicking on the "Select" link on the left in that flight's row. The page then looks like this:

At this point, we may be nearly done. If we're happy with the details of our constructed trip, we can click on the 'Show booking details' link on the left-hand side to obtain the needed details in order to book the trip by calling the airline (note: unfortunately, ITA cannot offer the ability to book your ticket online, because it would be a conflict of interest with our customers who have licensed our search engine and use it to sell tickets online). If we are not happy with the details of the trip, and we want to select other flights, we can click on the "Clear selections" link in the upper right of the page and start the process over.