Best Tool for Paid Flights From Multiple Origins

[relaxalot]

I've had a fair bit of success with using my various points to fly at the pointy end between Sydney and Europe for annual holidays and then find a cheap(ish) business class flight home. For example, last year I used points to fly business to London on Singapore Airlines (plus AUD 452 taxes etc.) and bought a one way business ticket on Thai home for AUD 1862. In previous years, I have done similar but bought a return flight departing Europe to Sydney with a modest fee to change the return date.

Often I will use the Matrix ITA tool to search a bunch of departure cities in Europe across a range of dates. The availability of award seats (and my points) determines my landing place in Europe and the availability of a cheap ticket home determines my departure city from Europe and I then construct my itinerary between. All works because there is so much to see that I am interested in and because Europe is pretty easy to get round.

Two questions. Firstly is there a better (or just alternative) tool to Matrix ITA that allows me to search across a time range for multiple departure cities? Secondly, is there anything else I should be thinking about in terms of top level strategies?

 

[cgichard]

I've read that Momondo allows you to select a region or a whole country as your destination, but I haven't used that tool myself. I think you can also use it to look at fares across several dates, and compare the cheapest with the fastest.

 

[Mattg]

I almost always use ITA Matrix for these kinds of searches - I personally haven't found a better tool yet.

I assume you're aware that you can simultaneously search for flights from multiple departure points using ITA Matrix? i.e. enter the origin as "LHR, CDG, TXL, BCN, OSL, CPH, ARN, PRG, FRA"... etc.

Regarding your second question, have you looked at the cost of premium airfares from Cairo to Australia?

 

[docjames]

I tend to use ITA Matrix too.

THis one also useful looking at fare buckets

Flight Availability - BCD Travel

 

[browski]

Two questions. Firstly is there a better (or just alternative) tool to Matrix ITA that allows me to search across a time range for multiple departure cities? Secondly, is there anything else I should be thinking about in terms of top level strategies?

It depends on how much time you have for research.

You might think that ITA Matrix and Google Flights run off the same database, but they do not.
For example ITA Matrix is great for a more multiple location search but it still does not show you all your flight options. For example Norwegian Air Shuttle, Air Asia and Scoot do not appear on ITA Matrix, but they do on Google Flights.

Now you may not care about these airlines because they are LCC, but it is still useful to be aware of the options - especially the LGW-SIN and OSL/ARN-BKK flights on Norwegian or ATH-SIN on Scoot in their Premium seats.

So I would search ITA Matrix for multi-city HCCs (i just invented this) and Google Flights to see pricing options from particular city pairs. For all options from city pairs, including LCCs and Code shares (but not pricing), there is of course this genius piece of software: OAG Flight Tools - Which Airlines fly my route

 

[jetpack]

I use Google Flights. You can only put 5 cities at a time but it is much faster than ITA Matrix.

 

[relaxalot]

I almost always use ITA Matrix for these kinds of searches - I personally haven't found a better tool yet.

I assume you're aware that you can simultaneously search for flights from multiple departure points using ITA Matrix? i.e. enter the origin as "LHR, CDG, TXL, BCN, OSL, CPH, ARN, PRG, FRA"... etc.

Regarding your second question, have you looked at the cost of premium airfares from Cairo to Australia?

Yes, I have a couple of search strings I use and have stored so I just cut and paste in each time rather than typing. One for main departure ports and one for most of the secondary ports. I think I have it covered but always worry (!) there might be one other port I've missed and that has that great fare on that day.....basically just checking that nobody out there has found a better way......

In regards to Cairo, I'll take a look......

 

[relaxalot]

It depends on how much time you have for research.

You might think that ITA Matrix and Google Flights run off the same database, but they do not.
For example ITA Matrix is great for a more multiple location search but it still does not show you all your flight options. For example Norwegian Air Shuttle, Air Asia and Scoot do not appear on ITA Matrix, but they do on Google Flights.

Now you may not care about these airlines because they are LCC, but it is still useful to be aware of the options - especially the LGW-SIN and OSL/ARN-BKK flights on Norwegian or ATH-SIN on Scoot in their Premium seats.

So I would search ITA Matrix for multi-city HCCs (i just invented this) and Google Flights to see pricing options from particular city pairs. For all options from city pairs, including LCCs and Code shares (but not pricing), there is of course this genius piece of software: OAG Flight Tools - Which Airlines fly my route

Thanks for the suggestion to combine Google Flights with my searches on ITA Matrix. I can see (and Jetpack has also suggested) that you can enter 5 originating cities at a time and this will bring up the LCCs too. I certainly wouldn't dismiss Scoot Biz or the like from time to time.

 

[browski]

In regards to Cairo, I'll take a look......

....and often departing Luxor is even better priced; especially on QR.

 

[ellen10]

Bookmarking for some future reading. Thanks for the tips.

 

[CaptJCool]

I use Google Flights. You can only put 5 cities at a time but it is much faster than ITA Matrix.

I did find tonight that on the classic version of google flights I could research 5 departure cities to multiple destination cities as long as I used the term "Europe" or "United States" or "Australia" etc in the destination...

So I tried it in the current version and was able to use 7 departure cities to multiple destinations

From there you can select one destination city within the region or country to narrow the focus

 

[tgh]

A * would be useful in ita.
I was searching for flights from St.Johns in Newfoundland to anywhere in Europe..by process of elimination the best options were found.. (Air Canada direct to LHR)...but it was a bit messy.
Sometimes I use an airline map to see who flies where, but for smaller , less common airport destinations, it would be nice to be able to ask who flies in and out of here and to where?

 

[Mattg]

A * would be useful in ita.
I was searching for flights from St.Johns in Newfoundland to anywhere in Europe..by process of elimination the best options were found.. (Air Canada direct to LHR)...but it was a bit messy.
Sometimes I use an airline map to see who flies where, but for smaller , less common airport destinations, it would be nice to be able to ask who flies in and out of here and to where?

Wikipedia (surprisingly) can be good for that.

St. John's International Airport - Wikipedia

 

[astrosly]

Sometimes I use an airline map to see who flies where, but for smaller , less common airport destinations, it would be nice to be able to ask who flies in and out of here and to where?

I use info.flightmapper.net to find all flights from any airport, i.e. http://info.flightmapper.net/airport/xx_ where xx_ is your airport IATA code. It groups all direct flights by country and then airport, providing either a link or you can expand to see all flights and codeshares.