How to ticket complex itineraries found via ITA

Can others here please post good travel agents whom can assist in booking these complex ITA itineraries?

For UA, I call the 1k desk. Many many times, they can't get the price to match ITA but with a little pushing, shoving, hold times, supervisors, somehow magically they can do it. It defintely helps to know the booking codes, the exact flights of course, and if you know the fare construction, sometimes you can help them figure out how to get their system to price it correctly (ie, if it is a-b-c-d-e, but the fare is a-c+c-e, coaching the agent on how to force the system can do it). i've had a few times where they insisted they coudln't do it, so i follow FT rule #1 and after max 2 more agents, magically the fare was bookable.

Good advice on always knowing as many specifics as possible.

Isn't the rule with a good deal premium fare to NOT call the airline? I thought this is what ends up causing these good deals to be removed. I would think it may be wiser to united.com web support(aka ICC call centre), as these fares will be more likely to slip by them but noticed by regular United agents. What would be even better is for MP members to refer us to travel agents.

I support this!

Hi all,

If there are TAs reading this, based in the US, please let me know. Don't have any immediate needs, but the options to hold tickets or book more creative bookings will come up in the future.

Thanks in advance,

GenevaFlyer

I actually have an ITA itinerary that I can't seem to get to price out on any of the OTA websites. I would love to get a few recommendations for TAs that I could use to book the tickets.

Thanks!

Me too. I came here looking for advice/help to book an ITA itinerary, which is an open jaw and involves 3 airlines. Can anyone suggest a good TA or another way to get the itinerary booked? Feel free to PM me if you prefer replying that way. Thanks!

Have you tried Hipmunk? It supports the ITA routing syntax and will pass you off to a booking engine, assuming it can find the flights you are looking for. It is not perfect, but it is pretty darn good in many cases.

Orbitz also uses ITA for its back-end so theoretically anything on one should be possible on the other, but that isn't always the case. If you want me to try to force one send me a PM with the ITA flight details and I'll give it a go.

In the end I found that I could get the itineraries priced out by calling the chase ultimate rewards travel people directly (as well as Amex travel). I got them to do it segment by segment, so it was slow going, but in the end they all priced out to within $5 of the ITA price. Plus got the bonus miles for doing it via the UR travel agent, even if it was over the phone!