ITA, a limited GDS anyone can use

We’ve already seen at what is a GDS? what a Global Distribution System is. At that entry we mentioned that only travel agents and other professionals of the tourism sector can access GDSs to search for, book and purchase tickets.

Today we want to introduce you to ITA, a GDS developed by ITA Software and used by some aggregators like the American Orbitz, as well as by some airlines. With ITA you won’t be able to book or purchase tickets but, unlike the other GDSs, you have limited access to some of the date held at the system. You can do some simple fare checks and power users will be able to carry out more detailed searches. Fares are presented in a very clear fashion and the user gets access to the fare code, its rules and taxes.

Go to the ITA homepage. Out of the four options available on the middle of the screen, click on Search Fares Using QPX.

On the next screen, check Log in as Guest.

On the initial search page, at the top of the page, you can search for flights on specific dates (day more, day less), perform a weekend search, or the cheapest fares during a 30-day period at month-long search. For each search you can choose One Way, Round Trip or Multi-Segment.

To select the departure airport and your destination you have to use the codes for the airports you want to use (in case you need it, at World Airport Codes we explained how to search for airport codes).

If you are using the system from outside the US you need to specify where the tickets will be issued, so the fares and taxes appear on your local currency (and fares not available on your region are eliminated from the search results ). You need to identify your current location at Sales City.

The results appear on a new page. At the top of the page, a summary of the different airfares.

At the bottom of the page, the results from the cheapest to the most expensive. As well as the airfare (including taxes and supplements), the bottom of the page contains information on stopovers, dates, duration of the flight, as well as warnings when you need to change airports or when a stopover is quite long.

If you click on Details you will access a new page with the description of the flights.

The option Show Booking Details on the left-hand side allows you to view all the taxes, supplements and codes of the fare you have selected. The option Rules, appearing now right next to each fare, allows you to view all the rules and restrictions of the fare you have selected.

You can search on a specific airline or on several of them; search for direct flights; search for a specific booking codes. For more advanced searches you need to be conversant with the language used by the virtual search engine – language described at the Help section on the initial search page.

ITA won’t allow you to book or buy the airfares you find, but because the search results give the full details of the fare, the route and the flights used, you only need to send the result to a travel agent with GDS access for them to locate the fare for you. ITA allows you to send your search results by email (choose E-mail this itinerary at the top of the page).

ITA is a hell of a search engine but, as you will probably be aware by now, you need some basic training to be able to use it. Try it out, if you are used to searching fares on the Internet, you are going to love it.

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Tags: GDS

Category: airfares