Book Cheap Fares You Find on ITA Matrix with Hipmunk

Google's ITA Matrix is the power user's tool of choice to find flights, including cheap first-class fares and multi-city connections, but you can't book directly on the site. You can, however, use ITA Matrix codes on Hipmunk, another one of our favorite travel booking sites.

Why would you want to do this instead of just going to Hipmunk or another travel site directly? Boarding Area explains that ITA Matrix often presents flight options you can't find anywhere else and sometimes the price you see on ITA Matrix will not show up on travel booking sites' or the airline's own website.

By entering specific code from ITA into the Hipmunk search box, however, you'll get the promised, lower price.

This seems to work mainly for multi-leg trips:

Unfortunately, trying other permutations on ITA language often returns an error message on Hipmunk. But it's pretty good at airlines and connection cities, which is usually enough to get what you need.

If Hipmunk isn't finding the flights you want, you can play with the Multi-city option and break up the flight legs into separate entries (yet still enter them using ITA codes). That often does the trick, though even then every once in a while you won't be able to force the right flights. In that case you're out of luck if you can't get the itinerary anywhere else.

But more often than not, Hipmunk will find it for you… with a little help from ITA.

Worth a try if it can save you money on your travels.

Bet You Didn't Know: Using Hipmunk to Book ITA Matrix Flights | Boarding Area

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