When using Travelocity or Expedia to shop for flights to various UK airports from O’Hare airport, I get numerous results, but almost all the results are various codeshare flights. I’d like to find someway to filter out all these codeshare flights.
Extra credit if there’s a way to include connections but filter out certain airports. While I always prefer non stop flights, I’m willing to change plans but I’d love to avoid JFK.
I don’t know of a way to filter out codeshares, but the search on http://www.momondo.com does have a connecting airport filter.
I agree philosophically that codeshares are darn near bait-and-switch. But I’m not understanding the actual problem you’re having.
You look at your search results, pick a flight of interest based in time, route, and price, then dig into the details to see what airline it really is. Less than ideal, but not a large obstacle.
Or are you using the term “codeshare” incorrectly and you’re really trying to avoid segments on affiliated express carriers versus mainline carriers?
I feel like I’m missing something too. If you want to fly a particular airline, and not any of its partners, then usually the web site for the airline you want to fly will have an option to exclude codeshare flights (usually under advanced search or something).
Here’s an example. In looking at flights from O’Hare to Manchester, American Airlines operates a flight 54 on a Boeing 767-300. That flight gets awful reviews on seat guru since they use an older aircraft that doesn’t have in seat entertainment, just the old drop down video monitors that I last saw in the 1990s. When I search on the popular travel websites, they also bring up the codeshare partners Finnair, British Airways, and Iberia, plus a few others that I’m forgetting.
You may have luck with the advanced routing language on ITA flight matrix. It is not well documented on the site, but here is a blog post describing it in some detail.
It looks like you can use the “O:XX” syntax to specify a specific operating carrier (i.e. not a codeshare). And it looks like there is some way to say “connect through one of these airports”, but I don’t see “don’t connect through this specific airport” as an option.
Sure, but the exact same flight dep/arr times and equipment should be a dead giveaway. And looking very quickly Orbitz and Kayak both have a (tiny grey print, to be fair) footnote in each listing that mentions if another airline is actually operating any of the segments.
Now, the feature to explicitly filter out one or more connection points would be nice for those of us who find it stupid to spend five hours heading straight *away *from our destination, only to then backtrack.
Maybe the OP’s trouble is trying to use one airline to get everywhere… like " I want to see when United can get to me Moscow".
No… it cannot,
For example, United is only get him from Ohare to UK, France or Deutchland.
The other american based airlines only do same… basically.
if that is ok, then use united.com to find the flights that are operated by united.
(or repeat for American or jetstar…)
For other destinations in Europe, try the obvious airlines for that country, as numerous of them fly to Ohare…
Of course thats only western Europe, no Hungary or Ukraine or Greece.
Etihad and Emiretes have enough customers to do Ohare to Dubai and Saudi Arabia …
But see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O’Hare_International_Airport#Passenger …
You can see why are only finding code shares to reasonable flight schedule to your destination …
If there were reasonable connections expedia would show them !
You need to pick the date that the non-codeshare flight plan occurs, by finding out what day that is from your chosen airlines timetable - but when you buy the ticket, they reserve the right to code share the flight instead of operating it themselves…
On Matrix the ~ symbol is a way of negating what follows.
To exclude a specific layover city you need to click on Advanced Routing (just underneath the destination city) and it will make a couple boxes pop up.
For a sample search Chicago to Glasgow but avoiding London Heathrow you would enter ~LHR in the advanced routing boxes for the outbound and/or return as desired.
The downside to Matrix is that you can only search there. You have to go elsewhere to buy the damn tickets.
Yeah, I saw the “~” thing for carriers. Didn’t realize it could be used for connections, though. (Most flights I take are fairly conventional, so I’m never doing this kind of thing myself).
I figure once you know the flight, you can go to a conventional travel site and book it (or even to the airline’s own site). Nearly all travel sites shell to ITA for the “search” part of their phase, so everything that gets found on ITA should be available anywhere.
Skyscanner clearly tells you who actually is operating the flight. I haven’t used any other site to search in the last few years. Sky scanner has always got me the best deal.
I don’t know that you would always want to filter out codeshare flights. I frequently find a substantial price differences between fares on the operating airline and on the codeshare airline. Many times the codeshare airline fare is the lower one…
I don’t think the OP has any problem if he is holding a ticket from Bumblefuck Airlines but the flight he is actually operated by InFlightMassage Airlines. He’s just worried that he might have a ticked from InFlightMassage Airlines, only to find out that it is being operated by BumbleFuck Airlines. Restricting the Operating Carrier in the search can ensure that (but of course if BumbleFuck Airlines has a great sale on the codeshare, he can still get it, in principle).
Unless you’re only flying on the big planes it’s pretty much impossible to avoid other carriers. That is, even though regional airlines (that do short connecting flights) seem like they’re owned & operated by the big names, right down to their regional jets being painted in the big airlines livery, they are not. They are smaller, independent airline companies that simply have an exclusive contract to handle the big airlines shorter routes. The pilots, crew, maintenance, everyone actually works for the smaller independent company.
This was in the news a couple years ago when a regional flight crashed due to flight crew error by them not having been fully trained on that particular aircraft.