21

In my case the airline will be Aeromexico, and it would be from Shanghai, China to Tijuana, Mexico, and the flight numbers are AM98 and AM99.

But the dates could be pretty much anywhere from August 2016 up to six or even more months later than that.

In my case I'd be spending up to a year mostly in China and nearby Asian countries and taking a side trip to Mexico for a couple of months at some time within that, based on when prices are as low as I can find.

But I'm looking for a general technique that anybody could use to find flights.

I've tried Adioso, Momondo, and SkyScanner but they're all very inflexible and incapable for this kind of thing, unless I'm missing something.

4
  • Usually, if you buy your ticket 50 days before the departure then you will buy the cheapest ticket. Since you are so flexible, I recommend you just to choose any date and buy the ticket about 50 days before the departure!!
    – yaya
    Jul 18, 2016 at 6:23
  • On the search engines the prices seemed to vary between about $550 USD to around $1500 or so when I was able get random dates with prices to display. Jul 18, 2016 at 6:57
  • 3
    @yaya: you seem to be saying that the price will be the same regardless of date, but day-of-week and seasonality do seem to affect prices even that far ahead. Jul 18, 2016 at 10:21
  • 3
    Perhaps I'm being really naive here, so I'm not posting this as an answer, but Aeromexico has free-to-call numbers from several countries to their telephone sales line, and also has email support for sales. Even if they get the answer wrong, it would seem foolish not to ask them what's the best they can do for this relatively unusual request, and use that as a baseline when searching elsewhere. Jul 18, 2016 at 10:28

4 Answers 4

17

Matrix allows you to do a month long search:

enter image description here

enter image description here

You'll have to search a month forward each time.

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  • Matrix does find flights, but not cheap flights. Here's a screengrab from the Aeromexico site where I find flights with each leg just over $500 USD. On Matrix the price always seems to be $1645 USD - screengrab of that. Jul 18, 2016 at 7:09
  • @hippietrail That is the reverse direction!
    – Berwyn
    Jul 18, 2016 at 7:12
  • It never seems to get down to about $500 USD no matter which direction or date I put in. $719 is the lowest I've found for either leg on Matrix so far. Jul 18, 2016 at 7:15
  • 1
    @hippietrail The airline doesn't have to publish all fares to the GDS, so it's possible they will only display on their own site or via other sites that scrape it. Am struggling with the aeromexico site
    – Berwyn
    Jul 18, 2016 at 7:21
  • 1
    @hippietrail 31 aug to 2nd oct on matrix gives US$1033 total also
    – Berwyn
    Jul 18, 2016 at 7:24
8

You can use google flight for this

https://www.google.de/flights/#search;f=SHA,PVG;t=TIJ;d=2016-08-01;r=2016-09-25

Click on the Start Date and then click on the Price Graph.

You could give a start date (1st Aug) and a duration (55 days). Then the price graph would give all possible sliding windows of length 55 days starting from 1st Aug. enter image description here

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  • 2
    Note that this price graph mostly includes different flights than the wanted one. In this specific case you could select "nonstop flights only" as it's the only nonstop flight on that route.
    – neo
    Jul 18, 2016 at 14:48
6

Try with Kiwi. I have written about Kiwi in my answers here and here.

You can not specify the flight numbers but you can specify the origin and destination as well as direct flights only which for your case of AM99 and AM98 boils down to the flight numbers you were looking for.

Datewise, you can specify a date range of several month for both departure and return or a duration of stay of 2-31 days. The cheapest I get for departing August - September 2016 and staying 2- 31 nights is EUR 1079.

enter image description here

Funnily the graphics of Kiwi make it look like you were not flying over the Pacific ocean but the other way round :)

0

Like the above person said, only be totally inflexible on the times you're willing to fly out and land. Specifying the airport (not choosing "all airports") and specifying the airline couldn't hurt, either.

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  • I'd imagine if the person is that flexible about the date, he wouldn't mind taking a different airline, if it was cheaper.
    – Lenne
    Jul 19, 2016 at 5:42
  • 2
    Hi and welcome to Travel SE. Your answer is more of a comment and not helpful for some reasons: 1) which answer does it refer to? it is not clear (ordering can change with votes and new answers coming in). 2) what tool are you referring to? this could be a great answer but you need to expand it, provide a screenshot maybe, some links, make it look like the other answers and you will have my +1 :)
    – mts
    Jul 19, 2016 at 7:09

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