Booking tickets during Covid-19 with ITA

Years ago I read a wonderful blog post showing some advanced use-cases for ITA

I have a following problem: I need a ticket from Russia to US that doesn't go through any countries with locked borders due to Covid-19.

So, Step 1: List of rules:

Sorry I didn't clean up formatting, that's not the point of the post.

From CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/from-other-countries.html

With specific exceptions, foreign nationals who have been in any of the following countries during the past 14 days may not enter the United States. For a full list of exceptions, please refer to the relevant proclamations in the links below.

Chinaexternal icon
Iranexternal icon
European Schengen areaexternal icon (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City)
United Kingdomexternal icon (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)
Republic of Irelandexternal icon
Brazilexternal icon

And another one from Trip.com < Full URL>

United StatesPartially restricted
Foreign nationals who have visited any of the following countries / regions within 14 days of their arrival in the United States are prohibited from entering: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mainland China, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Vatican City, United Kingdom.

All persons returning to the United States from abroad should self-isolate and monitor their health status for 14 days. From March 20, 2020, the United States government has suspended the issuing of new visas. From March 21, 2020, all US land border checkpoints with Canada and Mexico are closed to non-essential traffic. From June 24, 2020, additional restrictions are in place for persons holding special category visas including H-1B, H-2B, J-1, and L-1 visas. Travelers should verify their status with the US Department of Homeland Security prior to making travel arrangements.

Next, I had to find that wonderful blog post:

Luckily I found it very quickly. Turns out, not many people write about ITA

>>> https://creativeroam.com/blog/advanced-flight-searching/ <<<

READ THIS:> The big reason I needed this post, was for the attachments. It has a very convenient list of ALL airport codes by continent and by region. These codes are needed for filtering in ITA. Otherwise, I would have to fetch all of the airport codes for each of the countries in the list.

Btw, text extraction processing in One Note didn't extract even 20%. If you've read this far into the blog post, I would appreciate a suggestion for a good took to extract text from images.

This wonderful document is here: < Link to google excel >

Next, feed this info into ITA:

ITA is here: https://matrix.itasoftware.com/

You need to enable Advanced Controls and add syntax to Routing codes to disable connections. The Question mark sign has documentation with examples on the knobs you can turn.

So, outbound extension code for me, is to Disable NY (JFK) and Chicago (ORD) as connections on US side, because there are some connecting flights via SFO. I learned it by poking around flight searches. Also, I had to Disable all of Europe.

Routing code for that is a space delimited list of airports. Just enable header filters in google sheets, and then paste codes straight from the column. Comma delimited list was the old format, and isn't needed (and doesn't work) any more. When it's ready, paste it into the outbound extension code box:

-cities JFK ORD SJJ SOF BUD SKP BUH OTP EVN BAK MSQ OMO BOJ GOZ ROU SLS TGV VAR VID DBV LSZ OSI PUY RJK SPU ZAD ZAG QUF TLL TBS RIX VNO OHD CND AER KHV HTA IKT KZN MRV MOW DME SVO VKO MMK OVB LED UUD VLU ARH YKS BTS LJU MBX KBP IEV LWO NLV ODS SIP BEG INI QND TGD PRN TIV TIA INN SZG VIE CPH HEL BER SXF TXL DRS HAM ATH HEW CFU KGS JMK MJT RHO SKG IBZ ORK DUB GWY KIR NOC SNN CAG MLA BGO OSL TRF KRK WAW LIS PDL PMI SVQ VLC GOT STO ARN BMA BHD BFS PIK GLA INV ALV GRZ KLU LNZ ANR BRU LGG AKT LCA QLI NIC PFO PRG AAR AAL BLL EBJ FAE KRP ODE RNN SKS SGD TED ENF IVL JOE JYV KAJ KHJ KEM KTT KOK KUO KAO LPP MHQ MIK OUL POR RVN SVL SJY SOT TMP TKU VAA VRK AJA LBI NCY AUR BIA BIQ BOD BES CLY CMF CFE DNR FSC FRJ GNB LRH LAI LIL LIG LRT LDE LYS MRS MZM MPL MLH ENC NTE NCE FNI PAR CDG LBG ORY PUF PGF UIP RNS RNE RDZ SBK EBU SXB TLS AGB BYU BRE CGN DTM DUS ERF FRA HNN FDH HAJ HOQ FKB KEL CGN LEJ MUC FMO MSR NUE PAD SCN STR GWT WIE GIB GPA CHQ JKH HER KLX AOK KVA PVK SKG SMI JSI JTR ZTH CXI EGS REK KEF SXL AHO AOI BRI BGY BLQ VBS BDS CTA FLR GOA SUF LMP MIL LIN MXP BGY NAP OLB PMO PNL PEG PSR PSA REG RMI ROM CIA FCO TPS TSF TRS TRN VCE VBS VRN LUX AMS HAG EIN LEY MST RTM AES ALF BDU BOO BNN EVE FRO HFT HAU KKN KRS KSU LKL SOG SVG TOS TRD GDN POZ SZZ FAO FNC HOR OPO PXO SMA TER ALC LEI ACE BJZ BCN BIO ODB FUE GRO GRX XRY LCG LPA MAD MAH AGP MJV OVD REU EAS SPC SDR SCQ TCI TFS TFN VLL VDE VGO VIT ZAZ LYR JHE JKG KLR KSD KRN KID LDK LLA MMA MMX NRK ORB RNB SDL VXO VST VBY ACH BSL BRN ZDJ GVA LUG ZRH EAP TFN TFS SZD ABZ BHX BRS CBG CWL EMA LDY EDI GCI HUY IOM JER LBA LPL LON LCY LGW LHR LTN STN MAN NCL KOI SOU SEN STN SYY LSI MME WIC

From here, you can now filter down your results using the dropdowns in UI, or going back and adding additional controls on search screen.