Sites like Expedia, Yahoo Travel and Travelocity all have one thing in common: they suck. Actually, they probably all use SABRE, too.
It’s very hard to use these sites to compare trips with multiple airports; refining your results is hard, too. Maybe the UI is bad on purpose — they want you to give up and just buy the more expensive flight.
And why not? They’re travel agents; they make money on ticket sales. There’s hardly an incentive to be objective.
Three new players are filling the void. The first is SideStep, which my friend Samantha told me about. With SideStep, you can easily exclude flights out of your price range, favourite airlines or agreeable departure times. The UI is really slick, and it’s very responsive.
Someone at BarCamp Austin mentioned Kayak, which does much the same thing.
What looks even more interesting is FlySpy, which TechCrunch highlighted in February. FlySpy takes this to a whole new level, letting you track pricing trends and figuring out just when is the right time to buy. You can play with the alpha now, and see what it’s like to fly out of Minneapolis.
Lastly, if you ever want to find out which airlines and flight numbers will take you from A to B, check out SkyGuide.
(keywords: airline airfare flight price cheap)
I tried comparing SideStep VS Kayak and discovered that while Kayak let’s me do multi-city trips and has a slightly nicer UI, SideStep found me cheaper flights.