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Reader David S. writes:

Have you heard of the site airfarewatchdog.com? They list some very good fares. However I sometimes have a difficult time finding the fares that they list. What do you think about the site?

Indeed, I’m certainly familiar with George Hobica’s Airfarewatchdog. He and his team scour the internet for low fares and post regular updates, both listing the best fares in America, and the best fares for individual departure cities. It’s a great overview. His site has pointed to some good stuff, and I’ve linked to him before — like the $750 round trip business class fare on Maxjet back in March. He offers e-mail subscriptions, too, though the mailings are sometimes erratic.

Meaning no disrespect against Airfarewatchdog, but I find FareCompare’s alerts to be faster and more consistent. E-mails go out as soon as lowered fares hit the databases. If that’s too much information, you can get a good snapshot of fares from your city with the site’s Destination Deal Maps (effectively the same as Travelocity’s recently downgraded Dream Maps — except it functions both domestically and internationally.)

To see the Deal Maps, go to FareCompare.com and enter your departure city in the middle of the page.

To join the fare alert list, go to FareCompare.com, click on the Deal Maps or run a search for city pair, and then click on the “FareCompare AirFare Email Early Warning System” box in the upper left corner.

The downside of FareCompare is that it doesn’t cover Southwest or JetBlue, since those airlines don’t participate in the big global fare networks (GDS’s). So a human touch is necessary to test those fares.

It’s a case of machine vs. man. FareCompare’s automated system offers faster response than the more human search of Airfarewatchdog. But the ‘dog includes airlines that the machines can’t.

tags: travel | Airfarewatchdog | FareCompare

Travelocity has disabled its flexible search function for international destinations. According to SmarterTravel.com, the online agency pulled the option because the U.S. Department of Transportation argued that the existing search did not offer sufficient price transparency. The culprit: fuel surcharges.

Indeed, this was my own pet peeve with Travelocity’s flexible search. You start with a great fare to Paris and when you finish clicking, your fare went up $300 — $100 in taxes (expected) and $200 in fuel surcharges (suprise!). Often, Travelocity would come back with a message like “We found a lower fare for you than the one you selected.”

(The change also affects the international component of Travelocity’s Dream Maps. Interestingly, you can still see fares to international locations posted on the maps, but you can’t go the next step to find airlines or book them.)

I part company with SmarterTravel’s blame game: I actually think the DOT was right in pressuring Travelocity to offer a more transparent fare search. The existing product was misleading. It’s Travelocity’s fault for not configuring their fare search product in a way that includes surcharges. Fuel charges are a specific, identifiable line item in building a fare. Why can’t it be included in a search?

But for those who loved that flexible international search, now gone, what are the alternatives? Here are my picks, ranked in terms of similarity to Travelocity’s defunct search.

1) Zuji
Outsource! Zuji is Travelocity’s Singapore-based subsidiary, and it looks and feels much like the American site. And guess what: the international flexible date search is still there. The site is in English, and results are in US dollars. (If you’re based in the US, choose “other” for a country on the first page.) Some airlines are missing (but they were missing from the flex search on the US site in the last few months, too). Suggestion: Run your search on Zuji, then actually book the specific flights you find on Travelocity or elsewhere. Booking on Zuji may work, but you’ll incur higher booking fees plus extra charges for using a credit card overseas.

(Update July 29: A reader e-mail asks about Zuji and Dream Maps (referenced above). I can’t find a Dream Maps equivalent on Zuji. However, since Dream Maps will still show base fares (for now), but won’t let you click through to see airlines or schedules, here’s my advice: Use Dream Maps to find a good base fare in your desired region. If you see one, do a flexible date search on Zuji for that particular destination.)

2) FareCompare
On the plus side, FareCompare’s search acts much like Travelocity, except it’s organized by fare, not by airline. The downsides: It doesn’t show total prices (will it be targeted by the DOT next?). It also doesn’t let you book directly, but refers you to the big online agencies, where the price is often very different from what FareCompare quoted. Finally, it’s missing a number of smaller (but still mainline) international destinations.

3) ITA
The engine behind Orbitz, Continental, and others, allows you to search for fares to just about anywhere in the world, and it shows final prices including all taxes. It also finds codeshares and mixed-airline itineraries that are often good values. Its “month-long search” isn’t as broad a search as Travelocity’s, especially because you need to specify the length of your stay within narrow ranges, but it’s worth checking. But … it won’t let you book anything. You’ll need to go to an airline website, online agency, or traditional travel agent to buy the ticket.

4) Kayak
Kayak allows flexible search to international destinations, but only within 3 days of your specific dates. Some reliability problems here, too, for international fares that are quoted well below what the target sites actually charge. It’s not the free-for-all price-first dates-later approach of Travelocity (or Zuji) but it’s an option to consider.

Two incremental improvements to the world of travel searches. Two of my favorite sites have added features:

FareCompare.com has gone live with their historical price data on fares between cities. Want to see how current fares stack up? Do a search for city pairs, and you’ll see the price trends for the last 12 months. If the slope is heading up, don’t be surprised, given the price of oil. But if a current fare deviates below the average (black) line, it’s probably a good fare, and you may want to buy. See here for a tutorial.

Fare metasearch/aggregator Kayak.com added flexible date searching to their arsenal of tools. Not a shocker for users of Travelocity, Orbitz, etc., but this is the first use of flexible searching on a site that searches multiple travel sellers’ inventories. Another reason Kayak is my favorite among the aggregators, previously reviewed here. Minor nuisance: registration is required in order to use the flexible-date search feature. (WHY???)

The folks at FareCompare have improved their site to create a new fare search tool. It builds on the lists of newly-lowered fares that they’ve been offering for the last few weeks (previously mentioned here).

The new tool is notable in that it lets you list and sort fares not only by destination (obviously), but by airline, price, price per mile cost, and price change. Looking to find a cheap fare to beef up your mileage balance? Search by price per mile. Looking to find the recent fare sales? Search by savings. But perhaps most importantly for people loyal to a particular airline, it allows for sorting by major US carrier. (International destinations are covered, but not international airlines. JetBlue and Southwest aren’t included either.)

It’s reminiscent in some ways of the Travelocity-powered fare lists on Yahoo — see the Chicago example here. To view another city, change the last three letters in the link to the city or airport code for your desired departure location. But the FareCompare tool is better.

There’s room for improvement, of course: I’d still like to see an option to search fares by departure date, or at least departure month, right up front, before clicking on the output. It’s annoying to find a low fare for a destination you’re traveling to next month, only to find the fare is only valid for this coming weekend.

But it’s a great start. Add it to your arsenal of travel search tools.

(Updated August 6, 2006; original text is crossed out, corrections follow in text. Reason for update is here.)

Last week we discussed coach tickets that automatically upgrade actually book into first class (usually Q-UP or Y-UP fares; Z fares book into business class on three-class or international flights). (Updated August 6, 2006: Q-UP and Y-UP fares are first class fares, NOT economy fares with an upgrade. A minor distinction, but an important one in case your flight gets overbooked, or if a gate agent tries to tell you your “upgrade” was denied. See here.)

The folks at FareCompare have come up with two useful tools for finding discounted first class fares. First, they offer a Q-UP and Y-UP fare list for U.S. cities. This link will take you to the y-up (or equivalent) fares for Chicago; change the departure city at the top of the page.

Even better, they offer a handy guide (PDF) for booking Q-UP and Y-UP fares on the airlines’ websites. (Citing problems with the airlines’ homepages, they refer you to Expedia.com instead for USAirways and Delta.)

I’d add a caveat: Some of the discounted first class fares their methods find are nonrefundable first class. For example, a United QUAUPN fare is nonrefundable; a QUAUP fare can usually be refunded.) The fare without the N at the end might just cost a few dollars more (single digits) but it offers much more flexibility. You may need to pick up the phone to buy the refundable version.

A number of websites have cropped up in recent years, offering multi-site searches for airfare, hotels, and rental cars. I don’t mean the online travel agencies like Expedia or Orbitz. Rather, I’m referring to the sites which allow you to search availability across online agencies, consolidators, and the providers themselves. These sites, called aggregators, collect a few dollars for every sale that results from their referral, at no additional cost to the person doing the searching.

The great benefit of these sites is that you get greater transparency of fares. However, not all aggregators are created equal. I put a few to the test.

For the time being, I limited my comparison to airfare searches. I looked for accuracy (did the quoted price match the price actually offered at the provider’s page?), depth of information (does the site give the booking class, cancellation policies, etc.?), and control (can you sort searches easily, by provider, by price, by distance, etc.?)

For airfare, I compared Kayak, Farechase, Mobissimo, Bezurk, Farecompare, Sidestep, and Pricegrabber. (Since I’m based in the United States, these results may be biased toward North American searches.)

The result: Kayak came out on top, with the lowest prices, the most control over the output, and most information about both airlines and sellers. Sidestep comes close. Farecompare gets an honorable mention for its price-driven approach. All sites accurately reported fares — there were no surprises when clicking through to the target site. However, no single aggregator actually found every flight option or every major travel site.

Kayak
If you know your dates of travel, Kayak offers the most powerful site, in my opinion. It covers a range of websites, including a number of consolidators. The fare results can be sorted by airline, by time, by price, by airports (it searches alternate airports automatically), and by stops. One of the biggest benefits is the ability to see the precise fare booking code, by clicking “details.” (This is great if you’re looking for a cheap but upgradable fare, for example.) A downside to Kayak is that they seem to exclude the big three online agencies — Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz don’t seem to come up in searches. On the plus side, JetBlue, who (like Southwest) doesn’t show up in the big three’s searches, comes up for comparison on Kayak. Negative is that they don’t seem to grab every possible routing from every airline (a common complaint for all aggregators). Kayak is 95% there, but not quite 100%.

SideStep
Sidestep is a very close runner-up to Kayak on the pure-airfare search. It covers a similar range of sites, plus includes Orbitz in the search. It has one interesting benefit: offering air and hotel package searches across multiple sites. Note that Sidestep is perhaps best known for its downloadable toolbar, which “watches” where you browse, and offers fare alternatives. I am not a fan of this over-the-shoulder co-browsing, but you don’t have to use their toolbar in order to run a search.

Farechase
Farechase, owned by Yahoo, copies much of Kayak’s template, but searches a slightly different universe of sites, including both Orbitz and Cheaptickets. The total number of sites searched is smaller, but doesn’t overlap entirely with Kayak or Sidestep. One downside: the flight details do not include the booking class/fare code. Presumably you need to go through the process of a complete booking in order to see that info.

Mobissimo
Like Farechase, Mobissimo DOES include some of the online agencies: Orbitz, CheapTickets, and Opodo, for example. However, it offers less flexibility in sorting the data than Farechase, and it doesn’t give much in the way of flight details. While the fares it finds are comparable to Farechase, the presentation is previous-generation.

Pricegrabber
Update: PriceGrabber has thrown in the towel, shutting down their travel search feature. The rest of their site is still up and running. This review stays up, though the travel service is defunct.
Pricegrabber is a comparison shopping site, and their travel search is just one among many. The search engine again follows the Kayak template, but it doesn’t tell you up front which sites it has searched. Results can be sorted by price, airline, time ranges, and, interestingly, ontime statistics. But you can’t see the flights’ booking class here either, the range of alternate airports is limited, and you don’t even know who the seller is until you choose the flight. They do work with Orbitz, and perhaps others, but they need to provide more information.

Bezurk
This is an Asia-based site that taps into a completely different pool of providers. It copies the Kayak model, again. However, because the search is based on Asian companies, it may be difficult to find a fare you can actually purchase if your travels don’t touch Asia. Nonetheless, for international travel, check it out.

Farecompare
This recently unveiled site is notable for its price-driven approach. Instead of entering cities/dates and comparing options thereafter, Farecompare asks for cities only, and drills down on the basis of price. Much like Travelocity’s Dream Maps or Search by Price, you may end up with a great price… on dates you can’t use. However, the site is interesting for the sheer volume of information it provides, and it offers historical data tracking the city pair’s fare trend over time.

What if you just care about price, without regard to anything else? Who has the best price? I did two searches, one for Chicago to Los Angeles, one for San Francisco to Sydney. The city pairs made no difference: In both cases, Kayak, SideStep, and Mobissimo found the identical lowest prices. Farechase’s “lowest price” was more than the others.

Aggregators are a great tool, but even then, you may want to run one or two of them, to see if they differ. Maybe we need an aggregator of aggregators (perhaps metakayak.com?) to truly get thorough searches.

In two weeks, I’ll test the aggregators’ searches for hotels, which offer an entirely different set of challenges. If there are any sites that you believe I have missed, or if you think my assessment is way off base, let me know by leaving a comment or using the contact link at the top right of the page.

Update (April 24, 2006): One reader wrote, reminding me of ITA Software’s excellent fare search tool. ITA powers Orbitz.com for airfare searches, though Orbitz’s search engine is a dumbed-down version with far fewer features. The genius of ITA is that it is incredibly powerful, if you know how to phrase your searches. However, it’s not a booking site, just an informative flight search, so even if you find a great fare, you have to find and book it elsewhere. Since ITA doesn’t actually get you to a booking (and, as the aggregators demonstrate, fares aren’t always available everywhere), I didn’t originally include them in the earlier discussion.

Update (April 28, 2006): Reader Todd points out that I forgot to include Qixo.com in my review. He’s right. Ahem:

Qixo.com
Qixo came up short. It offered less information (fare booking classes, provider, etc.) and had the highest price for identical searches. I ran fresh searches for new dates, with the same city pairs. Once again, Kayak had the lowest fare with the most choices and depth of information. Sidestep and Farechase had the same prices, with less info. Pricegrabber was a few dollars more expensive. Bezurk found nothing at all for North American itineraries. And Qixo? $120 more than the others. When the site even worked. Qixo came in last.