This week I had a rare business trip to Atlanta, Georgia. I booked the least expensive flight as usual using an airfare aggregation site. In this case I used Kayak.com as I often do. But fare alone is not the only measure of which is the best flight. I had two things that made my trip less than ideal.
- The night before I was scheduled to depart, US Airways cancelled my flight. They did not have a crew. So after I had spent a lot of time picking the right flight so I could spend an evening in Atlanta (not knowing that a tornado had torn up downtown) I ended up instead getting to my hotel at midnight.
- I had a very tight connection on my flight back (26 minutes) which is less than I would recommend for anyone. My flight was delayed a few minutes by bad weather and I ended up running between flights and arrived at the gate where the monitors said I would find a flight to San Jose but found a plane waiting to go to Seattle instead. A moment later they announced the last call for my flight 2 gates down.
There are always things that cannot be controlled when you fly, but situations can be predicted. For instance, some flights are habitually late. What if I had known that my flight from Atlanta was always late, then there is no way I would have taken a chance on with such a short layover. There is now a airfare aggregation site has just that sort of information. The site is InsideTrip.com.
Boston.com writes:
You thought you got a good deal when you booked that $200 flight from New York to Fort Lauderdale after scouring various websites to find the lowest fare. But after suffering through a long delay, a cramped flight on an old plane, and the airline’s losing your bags, that flight may not have felt like a bargain, after all.
Most travel sites, like Expedia and Kayak, do a good job of digging up the cheapest airfare for a given route, often giving you dozens of options. But when it comes to key factors that can help determine whether a flight is worth the money or is one to avoid - like how much legroom you get, a flight’s on-time performance, and mishandled luggage rates - travel sites tend to fall short.
For each search, InsideTrip provides not just fares but also evaluations of what Pelter calls 12 “pain points.” These include the amount of legroom in a cabin, how often the flight is on time, the aircraft type (larger jets get higher ratings), how crowded a specific flight typically is, and if you can walk to your connection. It even considers how long it usually takes to get through the security checkpoint nearest the gate.
Popularity: 44% [?]
