As widely reported and reviewed, Google launched their much-anticipated Flight Search feature after having completed the acquisition of ITA Software. ITA’s Matrix Airfare Search tool is bar none the most robust and user-friendly way to search for airfares – everything from simple roundtrips to complex multi-city combinations – and it’s my go-to website where I build all of my itineraries. The only thing it lacks is the ability to purchase directly on the site and we’ve all been expecting Google to come out with an industry leading booking engine packed with bells and whistles. The product they launched, however, is anything but revolutionary and is completely underwhelming.

I’ll get into my thoughts on why they launched it as is later, but first let me take you on a mini tour. My very first time plugging in an itinerary was met with a rather unfriendly error message. I searched for a simple Los Angeles to Chicago roundtrip leaving this Saturday September 24, 2011 and returning October 9^th.

Image courtesy Google

I was surprised to see the current restrictions requiring the itinerary to be shorter than 15 days along with the other notifications mentioning a minimum one-night stay and a maximum six-month booking window. Very un-ITA. I revised my booking dates and played with the map feature, which is actually pretty cool.

Image courtesy Google

It shows the rates to other cities in the United States for the same travel period, something useful if you also have your eye on another destination. As you can see from the map, only limited destinations are currently available and all within the U.S. One of the filtering tools allows you to set maximum price and duration (total travel time), but I think Google will confuse the average passenger here on how to manipulate the inputs, as well as what all those dots refer to.

Image courtesy Google

It looks more confusing than it should and I think they need to take away the “hit” points and just focus on the key inputs of price and duration with a better explanation to click on the “sliders” to adjust the filter. Would everyone know what the “sliders” are in this graphic? I think not. Continuing on below, I found several unfiltered (didn’t use the left-hand pane delimiters of # of stops, airline/alliance selection, connection points and times) flights from which to select my outbound.

Image courtesy Google

Nonstops were highlighted, but I think they need to do away with the confusing notification of result pulls. When you hover over the question mark next to “18 of 37 results,” it reveals “Longer and more expensive flights are hidden by default, increase the Price and Duration limits to see more results.” Okay, but then the notices next to each roundtrip price makes it seem like you’ll find 19 results, for example, if you were to click on that first American flight showing a $239 fare. That’s not the case and Google should remove those notifications. I selected a United flight and went on to pick the return.

Image courtesy Google

What’s incredibly strange here is the display of American flights for the return having picked United for the outbound. I’m at a loss why that happened, but played along and picked one of the flights. Notice here, though, that those pesky result notices, “XX from” have disappeared next to the price points. Google currently steers you directly to the airlines’ website to complete the booking, so when the “book” button appeared, it advised me I’d be ticketing the reservation with American (probably due to the fact it was the last segment on the itinerary). Shockingly, when I clicked through it did indeed setup the itinerary as selected.

Image courtesy American Airlines

How unfortunate for American had I continued to purchase with a United segment. Here, though, I finally get to see the aircraft type, something totally lacking on the Google side and while it might not be important to most people, I’m keen to know that during the selection process. I played around a bit more and was thoroughly disappointed at how lacking this initial incarnation was. I will give credit to its speed and correct transfer of data to the airline’s site, as well as being able to see nearby airports with ease via the dropdown option from the default airport based on your IP address (I assume).

Image courtesy Google

The obviousness that you’ve selected an outbound and return just isn’t there, however, so Google absolutely needs better and deliberate notification to the user that you’ve actually selected one or the other. There is a ton more I could criticize, but for now I’ll leave this post as is knowing Flight Search is an ultra-early deployment.

So why did Google release such an inferior and restrictive product? My guess is they wanted real-world load testing and who better to “employ” as beta testers than you and me? Our initial searches will do wonders for their analytics. Also, I’m certain they wanted these types of critical reviews before releasing what I’m expecting to be the leading search and booking engine. They know what they have with ITA and I’m certain we’ll eventually have a tool used as frequently as you would use native Google for any other search.

For further insightful remarks well beyond my simplistic example, be sure to check out Henry Harteveldt’s guest post on CrankyFlier. He takes you a bit deeper into the pros and cons of this immature release and correctly states “Google launched the product too soon.” Have you tried it out? What are your comments?

P.S., Be sure to check out my review of a more advanced tool available now: Everbread’s Haystack Flight Search. No, I have not been paid by, nor have any stake in Everbread or Haystack. I was just as critical of their preliminary public release, but have seen true innovation for what the future holds by way of a preview of its actual functionality that is light years ahead of this Google embarrassment.

In other airline, hotel and travel industry news this week…

• Google launched a much-criticized Flight Search feature this week. Limited to airfare searches for travel within the United States, this is definitely just a teaser as confirmed by Google’s Inside Search blog where the company states, “This is just an early look, not the final destination.” The highly critical industry followers were expecting a fully functional Googled version of ITA Software, and while I agree with their reviews, I’m certain this is beta version for which the company will now get earfuls of “free” testing data and advice. I’ll make a separate posting in the future comparing it against what I’ve seen of Everbread’s Haystack.
• Funding for the FAA has been given a stay of execution once again, now until January 31, 2012. This is the 22^nd “temporary” extension for the administration, if you can call more than four years temporary. Labor rules, subsidies, airport slot issues and even arguments over bike paths and walking trails in the bigger-picture transportation bill will have to be dealt with in the coming months. Even with the 2012 elections becoming the focus in Washington, I hope both sides take heart and draft long-term funding as transportation and aviation interest groups have been urging.
• I need to begin a trip originating at London’s Heathrow Airport soon to try out their new “laser-guided travel pods” that whisk travelers from the parking garage – sorry, car park – to the destination (terminal) of choice. Braniff envisioned something like this back in the 1960s assuming it would be available by 1975 (humorously). If Heathrow could get these pods to whisk you between terminals for connecting flights, now that would really be something.
• Do you use hotel safes? You know, the in-room ones where you select your own numeric code? I do, but will certainly be sure to test out whether or not it has a default password as demonstrated in this short video clip. Most do, I’m sure, but I don’t think it should be as obvious as 0000.
• The one-hour work stoppages by engineers at Qantas have been bad enough, but now 3,800 baggage handlers and other ground staff are planning a four hour strike this coming Tuesday September 20, 2011. Qantas will reportedly swap in larger aircraft on some routes in an attempt to more quickly reaccommodate passengers whose flights have cancelled. Here the unions are asking for five percent annual pay raises for the next three years, as well as job security entitlement.
• The Department of Transportation fining airlines isn’t anything new, especially for the easiest breach requiring them, for example, to disclose that the “United” flight you’re on from Los Angeles to Reno is actually operated by Skywest Airlines. In a first for the Global Distribution System industry, the DOT has fined Amadeus $95,000 for failing to follow through with travel agencies to ensure their software correctly displayed these codeshare flights. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood states, “We expect all companies that sell or facilitate the sale of air transportation – airlines, travel agents and GDSs alike – to comply with the laws we enforce.”

A week and a half ago I posted a review of Everbread’s Haystack airfare search engine that provides functionality similar to ITA Software’s Matrix Airfare Search. I noted its similarities to ITA and also called out some glaring shortcomings, such as its inability to search for flights with flexible days (+/- x-days, month long, etc), not pulling in the full schedule of outbound & return pairings, lack of fare basis codes, tax breakout and more. I closed by acknowledging the fact it is a demo version and greater enhancements would likely rollout with the next release.

The day after that post, Everbread’s Deputy COO Filip Filipov sent me an email commending my thorough review and agreed with some of my criticism, but offered to show me a preview of additional features and functionality through a WebEx screen sharing conference call. I was thrilled for the direct contact by Everbread and scheduled a time the following week for the call.

After our brief introductory conversation, Filip logged in with his development credentials and took me on a tour of Haystack’s actual current functionality. He mentioned the reason for the limited capability public release version currently out there is in part to avoid revealing the highly proprietary successes they’ve developed behind the scenes. What he ended up showing me is indeed the next generation of airfare search engines and confirmed in my mind that Haystack is perhaps more than just competition for ITA Software, but also a front-runner integrating booking abilities into social media.

Believe me in that I really wanted to be taking screen captures during our call, but out of sincere respect for him taking an hour out of his day I refrained. Here are some of the highlights:

• On my initial test drive, Southwest didn’t appear in the results and I was curious to find out why. It was partly my fault, but partly not. There is a filter item I didn’t include (low cost carrier) that isn’t pre-defaulted. That was my error, but attempting it again also left Southwest off. They’re still developing worldwide connections to low cost carriers, but have had success with many European LCCs. He mentioned it can sometimes be challenging to get the appropriate API access from certain carriers to make this happen (think Ryanair, for example).
• Total breakout of taxes is shown and fully itemized by tax code.
• Full fare basis information is shown.
• Haystack validates its own fare construction against that of GDSs to ensure a consistent 100% match.
• The system can be easily modified to accommodate agency-specific programming needs.
• Expanded date range searching is a reality, currently up to +/- 15 days, which effectively gives a 30-day view and will be further developed to go +/- 30 days.
• Charter flights are included in search results, which can be a very significant advantage over published schedules in some markets.
• Private fares, bulk fares, and other non-published fares are fully supported.
• Delta Air Lines and Malaysia Airlines currently have Facebook integration that allows ticketing, but what he showed me is the absolute future of integrating social media and travel. Want to go see one of your long-distance friends on Facebook next weekend? Based on location data saved in profiles, Haystack will show the lowest fares for you to take a quick trip to see them and a link for booking the ticket.
• Haystack will return every possible combination of airlines and schedules well beyond what the demo version currently shows and that of ITA.
• Haystack has been proven to be faster than ITA in most search comparisons.

It’s an incredibly impressive technology and the company has secured many well-known clients across Europe. The demo version out there now has a sidebar ability to provide feedback, so if you’d like to offer your own suggestions, sign up for an account here. ITA Software hasn’t released new functionality, but I’d have to be certain they’re also developing enhanced capabilities that Google will eventually rollout live. It will be fun to monitor both companies and while they duke it out for market share, the products they release will do nothing but enhance we travelers’ lives.

I recently posted some videos put out by UK-based Everbread showing a humorous yet accurate description of how Global Distribution Systems came into being and their evolution to present form. Those videos were admittedly a selfless plug for the company’s Haystack airfare search engine, whose underlying technology is marketed as a business-to-business solution with greater efficiencies and processes than that of traditional GDSs. Sounding very reminiscent of ITA Software’s Matrix Airfare Search Tool, I was even more intrigued because it claims to also search off-GDS low cost carrier fares and schedules, something ITA lacks. I signed up for an account and took it for a test drive last night.

I decided to search for a basic roundtrip ticket in a market I knew Southwest Airlines flew along with traditional carriers, so I plugged in Los Angeles to Denver leaving September 16^th, returning September 20, 2011:

The expandable options below the basic search fields open up to allow customization for preferred carriers, number of stops, class of service and other “standard” parameters. It also has other selections available for more advanced fine tuning, including the ability to select interline specificity and types of fares (refundable, upgradable, changeable). Wanting to keep it simple, I selected the option to show fare information with the results leaving the other defaults in place, and hit search:

Hmm, where’s Southwest? Anyway, it’s sort of a similar response to what ITA would give and very curious to compare their pricing against ITA’s, I popped over there to get nearly identical results:

The listings returned are in ascending order based on fare and for sake of space, I’m showing the top four below:

You have the ability to further sort and modify the results with a toolbar appearing at left. Included here is the option to filter by alliance (Star, oneworld, etc), airline, virtual interline, stops, flight time and more. First I decided to deselect Frontier Airines and it returned the following result:

Hmm, Frontier remained. It appears that if you keep “multiple airlines” checked, deselecting specific airlines will only chop off itineraries from the results wholly comprised of the deselected carrier. I played around with it for a while, then decided just to leave United checked as the carrier with nonstop flights only. Here were the top three results:

Ugh. Burbank got in there, so it seems they’ve set the logic to include nearby airports (city code logic vs. simply airport code). That definitely could be useful, but I wasn’t expecting it. Deselecting the “airport changes” option didn’t make it go away either. What was more surprising, though, is how few options in total appeared: 24 total combinations and since there are eight nonstops daily in each direction LAX-DEN, it should have returned 64 possible combos. The default search option returns 500 results (max seems to be 1,000), so when I later searched for just United flights on that route, it seemed to pull in the full schedule (plus Burbank).

For now, I decided to move on, make a selection, and was able to reveal class of service and a partial fare breakdown, but no fare basis codes or fare construction detail:

As Haystack isn’t a booking site like ITA, you can only “share” the itinerary you’ve selected by sending it to an email address or to your Google or Outlook calendar. I chose the email route:

Notice the email left off fare details (fare buckets & price breakout)? It does provide a link for the results, but had I forwarded this to my travel agent, for example, the link requires a sign-in back to Haystack. If I provided my login credentials to my travel agent, they would be redirected to the entire screen of results wherein this selection was made. A bit cumbersome, in my opinion.

Let me make it clear that I acknowledge this is a demo version and isn’t intended to be a consumer search engine, but at the same time I was expecting advanced ITA-type functionality and detail. Having the ability to only search for specific dates without being offered “flexible dates,” month-long or “+/- 3 days” for a better fare seems so 1999. Perhaps that’s what they’re developing now and will be part of Haystack 2.0. It didn’t seem to return results quite as fast as ITA, but maybe only by three or four more seconds. Also, I have to throw them a bone and while Southwest Airlines flights & fares didn’t appear, I didn’t try routes with European low cost carriers, their specialty (likely).

I’ll be following their progress with interest and in the meantime, it might not be a bad tool to bookmark and revisit once in a while. Learn more about Everbread and Haystack here, including signing up for a free account.

[Updated to add: Please be sure to click-through to my follow-up post here. After posting the above review, the company's Deputy COO contacted me directly to give a preview of current functionality not included with the demo version out there live at the moment. VERY impressive stuff!]

Eventually I’ll get around to posting a detailed description and history of Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), but in the meantime check out these videos from Everbread. The UK-based travel technology company put these together in part to explain the method by which airline reservations have been booked since the 1950s, but also to expose the shortcomings of legacy GDSs and humorously plug their next generation airfare search engine. I’m excited to give their Haystack system a test-drive and signed up for an account. Sadly, while the confirmation seemed immediate when I registered online, the email I received stated:

[Update: Had I checked my email again prior to posting this, I would have seen that I've been fully activated. Stay tuned for a future post where I'll take Haystack for a test drive.]

The videos are accurate in that they give a high-level snapshot of GDSs from their creation to present day form and function, but quite a bit of detail is left out. Still, though, I have to give Everbread props for summarizing the highly complex nature of GDS functionality into an easily understandable framework. Their Haystack system to me sounds like an enhanced ITA Software-type of search tool that additionally captures “off-line” low-cost carrier data (i.e., Southwest Airlines, for example, whose limited subscription in GDSs leaves them off ITA’s Matrix search).

Be sure to note the rather hilarious caricature of Sir Richard Branson in the second video. American Airlines certainly agrees with their statement, “Airlines pay truckloads of money for the global distribution network.” Enjoy!

(Hat tip: Gulliver via Tnooz)