I hate change. This week, two of my favorite airfare searching tools either went away or previous versions were disabled. I’m of course referring to the trusty FareCompare Flyertalk page being taken down and ITA Software’s Classic “Matrix 1” being totally removed. I feel sort of naked without them.

The FareCompare site was bar none the easiest and fastest way to find which markets had the cheapest fares from your origin city or region. The tabled list provided a quick snapshot of city pairs, (nearly) all-in fares and although often inaccurate, a cost per mile column. It was particularly useful to quickly see which markets had truly lowball fares ideal for mileage runs.

It’s still listed as a tool on the website, but with a “coming soon” disclaimer. Flyertalk user “gbryan84” received an email from FareCompare’s CEO Rick Seaney stating, “… we are in the midst of a massive rollout of new backend software to comply with new DOT regulations in January. Getting the FT app back up is on the list, but I don’t have an exact time yet.”

They left another feature active that displays fares from an origin on a global map called the Where-To-Go: Getaway Map that can be found here.

It, then, is probably the next best thing at the moment to not-so-quickly see what fares are out there in the markets presently. Kayak has a similar Explore map tool and it, too, requires manual manipulation of the map to view the fares and further details.

I found a potential mileage run fare for Los Angeles to Columbus on both the FareCompare and Kayak map, so made note of it and checked out the routing rules on ExpertFlyer.

Kayak Explore map

FareCompare Getaway map

United Airlines has pretty generous routing rules on their fare in the LAX-CMH market, so I went to ITA Software’s Matrix to check out availability. I’ve used the “new” tool previously and it does eventually get you to the same information, but it takes more click-throughs and I find it slower than the classic version. The routing I wanted was from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Washington Dulles to Columbus for a one-nighter and I plugged in the following:

A calendar appeared showing the fares available each day and the month of February looked to have plenty of availability for the cheapest fare. Once selecting a date, it will take you to a list of flights and their respective fares. Clicking through gets you the same detail as the classic version.

It’s not an efficient method to find mileage runs presently, but at least there’s still a way beyond just plugging in random markets to display available fares. This run, by the way, nets 6,838 EQMs (I can’t bring myself to call them Premier Qualifying Miles yet) at an all-in fare of $258.20, or 3.78 cpm.

My fingers are crossed the FareCompare tool comes back sooner rather than later. I know I’m not the only one truly missing it right now. Does anyone have other tools they’re using to find mileage runs?

[Coincidentally, Ben, too, wrote a similar post at the same time and his method uses ITA Software to find runs. Check out his method here.]

As a blogger I bookmark and follow a huge amount of travel-related websites that feature news and reviews in the airline and travel industry. One of them is Tnooz.com whose tagline is “Talking Travel Tech.” It really is a fantastic site and they frequently cover global distribution system (GDS) issues and stories for which I enjoy and geek out on given my previous work history in the industry.

One article last week entitled “Six myths of air travel search on the web” caught my attention and I clicked in thinking I’d once again agree with their normally accurate reporting. Some of the conclusions in that article completely took me by surprise and I have to share my disagreements here.

Myth 1 – Air search is simple and easy. They claim, “Invariably, it is difficult to find prices and routes, and there is a bewildering array of options.” What? Go to any Online Travel Agency (OTA) or airline website, plug in your dates and to & from cities, and you quickly get a selection of routes and fares. I just don’t understand why they think it’s so hard to find this information.

They continue, “Users can spend hours looking at different possible options… (often finding a) bewildering array of options.” Yes, when you search for a ticket many pairings of flights appear, but they’re generally sorted by time-of-day and price. Is it really that difficult to comprehend the search results?

Myth 2 – It doesn’t matter where a user searches (the results are the same). In my experience, yes, I’ve occasionally found different hotel prices on different sites. It’s not very often and it’s normally due to the fact that the OTAs aren’t quick enough to pull down availability when a hotel reports expired rates. On the airline front, however, OTAs generally pull real-time availability and this article claims, “The results, regardless of search site, are inconsistent and generate little trust for the user.” When you actually click through to book a flight at a quoted fare, the OTA immediately confirms real-time pricing and will display a “We’re sorry, this fare no longer exists” message when warranted. Okay, maybe I’ll give them a little leeway in the “trust” issue, but they shouldn’t claim inconsistent results when OTAs do in fact pull actual pricing.

Myth 3 – Air search works. They claim, “Frankly, it doesn’t. For something that looks like a commodity product, an airline seat is complicated.” I’ll give them credit there as ancillary fees create a lot of confusion and inconsistency when searching across all carriers, but they continue on saying, “(some websites) often powered by ITA generate a result, but this is no longer dynamic. Meanwhile, the internal price from the call centre agent is dynamic and can be different.” Nope. ITA is by far the most powerful and accurate airfare search tool I’ve ever come across. If anyone has real-time availability and fares down, it’s ITA.

The remaining myths discussed do have their merit and I’d encourage you to read the full article. Maybe I’m being too critical because of my “expert” travel experience and abilities, but I do feel this writer misinterprets the ease we have in searching and booking air tickets today. Google Flight Search needs a huge amount of improvement to become a leading tool for flight bookings, as he acknowledges. He also notes the inability to book flights after having found an ideal itinerary on Kayak. His claim, though, that finding flights “should be a heck of a lot better than it is,” seems ridiculous in my mind. Don’t you find booking flights pretty convenient today?

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.

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.