Using hidden city fares might be cheap, but it means you can’t check luggage. How did it fall so far in the rankings this time? For one thing, our new #2 (and others) have also adopted Skiplagged’s main trick of using “hidden city” fares, a somewhat shady savings technique the airlines hate-it involves buying itineraries that have stops and abandoning some flight legs before the final destination. Skiplagged, an upstart that first appeared in 2013, fast outgrew its travel hacker roots to claim the top spot in 2019. It also frequently found the exact same flight as many other sights, but at prices that were a little bit higher-often just 5% to 15%, but still.
It whiffed on the Denver to Delhi route every time, and was the only site not to figure out that you could pair Vueling and Easyjet flights to make a last-minute London–Barcelona trip cheaper. So why is the mighty Google sitting at #8? It also went above and beyond by suggesting we try leaving from Newark instead for our proposed Philly-to-Rome trip-which in a pricey last-minute situation would have been well worth the drive, as it brought the fare down from $5,265 to just $1,055. Google Flights features a fabulous “Explore map” feature that allows you to select any two major city pairs and see lowest fare for your dates in addition to price trends for the month surrounding them. And it's one of only three engines in our results that has a filter allowing you to add checked and cabin bags and recalculate the prices accordingly. It shows average prices on a pop-up calendar so you can see at a glance when the cheapest days to fly are for the next two months (you can also peruse a price grid and price graph on the results page). However, the titan of online search has combined that database with its own algorithmic wizardry to produce some excellent features.įirst of all, it is unbelievably fast, refreshing results as you key in filters almost before you can blink.
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Google’s purchase of the IATA Software flight engine a decade ago didn’t turn into the game-changer many predicted. Many other aggregators canvass FlightNetwork as part of their results, but given the customer reports, using it might be best for itineraries you don’t anticipate having to change. The company is reportedly slow to respond or offer refunds, and dissatisfied customers have posted online about having to pay fees even when flights were canceled. It just shows a note that you’ll "be able to add baggage during check-in or at the airport." Checked bags can cost $30 to $100 a pop each way, so we expect better communication.įinally, many people report running into problems with customer service, especially when it comes to canceled flights and altered itineraries. Not only doesn't it disclose baggage fees, it also won’t let you bundle them into the fare. Although its six-week APEX fares prices for New York to Paris were the best of our bunch, its last-minute prices on the same route were the worst.
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By far the priciest when it came to last-minute fares, FlightNetwork was also the only site that couldn’t locate a direct flight to Japan even with a full six weeks’ notice. Yes, it found among the lowest last-minute fares for Miami–Rio and Philly–Rome, but it really dropped the ball on L.A.–Tokyo. Fares within 1% of one another were considered equal.įlightNetwork, a Canadian online travel agency (you’ll have to do your own currency conversions), makes our top 10 for the first time-but its results were all over the place.
We then used a complicated, weighted scoring system for each route search that rewards two points to any site that finds the best fares, one point for second-best, nothing for average results, a negative point for high prices, and minus two for the sites that returned the worst fares. Airlines may think such routings make for viable plans, but we don’t. We have no time for, um, “creative” itineraries that would be hell to fly-so we discarded results that increased total travel time by more than half through excessively long layovers, too many stops, or flying way out of the way just to change planes. We threw in a curve ball (Denver to New Delhi) and even included a flight with no North American legs (London–Barcelona) to see how well each contestant handled Europe‘s wilderness of low-cost carriers. We covered major gateways (NYC to LAX, Miami to Rio) and secondary ones (Philadelphia to Rome). We tried both last-minute flights (leaving the coming weekend) and APEX fares (booked six weeks out). We tested 19 sites on the same 28 itineraries.
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