Originally Posted by
zagy
When using the website search, does it make any difference if you select the time of departure instead of just the date?
I've seen it mentioned somehwere that it does but not sure what the difference would be. Maybe some routes are found that otherwise wouldn't be?
I've recently played around an awful lot with flight search engines, both on airline portals, kayaks, negotiators, matrices, as well as on frequent flyer tools.
I've observed that any change of parameters (spec. narrowing down a search) will result in different routes (and sometimes far more favourable prices) being shown.
in one case that I flew in December with Lifemiles, a narrower search (e.g. airline or time of departure selection) gave me availability that the wider search didn't show.
I guess it all comes down to the fact that there are so many routes available that no system can search them exhaustively, and different parameters will influence the search sequence, which will create different cut off points.