Thanks for the ita links. This is the tool that powers expedia or orbitz isn't it? Anyway, I am glad for some new ideas.

I guess I came across rather enthusiatic. I know that what I described doesn' exist; it would be the holy grail of search engines. I just want to know how close people have come. I forgot to add the part where a search tool takes yours settings and then searches for the same spread on all the major search sites to check for competing fares. In fact, you could have it run itself daily with pre-set alerts that get sent to your email, along with a ring tone to your desktop.

Thanks for the pointers so far.