rosj

We have written software to process the worldwide flight schedules http://flights.farecompare.com, we will be using that same software to make sure a fare has online connectivity.

This is even more complicated because many times the airlines have seasonal connectivity so we have to weed out fares based on travel dates.

----
rosj

davistev

I often find that certain fares are quoted to Australia from the USA using Asian carriers but I have never been able to book them on the main travel sites. FC does list the fares but same deal. These fares are available if I call a person live (sometimes). Often the reason is simply a dateline thing with forced overnights due to bad connections. Computers tend to hiccup on these things.

eg: Asiana fares to Sydney from SEA
eg: SQ fares to Adelaide from USA

anyway - love FC.

Thanks

OxyChaz

I like kayak, but some of their quirks kill me...like if I want to do a search between LAX-BNA, I don't want to be routed from LAX-BNA and BNA-ONT/SNA/LGB. It shouldn't be the default setting...should be an option after. Just a pet peeve...

rgm18

im not sure i get what people are talking about getting both farecompare and kayak results.

for me, the calendar that comes up seems to have the cheapest fare open for all days and then when u click check for seats, it just searches with kayak.

i liked how FC allowed me to see the cheapest fares then work to find the days its available...any ideas? am i missing something?

badjuju

Noticed that too and I'm not crazy about it. After I search for a cheap fare, the results are a lot more than they should - like $300 more.

Maybe there's something I'm missing with the new change, but I don't see a benefit

badjuju

For those of you who like the change, please explain what I'm doing wrong. In FC Engine, the lowest fare from ORD-MCO is $98. I pasted the fare rules below. Now, when I try any date in Feb (it's a 3-day advance), the price is a lot more. I know a possibility could be seats for those dates are sold out, but it happens with any date (tried May) and various cities.
Thanks.

$98 (w/taxes $117) roundtrip
Created Dec 27 2006
Fare Class OR3DN
Min Stay No Restriction
Max Stay No Restriction
Flt Restr No Restriction

mikita

Every time the fare they show available comes up hundreds of $'s more. It seems like a waste of time to even look at Fare Compare anymore.

rosj

Our system does fare applicability (this means there is a fare all 20+ rules are validated and the only issue is whether there airline will release a seat at that price). And BTW we have the fares hours before they hit the street so you get a big head start.

In the past we checked for inventory using inventory queries which cost $, which could only be offset by revenue if someone booked something by not hoping over to a site directly and bypassing our revenue stream or clicked on an ad.

I can't tell you how many people flame with why do you return no seats, just show me the price with seats. If only it were so easy.

In testing Kayak it will return inventoried results for your selected days from both ITA and the airline sites themselves. In the past you would have gotten back a no seats found and possibly alternate days with that inventory depending on many many day inventory queries we wanted to make each of which cost $. This was a technique to chase a fare, you can always go over to flexible Travelocity once they load the fare (domestic only) and click on all the days of the month to find inventory (they don't pay for inventory queries .

Agreed some of the cheapest fares have limited inventory and in a perfect world we would just query every day of the year for every city pair in the world every 10 minutes (because inventory can change dynamically). Of course that would cost billions of dollars and take years to make those queries and get responses.

Bottom line is that for the purpose of an MR knowing there is a good price and it has routing that is amenable to an MR is 80% of the battle. Finding the days with inventory or flight schedules with a same day turn can be tedious and frustrating, but if MR's were easy and not partially an art form you wouldn't be on this board ....

We will be posting several new features in the next week which I think might be of particular interest and are going to do some major upgrades to the FT tool.

---
rosj

rtarbuck

Rosj:

Thanks again for all you and your company do for FTers.

Looking forward to changes!


^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

KVS

There is virtually no availability on that route for most of Feb, not to mention that O is one of AA's lowest booking classes ...

[KVS Availability Tool 2.7.4/Platinum - Sabre: ITN/US-AXC1]

jpdx

Or Zuji.com internationally.

Thanks for your work, rosj! ^

luv2ctheworld

Cool! ^

Thanks again!

How's about a Freddy for Farecompare! If there were such a category!

camachinist

Any guidance as to which browser to use on a Mac? The new Kayak subroutines have often either frozen or crashed my Mozilla and Netscape browsers on my older G3 roadwarrior laptop running 10.1.5. I've also seen query errors.

Sounds like a script issue, if past experience is any guide.

FWIW, I liked the old FC. It might have returned some dry holes but it was fast and clean.

BTW, I'm also seeing scripting errors with the above hardware/software when using the FT MR search page. It defaults back to a preset airport unless I manipulate the code in the address bar. More trouble on Netscape than Mozilla.

The perfect world for me would be if you could combine the GDS access of KVS/EF with the raw bucket lists of Seatcounter and the fare metrics/history that FC has now. I'd pay a couple hundred bucks a year for that kind of package...

All that said, FC was a major tool in getting me to 1K for little money. Thanks for that

Pat

TravellingMan

rosj - All my leisure trips last year and this year were based on your alerts. Thanks for the service that you are providing. Bring on the features ^