Few suggestions

- Add date range filter
This will enable us to see the lowest fares for the period we want to travel.

- Class of service filter

- Alliance filter

- If we filter on a Carrier, the carrier should be carried forward the the subsequent detail screen. ie on the 2nd screen where it shows the fares by month, only show the filtered Carrier fare and like wise to the subsequent screens.

- Add surcharges and Taxes to the fare displayed. (since that adds up to significant amount these days). It might vary based on the routing, but you could include based on the direct routing)

- email alerts. Need a better filter , say 25% drop in fares instead of a $20 drop, better yet a user defined setting , that way I can set to receive only emails where there is a 50% drop.

- stop pop ad to sign up for alert.

Thanks for being open to suggestions.

I still don't see how that does anything for us, if we can't actually get the price. I'd much rather be able to see the lowest price I can actually book.

http://www.farecompare.com/search/yupfares.html



The flyertalk page is

http://www.farecompare.com/search/flyertalk.html

#1, fix the fuel surcharge.
 

I was a big supporter of FC, and used it to find many very nice fares. These days I send people to ITA Software.

Some of the searches you're talking about could be very nice. I would be very willing to PAY a small bag of cash (okay, my change collection) for a search that would show me the best business class fares in the world. I've just returned from CMB, so I will go quite a distance for a good deal.

Fuel surcharges need to be figured correctly to make FC be a decent tool. I don't mind so much that phantom fares pop up, and I waste a bit of time investigating them. I do very much mind it showing a $150 RT fare to LGW, and then it really being $400 more because of silly surcharges.

I've been asking for a very long time about email alerts for business class fares. As others have mentioned, if you expand the functionality of FC, and then put some links on the same results page, most people would have no problem with using them. I book 20-25 tickets a year for myself, plus another 20-25 for friends and family every year, it would add up quickly.

One more I just remembered

- Minimum days filter.

Yes! What makes your site special is access to the best fare information, not availability. Please don't lose sight of that.

I'd like to see more powerful search filters--multiple airlines at once (or by exclusion), by destination (instead of origin), by econ, first or bus class. Once I pick something, a list of all fares (or at least the old style list of each airline) would be nice. Including fare and routings rules with another click would be great!

Availability via FC does nothing for me because, frankly, your site is no good at it. And that means I won't buy from your link. So how can you make money off me, ads? Subscription? I dunno, but all the changes I've seen in the last six months have made the site less useful to me.

The way the current airfare systems works, you have fares - each has one or more booking codes, and you have inventory for each flight the airline runs which is based on booking codes. No one has live access to the inventory for every flight on every day except for the airline. ITA has inventory calculators so that they dont have to bang on the airlines reservations systems for every query but they only do a 30 day search. As everyone GDSes/ITA charges for every query its financially impossible to find out if every cheap fare is available across the next 330 days. The best that could happen is if Expedia/Travelocity/Orbitz allowed people to query their inventory caches (fat chance)

So where we come is - is that we see the airfares (drops or raises) as soon as they are published by ATP. For example, just this morning Delta filed a fare
from Phoenix to Providence for $49 base one way to match Northwest's fare.
Delta's fare has no min stay - 2 transfers each way.

I get a report after every ATP feed that gives me this information, if you are sitting in Texas trying to figure out a mileage run you need target fares to start with. Thats what we are offering.

FareCompare, please do not do what Travelocity did: get rid of the most valuable tool used by mileage runners. They got rid of Dream Maps, so please do not get rid of the FT page on FareCompare.

By the way, I love your site. ^^ to you!

-Please, please bring back the flexible search for business class fares. Even better, if you can, add class of service as a drop down option on the Flyertalk page.

-Not so urgent in my mind, but could you have a destination driven search (e.g., show all the fares to XXX)?

I visit FC multiple times a day, but mainly use it for reference. I've almost always been unsuccessful at finding the fares listed (domestic and int'l). I'll click through the site and end up with a fare that is considerably higher than what it showed me on the calendar. Alternatively, I'll visit the website for the airline indicated, and still not find it. I'll then jump to other travel sites and not find it there either.
As stated, I use it mainly for reference.

I do appreciate that. However, to arrive at a balanced understanding of the situation, consider this: I could tell you that 50" Plasma TV's cost $1 in California because one store there sold one TV at that price in some promotion. Would that be useful information to people who are wondering where to buy their next TV? Probably not. So, instead of promoting extremes, we might strive for average lows that are real.

If you don't do that, you are unwillingly participating in a "bait and switch" game. Let's say Fantasy Air flies a million passengers between JFK and LHR per year. Of those million seats, they could offer ONE on some red-eye run for $1. Sites like yours will be showing that $1 to eager shoppers for the whole year, seats or no seats. Fantasy Air hopes that people who click on that will eventually buy $1079 tickets. You are distributing their $1 flyers for free.

I realize that I am not offering a solution here. I don't know what you know. But certain things are clear:

* Average traveller is looking for lowest fares and shortest duration.
* Some are flexible with dates, some less so.
* Mile Runners Lite are looking to maximize miles/dollar for trips they need to take anyway.
* Hard core Mile Runners are looking for any MR to anywhere. Etc.

You have to figure out how to serve these groups without becoming an unwilling conduit for the airlines' "bait and switch" games.

To be honest, I had not thought of FC that way and I use AirfareWatchdog to monitor sudden developments. Still, if that is your business model, you have my best wishes.

Can't we at least get rid of deliberate hurdles placed in front of us, eg, the need to click "I don't want emails" each time? What is particularly annoying is that I have to go through that only to see Kayak results, which I can see at Kayak without such a hurdle, and Kayak saves my searches too.

As others have said, I too would gladly pay a subscription fee to a site that meets most of my needs. Whether it is KVS, EF, ITA, Kayak, FC---I don't want to pay for many overlapping capabilities, but I'll pay if one of them becomes a true "one stop" solution.

Regarding US domestic fares on FlyerTalk page, I am not totally dissatisfied with FareCompare. Just remind users what they see are base fares. Simple notes on that page suffice. Also, need to clarify what PPM means. PPM is not equal to CPM/CPEQM (cents per mile/cents per elite qualifying miles), which FlyerTalkers use here.

A minor error on displaying domestic base fares: I have been feeling from/to SJU/STT base fares on the list are always wrong due to mis-calculation of US transportation tax.

Regarding International fares, currently it's very tough to utilize that info. Some include fuel surcharges, some don't. I still think displaying all-in fares is very hard to accomplish without providing any preferred dates/routings. I would like to see base fares and fuel surcharges listed separately instead of seeing these together. i.e. "Today's Price" needs to be broken into two portions. I prefer "base fare + fuel surcharge" comparison to "all-in price" comparison. I may be a minority though.

I understand why you need linking between FT page and fare calendar page. However, I feel this creates confusion because people will see all-in fares FC estimated after clicking particular "Destination". Besides checking inventory issue, another reason why people are whining that most of fares on FareCompare are unbookable. Needless to say, wrong estimation is main issue. I don't care much about inventory since FC is not selling ticket directly.

Thanks for asking for feedback. I use the flyertalk page frequently, and here are the improvements that would be at the top of my wish list:
I'd be fine with surcharges and estimated taxes/fees in a separate column, but it would be helpful to also have a "estimated minimum total" column that can be sorted.

The fare rules should be one click away from the flyertalk page, and it would be helpful to have a digest of the rules (booking code, dates, min/max stay, advance purchase) appear with a mouse-over before the click. The full routing rule, however deeply hidden, would be very welcome.

I rarely visit FC anymore because I just could not book the lowest fares shown lately. It turned into a frustration drill. From this thread I now understand it does not check availability and from cost factors cited above, I can understand.
As for tweaks, I really love being able to view a single carrier (e.g. UA), so the single carrier line is useful, yet when I go on to single month screen, I am back looking at competitors low prices (and not knowing it till I click on the day). It needs to be set up so that if I am truly looking for the lowest fare on ANYONE, you can do that, but IF you are ONLY interested in UA or AA. etc, then once you click on that line, it should not build a month with other carriers cluttering the screen.
Like many dedicated FT'ers, most of my trips are either on my carrier of choice, OR I don't go. Pls help me find the lowest cost flt on my single carrier (or alliance) of choice.
Thanks for highlighting low ball fares. I actually have booked a few in earlier times, just nothing lately.....