DOT clears Orbitz
 

Thought my fellow flyertalkers might be interested in this news off the wires... http://news.excite.com/news/r/010413...port-orbitz-dc
I've been beta-testing orbitz for a couple of weeks now and am glad to see that they are able to move forward. You guys should sign up to beta test - as we all know, feedback is valuable!

Yeah this great news. See my post in Study says nay.

Where do we sign up for the beta?

I just checked out www.orbitz.com

They do not sell tickets yet, but the search engine is active -- and it is terrific. It is easy to see available fares and quickly sort them to find the right combination of fare, time, stop, and preferred airlines. And it is fast!

Most impressive.

There is a link on the home page that allows you to request to be a beta tester. After being bit beta testing CO's new eService site, I am twice shy ...

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He who dies with the most miles ... is dead.

You can actually buy tickets if you sign up for free at the preview area at http://launch.orbitz.com

I like, but isn't this just the engine from http://beta.itasoftware.com/servlet/cvgdispatch ?

I think it is. Delta announced yesterday that they are converting reservations and ticketing from a legacy mainframe system to ITA's software on a UNIX farm because of the results they saw in Orbitz and their own testing.

I believe that Orbitz has sunk a tremendous amount of money into developing a more robust ITA engine with Micromuse (Netcool suite)...let me find an article

I don't know if this is helpful but it says ITA designs fare search software, so I am pretty sure Orbitz's is talor made:
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/162383.html

A little more background discussion on ITA ...

[This message has been edited by essxjay (edited 04-17-2001).]

Thanks!

thanks for the additional info guys!

Orbitz is missing at least one feature (that I happen to value highly) from the itasoftware site. ita would let me tell it to search strictly the three airports I can reach (CHA, BNA, ATL); on Orbitz, I would have to give it a radius around CHA, thus pulling in worthless results from TYS and HSV also.

How worthless is that extra info to someone else? I would see it as a bonus...maybe those extra airports give a better rate/schedule etc.