I like Orbitz for presenting a lot of options at once. I like the ability to easily switch between exact matches and near-matches to airports 25, 50, or 100 miles away. I fly to DCA a lot, and some other websites make it difficult to either include or exclude BWI from searches at will. I've found some cases where the Orbitz fares are the best, but usually I've found that going through the airline site after doing the Orbitz search works fine. Since the airlines started the site themselves, I would think that this would usually work (???).

A couple of things I don't like about the user interface: If I say I want to fly in the *evening*, don't show me 146 flights departing at 5.50am. Or...at least show me the evening flights first, and give me an option to get the other flights if I want them. For hotels: don't make me click on each hotel in a list to see if it has rooms and what the rates are. Show me available hotels, available rates, and nothing else.

These are minor peeves...in general I like the site.

I've also had a bad Orbitz experience. Tried to book a flight from CHM (Columbus, OH) to ISP (Islip, NY) for 4 people. Found a great fare at a great time on Orbitz, went to purchase the fare, only to find out that it was sold out. I searched again several hours later, only to have the same sold out fare come up again!

What should have been a 15 minute process to buy the tickets on Orbitz ended up being 2 hours of frustration on the phone to Orbitz customer service, checking other services (I had great luck with sidestep.com and qixo.com), and checking airline websites.

I will never use Orbitz again after this experience!

Thanks for all in the info in your response. I guess I'm still a little more comfortable with the bricks and mortar consolidators, who often have similar fares, but I'll be less concerned about using ORBITZ or any of the other sites after reading your opinions.