Last week, news of a new search engine, Insidetrip.com, hit the blog-o-sphere and due to an unfortunate fascination with cookingforengineers.com I just got around to testing it this weekend.
Like most aggregators, Insidetrip provides a wealth of data, and I think you can feel pretty confident that they’re finding you the lowest available price on your itinerary. But anybody can do that these days.
What makes their engine special is the other factors that they display along with the fare — factors that rate the quality of the trip. Some, like number of connections, are obvious, while others such as aircraft age are more subtle. But depending on which of these factors you find important, you can leaf through the various fares to see what’s available at a particular “Trip Quality”, as they put it. They even go so far as to rate every itinerary by its quality, so you can easily pick out the least strenuous trip.
The one thing I feel is missing so far is the ability to flex search. It’s so important for me to use the ± 1 day function when booking an itinerary; that extra day can cause significant price fluctuations. After all, I and many other people would probably chuck all of the comfort, speed and ease factors out the window if the ticket was twenty bucks cheaper.
All in all it’s a great site though and I recommend taking a look at it. It may be a little too busy for my likes, but I think many people will find it very useful.