As a small business owner, you need to schedule travel wisely, balancing things like cost, time, and hassle. Being able to work while traveling is a huge advantage, and so is scheduling the perfect flights getting you where you need to go with as little time wasted as possible.
We have researched the current online tools and come up with our top 3 list of the best online flight tools.
1. SkyScanner.com SkyScanner.com is an excellent tool for quickly seeing where the pricing is for a potential trip. It will sort through thousands of options and give you a stacking report of pricing and airline. One of our favorite features is to leave the destination open ended and let the tool run through all destinations and stack them. While not great for a set city pair need, it is an interesting tool for planning a potential holiday. One word of caution, in researching these tools, we found that most of them including SkyScanner.com do not have api access to all airlines. So keep an open mind when using the tools that they are not necessarily all inclusive with their data. Missing your favorite airline? It is likely because the airline has refused the site’s api request. The lesson here is to use more than one tool, and to always start the search by going to your preferred airline’s site.
2. Expedia.com Expedia has been around for a long time. In our opinion their strength is for planning package deals with flights and hotels, so this may not align with the needs of a small business owner. But the robust data set is superior to many on this list and places Expedia in a strong second place showing. The added benefit of also being able to use this tool to book a hotel room is a big plus.
3. JetBlue While we are a huge fan of Delta, we cannot pass up the best airline pricing tool, which is offered by JetBlue Airline. What a fantastic and well thought out travel tool. The flexibility and pricing transparency is excellent. We cannot recommend it highly enough. Of course, only offering up their own data places them below the multi-carrier tools, but JetBlue at #3 is a well deserved place on our list.
Let us know if you have used any of these sites and how it went for you. Also let us know of any tools we may have missed in our research.
Having worked in the ainilre industry, the rules are very complex and you need a mainframe to keep track of them. :-)It depends on when you book your travel (7 days, 14 days in advance, etc.) and who else the ainilre competes against on that O&D (Origin / Desatination) pair. The USAir/United deal is a codeshare flight. USAir pays United a fee on every ticket they purchase on one of their flights. Probably the fee is much less than what UAL is charging, so USAir can charge less. If you think ainilre ticket pricing is bad, go car shopping. Good luck getting the same price from 2 different dealerships on any given day.On another note, I came up with this nickname after they did the name change:US Airways = Usually Standing Around In Rage With All Your Stuff.Cheers…Eric
Having worked in the airinle industry, the rules are very complex and you need a mainframe to keep track of them. :-)It depends on when you book your travel (7 days, 14 days in advance, etc.) and who else the airinle competes against on that O&D (Origin / Desatination) pair. The USAir/United deal is a codeshare flight. USAir pays United a fee on every ticket they purchase on one of their flights. Probably the fee is much less than what UAL is charging, so USAir can charge less. If you think airinle ticket pricing is bad, go car shopping. Good luck getting the same price from 2 different dealerships on any given day.On another note, I came up with this nickname after they did the name change:US Airways = Usually Standing Around In Rage With All Your Stuff.Cheers…Eric