Booking Flights Online’s Only Getting More Annoying [Travel]

Great news! Booking flights online is increasingly difficult and worsening. The explanation? As the NYT explains , many airlines are locked in grappling matches with fare aggregators like Orbitz and Expedia over who gets paid how much. Either way, we lose.

American and Delta had been essentially the mostsome of the most active in their site-skirting, ducking out of agreements with popular services like those above in addition as smaller ones, comparable to Bookit.com, Airfare.com, and Vegas.com.

Sabre, a prominent (behind the curtain) network that routes fare information to booking sites, let American understand it’s taking flight of their contract a month early, and should actually go out of their option to make it harder in finding American Airline flights.

So where to turn, when there’s no booking site to rule them all? The Times suggests ITA Software , which serves up data to sites like Orbitz (among many others) within the first place. Meta-search sites like Kayak are also helpful, though again, there’s no definitive stop.

As long as airlines are so strapped for cash that a checked bag costs $25 and a bag of almonds costs $5, slap fights over fare data contracts probably aren’t going to sit back. [ NYT ]

Photo by Rene Schwietzke

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This post is tagged: american airline flights, booking flights, meta search sites, popular services, taking flight