puddle jumper

[totient]

I recently found myself buying a pair of tickets from Kona to Kapalua. AA.com (who I find have the easiest-to-use all-airlines schedule) found me a nonstop with an Aloha Air flightcode for $121 each, plus $5.70 in taxes. AlohaAir.com had the same total price, but claimed that $14.14 of it was tax. Expedia and Travelocity (the latter of whom win the prize for slowest web search) agreed with Aloha about how much was tax, and added a $5 per ticket "booking fee". So far, so straightforward, so much for the online travel agents. But what AA.com didn't reveal is that the flight isn't operated by Aloha, it's operated by Island Air. Buying an Island Air-designated ticket on the same flight on Travelocity lowered the total price to $94.93 each. On Expedia, it was $85.00. And on IslandAir.com, it was $64.27! And the frequent flyer miles are United miles either way.

Comments

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

In case you're curious about the tax thing, there are two taxes on airline tickets in the US: A 7.5% tax on the purchase price, plus a flat $5.70 on top of that. So AA and Aloha were both right.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

You should try our beta test site, matrix.itasoftware.com as well. Several online agencies use our software (including Orbitz, which you didn't try) and I think we do a better job than the others.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Love your product! Been using it for ages.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

That matched Expedia, without charging their $5 fee. I like the UI a little better than AA's, and it was a little quicker, but not tremendously in either case. Orbitz does have the fee (well, it was $4.99 instead of $5), and is less up-front about it, which is a turnoff for me. They were also a lot slower than using your site directly -- almost as slow as Travelocity. Strange.