A Small Step for Flights Search

In my quest for the ultimate flight search engine, I came across Yahoo! Farechase, which has implemented some good ideas. Unlike Yahoo Travel flight search, it doesn't rely on one data source, but goes around and searches on other popular travel sites.

There are some things I like a lot.

First of all, it saves your recent searches (and their lowest prices) in a dropdown on the top. Finally, a site that recognizes that you are really researching prices for a trip and that you're not going to enter wildly different destinations or dates each time you return to the site.

Second, I like that their date entry field is free text, not three individual text fields. However, they should accept any entry format: It shouldn't matter if you type "5.5.2005", "5 May 05" or just "5/5".

Also, it searches nearby airports as well to find lower prices. And, while it searches, it also starts displaying results, which is really quite a feat - no more minute-long waiting in front of a screen that says "Expedia is searching. Please stand by".

As always, many possible improvements remain. For example, why doesn't it search days close to your given dates to find even better deals?

But, as far as flight search goes, Farechase is very good. Kudos to the people at the big Y.