We've been doing those sorts of radius searches for years, although we don't currently integrate street-level data for any customers that I know of. Head to http://matrix2.itasoftware.com, put in where you are, then click "Nearby" - the default is 50 miles, even! Then ask for a calendar of lowest fares. You can even tell it "I want to stay 2-5 nights".
Many of our customers have something similar, but it's not always on the front page.
I need hopefully need to fly to Salt Lake City in Febuary and I'm staying for about 1-2 months
- I search for "Iceland -> Salt lake city" for 50 nights => $2,441 (many dates)
- I search for "Iceland -> New York" for 50 nights => $454 (many dates)
- I search for "New York -> Salt Lake City" for 50 nights => $350 (af few dates)
So If I do it manually from Iceland to new york and then book a flight some other dates from NYC->SLC, I save $1,637 ... that's a lot of savings
I understand that that is a hard problem to solve, but if it can be handled by a computer one day, my life will be better!
If you miss a connecting flight, you will be re-booked on the next flight, but it all stays within the context of your fare. Not so if you split up your journey into two distinct tickets. However, a lot of people won't mind this.
In your example, you can split up your travel dates, and use part of the $1600 you saved to stay a few days in New York. I like to do exactly this - the cheapest trans-Atlantic flights are offered by charter airlines from London, and I like to make time for a few days stay there when flying from continental Europe.
Not a big chance of missing your next flight with that kind of window. Even if you know you are going to miss the next flight, with most airlines (but very rarely with charters) you can re-book up to an hour or so before boarding, for a fee that may be less than the difference in ticket prices you would have paid anyway.
This also works for round-trip flights. I often book round-trip flights as two different tickets. A lot of the time it is cheaper, but it also offers more flexibility (remember, you have to pay change fee and ticket price differences - and the airline might only have expensive fares available!) in case you want to change one of the departure or return flights (but obviously not both, as then you're paying 2x the change fees).
Of course, what I haven't said yet is how difficult this will be to pull off. Any travel company that does this will be boycotted by all major airlines. Many fares you're bound to buy this way are sold at a loss (better to sell for something than have an 80% empty plane flying and get nothing is one way to put it; there really is no easy way to price flights - most airlines have teams of math and OR PhDs working on pricing). The multi-flight fares usually have a larger margin tacked on.
The only way to solve this problem is really to nuke the existing fare system and start over. As long as "flagship" airlines keep getting bailed out by the government, they will be able to undercut the competition (and themselves) into bankruptcy with the irrational fare arrangements.
I live in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina or Sao Paulo, Brazil are major hubs nearby (especially Buenos Aires which is an U$ 30 trip).
Last trip I made to Toronto (Canada) I just booked from Buenos Aires, and saved about U$ 400.
There's also the visa restrictions you have to factor in - for example I can't take any flight with stopovers at the United States because said country is stupid and requires visas for stopovers (!!!) - end result is I won't travel to the US, they've lost at least a few thousand bucks of my tourist money, make me book different carriers (I used Air Canada even though an US-based airline would have been cheaper) and make my life more difficult.
So, booking a flight requires nontrivial calculations for me :(
I want to know which is the easiest and cheapest way to get from point X to point Y (with a few options/alternatives I can choose from) at a rough time range. And that is any possible combination of train, car or airplane or whatever.
The nearby-feature is already nice (and I haven't even really seen that elsewhere) but I still found myself too limited. For example I don't care if I have to travel maybe 500km or even 1000km by train to another airport if that can save me 500€ or so.
The user experience of the Cleartrip site is startingly similar to that your link leads to.
Note: Tickets cannot be purchased directly from ITA Software. If you find a fare you like, you can give the information from this site to your travel agent or airline when making a booking.
This is a deal breaker. I do not want to contact travel agent OR airline customer rep for booking my tickets. I want to find the best fare, enter my credit card and be done. Also, why should Travel Agent OR airline honor the fare which you posted when we all know that flight ticket pricing is highly dynamic?