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Comment by antoko | Hacker News Reader

Kayak is great (was?) but Hipmunk is more than up to the task of filling the void if Priceline ruin Kayak.

Congrats to the Kayak folks I guess, when they got into the industry they really raised the bar.

Before Kayak I remember having to use Expedia and Orbitz and just having to accept their crappy UI because there simply were no alternatives.

View on HN

http://www.google.com/flights/?hl=en&gl=us#search;f=LAX;...

versus

http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/LAX-to-SFO#!dates=Nov09,Nov16...

I respect what Hipmunk is trying to do, but I really doubt they are filling voids outside of "this" community. I find it much harder to scan, slower to load, and having lower quality tools for finding alternate (or cheaper) fares.

I tried the Google tool...

"Sorry, flights from Germany are not currently supported."

"Sorry, flights from Italy are not currently supported."

"Sorry, flights from United Kingdom are not currently supported."

Wonderful. I can find flights from New York to London, but not vice versa.

It's interesting, considering they will provide round-trip flights and list the London to NY flight(s) as a separate item, which would make me think the data is there.

There's also:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/CheapFlights?geo=1&travelers=...

More Kayak-like in terms of the results list. Cheapest rates match Hipmunk, though curiously for different flights.

Hopefully Priceline will learn some improvements from Kayak and not try to force changes the other direction. Kayak has a great UI overall, but the explore interface is pure awesome: http://www.kayak.com/explore/

Visually that kind of interface is very appealing, but fares may be misleading... once you start the booking process, you will end up with completely different numbers. Typically, a featured "as low as $" air fare is a red eye, 8 hour connection time etc. I was going to output specials myself too, but then commented them out - as they hardly ever apply.

That being said, Kayak does have a great UI, and their iOS apps are eye candy.

I see Hipmunk still doesn't track budget airlines in Europe (eg, EasyJet).

Which makes it fairly useless to me, and absolutely not a replacement for Kayak.

Do any flight search tools track budget airlines?

Adioso was adding a lot of budget airlines up until recently. It's worth checking out.

Another site for budget airlines is travelfusion.com They also have an API

skyscanner.net does (or has done in the past anyway!)

Still does. They've got almost every European budget airline, actually. And I hear they have pretty good coverage of the Asian market, too.

Hipmunk does have EasyJet, in fact.

For example: http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/BCN-to-CDG#!dates=Dec31

Hipmunk has a much better interface, and considering it's also an aggregator, much better at helping me quickly find flights or hotels.

disagree. kayak provides filters in exactly the way that makes sense to me. i've tried hipmunk and google and always come back to kayak.

I find hipmunk better for optimizing schedule, kayak for optimizing price.

I was getting ready to say almost the exact same thing -- thank heavens that Hipmunk came when it did, or that acquisition (if soured) would have left a very large hole in my travel-making tools.

I don't particularly like Kayak, but as a matter of effectiveness, there's no doubt that it was pretty much king of the hill for a good long while. Since Hipmunk's inception though, it has definitely been the 'go-to' place for travel-planning, and beats the nearest competition (that I've used) by a mile.

I would also venture to say that this was perhaps a timely exit for Kayak, as the more and more traction Hipmunk sees, the less off the Kayak founders would have been for an exit.

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