New(ish) Travel Site

As I was reading boston.com this Friday, I came upon an article in the travel section that caught my attention. Although published back in the spring, I haven't seen much publicity or fanfare around InsideTrip.com.  According to Boston Globe " For each search, InsideTrip provides not just fares but also evaluations of what Pelter calls 12 "pain points." These include the amount of legroom in a cabin, how often the flight is on time, the aircraft type (larger jets get higher ratings), how crowded a specific flight typically is, and if you can walk to your connection. It even considers how long it usually takes to get through the security checkpoint nearest the gate.

Each flight is given an overall trip quality rating, which is displayed on the right side of the search results as a score out of 100. There are also Consumer Reports-style symbols rating speed, comfort, and ease in five levels, from poor to excellent."

Pluses: Easy to customize scoring system to eliminate things you dont care about such as security wait time, for instance.

Minuses: Summed up again by Boston Globe
"This system is not perfect. For example, for its lost bags ratings, the site uses Transportation Department statistics, which track mishandled bags by carriers, not by individual flights. Another ratings category - aircraft age - is the average for an airline's fleet, rather than for a specific flight. And lost luggage rankings and security wait times aren't available for international flights.


Because InsideTrip uses Orbitz for airline ticketing and customer service, it doesn't include some airlines like Southwest. And since the site is still in test mode, users could experience site shutdowns, slow search times, and other issues as the site works out kinks. For now, it is accessible only using Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.0 and later versions."