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Archive-name: travel/air/online-info
Last-modified: 2004/05/16
No changes from last week.
Please look through this entire FAQ, particularly the PLEASE NOTE at the end,
before e-mailing me a question or comment, since most of the questions I get
are already answered in the FAQ.
* April 2004 update
The airline industry is in lousy shape. (So what else is new?) Planes are
quite full, schedules just now getting back to what they were in 2001,
National, Midway and Vanguard Airlines are out of business, United, Hawaiian,
and Air Canada are flying in bankruptcy and are squabbling with their unions.
(United's hanging on, trying to get out of bankruptcy, but it has such
valuable routes that they'll be reincarnated as something if they go. Air
Canada will survive in some form since it's the only airline in most of
Canada. Too soon to tell for Hawaiian, maybe Aloha will absorb the corpse.) US
Airways emerged from bankruptcy but is still financially fragile and is
threatening bankruptcy again. The only major U.S. airlines currently making
money are low fare carriers Southwest, Jet Blue, Frontier, and Airtran. Since
early 2003 there's been a mild industry recovery, but it only improved the
situation from really, really bad to merely really bad.
Passengers are subject to much more extensive screening than in the past,
including screening of checked baggage at check-in time, so airlines recommend
arriving at least an hour earlier than before. In my experience the extra
delay is rarely more than 15 minutes, even with the extra baggage screening,
although I usually fly out of smaller airports, not big hubs where you can get
the killer two hour lines. The new government-operated TSA has taken over
screening at most airports, to relatively positive reviews, although there
still can be great inconsistency in procedures from one airport to another.
Foreign airlines are flying to and from the U.S. normally.
Other changes include: some airports have stopped curb-side baggage check,
anything vaguely resembling a knife may or may not be confiscated, you're
often only allowed one carry-on plus a purse, briefcase, diaper bag or the
like, non-passengers aren't allowed past security without a gate pass from an
airline, all passengers must have a boarding pass (not just a copy of the
itinerary) at most airports to get past security, some parking areas close to
terminals are closed. But check-in clerks no longer have to ask you whether
you packed your own suitcase. In theory a boarding pass you printed from an
airline's web site is valid for getting through security, in practice the TSA
agents sometimes don't understand what they are and will send you back to the
counter to get a "real" one.
* What's in this FAQ?
There's an enormous amount of information available on the Web about airlines
and aviation. This FAQ concentrates on two things: schedules, fares,
reservations, and tickets for commercial airlines, and on-line travel agents.
We list both airline-sponsored and independent information.
The first parts of this FAQ discuss on-line sources of airline schedules and
fares, of which there are several general-purpose services.
After that it lists airlines that have any of online schedules, fares,
reservations, ticket sales, and flight status.
Next comes a listing of on-line specials, sources of special fares and other
deals available over the net. Many airlines have short-notice specials which
are worth checking out.
The rest of the FAQ lists travel agents that offer service over the net and
have indicated that they'd like to be listed. I am not a travel agent (I
consult and write computer books which you can find out about in my web site
at http://www.johnlevine.com, and have only one client in the travel industry,
Orbitz) and the agent listings are provided free to any agent that asks and
sends in a short description of what he or she offers.
* Where is this FAQ available?
It's on the Web at http://airline.iecc.com, and perhaps at mirror sites.
Anyone is welcome to mirror the HTML version of this FAQ so long as the mirror
is kept up to date with the original. If you make a mirror, please let me know
by e-mail so I can tell you when there are updated
versions.
You can also get it by e-mail every Sunday. To get on the mailing list, send a
message to majordomo@lists.iecc.com containing the line "subscribe airline".
(Don't type the quotes, nor any other punctuation.)
* How do on-line reservations work?
Four giant airline computer systems in the United States handle nearly all the
airline reservations in the country. (They're known as CRSs, for computer
reservations systems, or more often now GDS for global distribution systems.)
Although each airline has a ``home'' CRS, the systems are all interlinked so
that you can, with few exceptions, buy tickets for any airline from any CRS.
The dominant systems in the U.S. are Sabre (home to American and US Airways),
Galileo (home to United), Worldspan (home to Delta, Northwest), and Amadeus
(Continental and many European lines.) Many of the low-price start-up airlines
don't participate in any of these systems but have their own Web sites where
you can check flights and buy tickets. Southwest, the largest and oldest of
the low-price airlines, doesn't participate, either. Southwest's web site gets
car and hotel info from Galileo, but the info seems not to flow the other way.
In theory, all the systems show the same data; in practice, however, they get
a little out of sync with each other. If you're looking for seats on a
sold-out flight, an airline's home system is most likely to have that last,
elusive seat. If you're looking for the lowest fare to somewhere, check all
four systems because a fare that's marked as sold out on one system often
mysteriously reappears on another system. Some airlines have rules about
flight segments that are not supposed to be sold together even though they're
all available, and at least once I got a cheap US Airways ticket on Expedia,
which didn't know about all the US Airways rules even though I couldn't on
their own site or Travelocity which did know about them. On the other hand,
many airlines have available some special deals that are only on their own Web
sites and maybe a few of the online agencies. Confused? You should be. We are.
The confusion is even worse if you want to fly internationally. Official fares
to most countries are set via a treaty organization called the IATA, so most
computer systems list only IATA fares for international flights. It's easy to
find entirely legal ``consolidator'' tickets sold for considerably less than
the official price, however, so an online or offline agent is extremely useful
for getting the best price. The airlines also can have some impressive online
offers on their web sites.
Here's our distilled wisdom about buying tickets online:
* Check the online systems to see what flights are available and for an idea
of the price ranges. Check more than one CRS. For tickets within the U.S. and
Canada, the prices in the CRS are for the most part the real prices that
people are paying.
* After you have found a likely airline, check that airline's site to see
whether it has any special Web-only deals. If a low-fare airline has the
route, be sure to check that one too, since most low-fare airlines don't
appear in CRS listings.
* If your schedule is flexible, check ticket bidding sites including Hotwire
(http://www.hotwire.com) and Priceline (http://www.priceline.com) and ticket
auctions such as Sky Auction (http://www.skyauction.com/).
* Particularly if you don't qualify for the lowest fare visible on the CRS,
check with a travel agent to see whether he can beat the online price, and buy
your tickets from the agent unless the online deal is better. Most agents get
no commission on fares visible on the CRS, so you can expect an agent to
charge you for ticking them.
* For international tickets, do all the steps above in this list, and then
check both online and with your agent for consolidator tickets. This is
particularly important if you don't qualify for the lowest published fare. See
Edward Hasbrouck's Consolidators and Bucket Shops FAQ
(http://hasbrouck.org/faq) for much more detailed information on consolidator
tickets.
* How can I get airline schedules on the Internet?
There are many sources listed below. Many of them will also let you book and
buy tickets. Until mid-1996 there were paid services were considerably better
than the free ones, but now I find that the free services are just as good.
* What's available on the Internet?
There are now several Internet gateways to airline CRS (computer reservation
systems) described later in this section. Also check this interesting
comparison of many of them (http://www.travelterminal.com/cgi-bin/compare.pl).
* Are these the same systems that travel agents use?
The underlying data are the same, but the interface is different. Some data
are visible to agents, but not to these systems. A good way to work is to make
the best reservation you can on-line, then call a travel agent, tell him what
you've reserved, and see if he can do better.
* How do I get access to them?
Most of these systems are provided through web sites. Many of the sites use
frames and SSL secure connections so you need a relatively recent browser such
as Opera, Netscape 6.0 or later, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.
A few systems provide their own software which invariably run on Windows
95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP.
Travelocity: Travelocity (http://www.travelocity.com) is an online agent owned
by Sabre. Travelocity merged with Preview Travel in a complex transaction in
which the surviving company was Preview but was renamed to Travelocity and was
eventually repurchased by Sabre. You need to provide a credit card number to
make reservations, but they won't charge you until you tell them to. Tickets
can be issued as e-tickets or, at extra cost, by mail. There is also a great
deal of travel destination information of variable usefulness. Unlike most
other web-based systems, it lets you hold a reservation without buying it.
Also handles hotels and rental cars. A nice fare watcher feature lets you list
a few routes you're interested in, and it sends you e-mail when an interesting
fare becomes available. They have a Travel Deals page that often has private
fares, two-for-one deals, and the like.
Some fares are marked "good buy" which means that they're only available on
Travelocity. But that doesn't mean that they're any cheaper than other fares.
All fares now include a $5/ticket service fee.
Travelocity includes a "last minute deals" feature which is a rebranded
version of Site59 (http://www.site59.com), which Travelocity owns.
Expedia: Expedia (http://www.expedia.com) was Microsoft's flashy entrant into
the web travel biz. In July 2001 they sold a controlling interest to USA
Networks, owner of Home Shopping Network and other great cultural monuments.
In August 2003, the two companies were merged under the extremely trendy name
of IAC/InterActive Corp, along with hotels.com, Match.com and LendingTree. It
still has that Microsoft feel, although I can hardly wait to see them start
cross-selling. The site is garish, but it's reasonably easy to negotiate and
to find schedules and fares. Underlying info is from Worldspan, prices now
include a $5 per ticket service fee. You have to provide a credit card number
to make a reservation, even if you don't want to buy immediately. Early on,
when I tried to reserve, it said it the credit card link was down, no
reservations possible, call a number in Florida if it's urgent. Yeah, right.
(At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1.) It seems to work better now. There's also
lots of promos and tie-ins, with Expedia-only special fares. You can sign up
for weekly e-mail about best fares on routes you select. Your web browser must
accept cookies or Expedia doesn't work.
Worldspan (http://www.worldspan.com) is another large international CRS. They
provide a Web availability and pricing system, which underlies the web sites
of participating agents as well as the Delta and Northwest web sites, only
available via customer sites, not on their own site. It's the system that
underlies Expedia (described above) and Orbitz (described below).
Apollo systems:
Internet Travel Network (http://www.itn.net) is now part of American Express.
It's a WWW-based flight booking system. You make reservations, using Apollo,
which are then ticketed by American Express, unless you entered via another
agency's web site. Several other sites on the net including several airlines
have ``private label'' connections to ITN, but it's the same system, usually
just with slightly different screen backgrounds and titles. The base ITN
system uses data from Apollo, but apparently some of the private label
versions use other CRS. Now that Easy Sabre is gone, this is the only system I
know that can display available fare classes, an important feature for some
kinds of discounts and special fares. It also displays an approximate number
of seats available in each fare class, useful both for guessing whether you
need to buy a cheap ticket right away, and for seeing which flights are likely
to have seats available for upgrades to first class. Set your display
preferences to ``expert.''
* Sidestep
Sidestep (http://www.sidestep.com) searches multiple airline web sites to find
the lowest fares, along with promotions like weekend fares and extra frequent
flyer miles. You download and install an add-in to Internet Explorer so it
only runs on Windows with IE. It's gotten wonderful reviews but when I've
tried to use it I haven't been very impressed with what it found, no better
than fare searches at Travelocity, often worse than Orbitz. It splatters your
browser, desktop, toolbar, and start menu with icons which is really annoying.
* OneTravel
OneTravel (http://www.onetravel.com) offers booking and ticketing. (They
recently absorbed FLIFO.) A "fare beater" feature searches negotiated and
"white label" fares. Similar data to Travelocity, less flashy, but less buggy,
too. Data from Amadeus. In some quick tests, Travelocity found fares that they
didn't and vice versa, with Travelocity's lower.
* Orbitz
Orbitz (http://www.orbitz.com), intended to be the "killer" airline ticket web
site. It's owned by United, Northwest, Continental, Delta, and American, with
at least 25 other airlines as affiliates. It has a very nice lowest fare
search engine. You can tell it to add alternate airport within 70 miles, and
it gives you the possible routings, cheapest first. It now lets you give a
range of dates, or say that you want to take a weekend trip in a particular
month, and it gives you a grid showing the lowest available fare for each
combination of departure and return dates. They promise unbiased fare and
schedule listings, and have agreements with affiliate airlines to include all
publicly available fares (a term that is harder to define than it looks) such
as web specials. Their search engine does a more thorough job than others
(it's written in Lisp and runs on PCs, the others are written in assembler on
mainframes) so it'll often find fares and connections that are entirely valid
but not shown on other systems. They also have some spiffy customer service,
e.g., they can call you or send a text message to your mobile phone or PDA a
few hours before flight time to tell you your gate and whether there are
delays. They charge a service fee of $6 per ticket. (Disclaimer: I am a paid
member of Orbitz' Consumer Advisory Board.)
* Galileo
Trip.com (http://www.trip.com) has been merged into Cheap Tickets.
Cheap Tickets (http://www.cheaptickets.com) originally sold mostly cheap
tickets to Hawaii, but is now a general purpose online agent. I gather that
unlike most other web sites, the live agents at their 800 number have access
to fares not on the web site and often not available through other sites.
Owned by Cendant, which recently bought Galileo and owns a whole bunch of
familiar travel names including Avis. Travelodge, and Howard Johnson.
* Amadeus
AmadeusLink (http://www.amadeus.net/), the successor to System One which
started a long time ago as Eastern Airlines' reservation system, has now grown
into an enormous international CRS called Amadeus, with a bunch of attractive
web pages. They offer extensive schedule and availability info, along with
rental car, hotel, and destination info. For bookings, you need to use a
subscribing travel agency, such as one of the agent systems that link to
Amadeus such as TripWeb and Travelweb, below. The AmadeusLink booking systems
all link into the same site, so other than some of the graphics, the function
they provide is identical. Once you've made a reservation on an Amadeus site
or through an Amadeus agent, Check My Trip (https://www.checkmytrip.com/) lets
you look up bookings if you have the six-character locator code and the
traveller's last name.
TripWeb (http://www.tripweb.com) is run by a Florida travel agency and offers
search and bookings through Amadeus, with free ticket delivery. Underneath
it's ITN, but it uses Amadeus for underlying data.
Travelweb (http://www.travelweb.com) has a lot of travel info, graphics that
look like they were drawn with a crayon (it's an aesthetic effect, I guess),
and airline reservations via Expedia.
* Fare searches and comparisons
ITA Software (http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch) builds the search
engine used by Orbitz and an increasing number of airline sites, and you can
use a copy of the latest version of their search system. No booking, you have
to take what you find and book elsewhere.
Qixo (http://www.qixo.com) searches two dozen airline sites and returns a
combined list of the lowest fares found for route. If you book through them,
there's a $20 booking fee, but of course once you know the airline and times,
there's nothing keeping you from booking up the same flights on another site.
Air Fare Scout (http://www.airfarescout.com) offers a low-fare search service.
They sell tickets (via an 800 number) and offer slighty better fares if you
join their $30/yr VIP club. The last time I checked I got an awful lot of
Microsoft SQL Server error messages rather than fare quotes.
Cheap Flights (http://www.CheapFlights.com) offers a nice search engine for
low cost tickes to US and international destinations. Not a travel agency,
they link to other agents and airlines where they presumably collect a
referral fee (which is fine, it doesn't affect the price of the ticket.) It's
the same people as Apple Fares, listed next.
Sky Scanner (http://www.skyscanner.net) offers an excellent search engine for
cheap flights within the UK and Europe. Don't miss their month views with
little bar charts of daily fares.
Flight Atlas (http://www.flightatlas.com/) offers cute animated maps showing
what routes are available among European airports, with links to the airlines
serving them. (To me it looks like of like a game of Battleship.)
SimplyQuick (http://travel.simplyquick.com/discount-airfares/) is an
independent guide to who's cheapest online for discount airfares, based on a
large survey of the top 8 online booking services, and providing a search
tailored city by city (US only). They also rate online travel agents and
travel service web sites. They're in New Zealand, but most of the info is for
US travellers.
Discounted international tickets: Apple Fares (http://www.applefares.com) has
an excellent search engine for low-cost European airlines. You can search both
for specific dates and destinations and for more general questions like
weekend trips from London to Spain two weeks from now.
AirTreks (http://www.airtreks.com) has a spiffy web site that helps construct
and price multi-stop and round-the-world international travel. They're a
travel agency, the site estimates the price, exact prices and tickets come
from live agents at the agency. (That's what you want, no computer can
navigate the swamp of international routes and fares very well.)
Farepoint (http://www.farepoint.co.uk/) provides a large database of fares via
UK travel agents. The site links to some of the agents who offer their
service.
Flights.com (http://www.flights.com) (formerly called TISS) is an online
database in Germany with current airfares provided by a group of
consolidators. They offer departures from a lot of different countries, now
including the U.S. They claim the prices they offer are the best available.
For routes within the US they act as a front end to flifo. One reader reports
a bad experience with their US agent, rebooking his reservation in a way that
lost the discount fare he'd reserved, although he'd had good results with
their UK agent.
Air Fare (http://www.air-fare.com) tracks lowest fares among major U.S.
cities, with daily updates of significantly lower fares. Worldspan-based Res
and ticketing also available.
* Real-time flight status and information
The extremely cool service from TheTrip (http://www.trip.com/) (scroll down to
Flight Tracker on their home page) gives you a real-time position map and ETA
for most domestic flights. Choice of plain text or way beyond cool animated
Java relief maps, and you can tell it to send e-mail when the plane arrives,
or an hour or two before. If you haven't already got your ticket, they offer
ITN for info and ticketing.
Microsoft Expedia (http://expedia.msn.com) now has real-time flight ops
including times and gates for major US airlines.
The Track A Flight (http://www.trackaflight.com/) service (formerly Flyte
Trax, same organization as flytecomm.com) also provides real-time position map
and ETA for most domestic flights, by flight number, or departing or arriving
airports. It's as nice as TheTrip.
Flight Arrivals (http://www.flightarrivals.com/) offers impressively complete
arrival info for most US airports. (It even has info for the teensy Ithaca NY
airport.) No maps, but lots of data.
* What about the airlines' own web sites??
Many airlines are on the World Wide Web. Five good directories of them are:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Travel_and_Transportation/Airlines/
http://www.airlineguide.info http://smilinjack.com/airlines.htm
http://flyaow.com/
This list contains only airlines sites that have schedule or booking
information available; see the pages mentioned above for lots of other airline
web pages with other info.
In the discussions below, flight ops means flight operations, that is, delays,
gates, cancellations, and the like. Ticketless ticketing means that rather
than issuing a real ticket, the airline sends you a receipt with a ticket
number. You cite that number and show ID when you check in. They send the
receipt via e-mail, fax, or (if there's time) snail mail. You pay with a
credit card.
This list is for North American (U.S., Canada, Mexico, and nearby islands)
airlines. The next section lists airlines elsewhere in the world.
Air Aruba (http://www.interknowledge.com/air-aruba/) has a rather dusty page
with limited route and contact info, on which the most useful item is that
they don't fly any more.
Air Canada (http://www.aircanada.ca/schedules/) has schedule info,
reservations, ticketing, and weekly Websaver special fares. Aussi disponible
en francais (http://www.aircanada.ca/francais/horaires/). You can also
download a 400K PC version of the entire schedule.
Air St Pierre (http://209.205.50.254/AspWeb/) flies from St Pierre (which, for
those who slept through geography class, is a French island near Newfoundland)
to nearby points. Schedule and fares, in French.
Airtran (http://www.airtran.com), a low-fare airline in the eastern U.S., has
schedules, reservations, ticketless ticketing, special offers, and an e-mail
specials newsletter.
Air Transat (http://www.airtransat.com) is a Canadian scheduled charter line
that flies to the US, the Caribbean, and Europe. Well-organized web site has
schedules, reservations, and flight ops.
Alaska Airlines (http://www.alaska-air.com/) has a web site with flight info,
reservations, ticketless ticketing, and special offers. On-line tickets get
250 bonus miles, more for e-tickets and automated checkin. The reservation
system finally seems to be working reliably, new design is pretty but not as
cute as the old retro design. Downloadable PDF schedule, too.
America West (http://www.americawest.com) has schedule info, reservations, and
ticketless ticketing in a site that is quite attractive now that the images
hold still. Weekly web specials for both air and air/land packages.
American Airlines (http://www.aa.com/) has a newly redesigned very blue web
site with schedules, fares, and flight ops. Reservations and ticketing
available, using the Orbitz booking and search engine. (So much for the
company that built Sabre in the first place, 40 years ago.) They also offer
timetables (http://www.aatimetable.com) in various online and printable
formats.
ALM (http://www.airalm.com/) flies to and from the Netherlands Antilles.
Routes, schedules, destination info, and occasional specials.
American Trans Air (http://www.ata.com) has a web site with schedules, fares,
flight ops. Reservations provided through a system which appears to be a
private label version of Travelocity. They currently offer a free companion
ticket after three round trips, free ticket after six round trips, for travel
booked on their web site.
Amtrak (http://www.amtrak.com) isn't an airline, but they're competitive on
many routes in urban parts of the U.S., and have scenic long distance routes.
Schedule info and reservations available, although the reservation system can
be awfully slow.
Bearskin Airlines (http://www.bearskinairlines.com/) flies small planes around
northern Ontario and Manitoba with hubs in bustling Thunder Bay and Sioux
Lookout. Sounds like fun. Info and reservations via a private label version of
Amadeus. The logo sweatshirts are attractive but seem a little pricey at
C$49.95.
BWIA (http://www.bwee.com/) flies to, from, and around the Caribbean. They
have a separate site (http://www.bwee-ticket.com), if you want to buy tickets
rather than just look at their soothing green web site.
Canadian Airlines (http://www.cdnair.ca) has been absorbed into Air Canada,
familiarly known as Mapleflot.
Continental (http://www.continental.com) has a spiffy new design with schedule
info, on-line booking, and flight status. CO.O.L. system offers a general
purpose reservation system with hotels and cars as well as flights, with the
same features as Microsoft's Expedia. Currently offering up to 1000 extra FF
miles for tickets bought on-line. Weekly specials via mailing list or web
site. (CO.O.L. requires cookies.)
Cubana (http://www.cubana.cu/) flies from Havana to points in Europe and the
Americas. Schedules, destinations, and fleet info. I wonder where they get the
spare parts for their DC-10 and 727.
Delta (http://www.delta.com) has fares, schedules, on-line ticketing, and
flight ops. Currently offering up to 1000 extra FF miles for tickets bought
on-line.
Firstair (http://www.firstair.ca/), a Canadian regional airline, has schedule
info. (Finally, you can get from North America to Greenland without flying
through Iceland.)
The current incarnation of Frontier (http://www.frontierairlines.com/) is a
low-fare line with a hub at Denver flying to points in the US and Mexico. Site
has reservations, flight ops.
Great Plains Airlines (http://www.gpair.com/) is a low-fare carrier with a hub
in St Louis.
Interstate Jet (http://www.flyijet.com/) is a low fare public charter line
flying from Atlanta to a few cities in the east central US. Schedule and fare
info (much of which is way out of date) and online reservations.
Jet Blue (http://www.jetblue.com), an airline that may yet bring sane airfares
to upstate New York, has an elegant web site with routes, fares, and on-line
ticket sales, Don't miss the rotating 3-D Airbus A320, even though it does
make Internet Exploder crash.
LIAT (http://www.flyliat.com), who island-hop in the Caribbean, had a web site
with a route map, promises of schedule and fare info, and an impressive range
of other stuff, from company history to downloadable Flight Simulator modules,
except now their domain appears to be inactive.. It also warned about a pirate
site (http://www.liat.com) which purports to be LIAT but in fact appears to be
a travel agency squatting on a similar domain name.
Midway Airlines (http://www.midwayair.com/), isn't flying. Apparently they're
in the process of morphing into a feeder for US Airways.
Midwest Express (http://www.midwestexpress.com/) has routes, schedules, and
fares. Also reservations through what appears to be a private label version of
Travelocity.
National Airlines (http://www.nationalairlines.com), a low-fare startup with a
hub in Las Vegas ceased operations the first week in November 2002.
New England Airlines (http://www.block-island.com/flybi/sumsched.html) flies
between Block Island RI and Westerly RI. Schedule and fare info, reservations
via an e-mail form.
Northwest Airlines (http://www.nwa.com) has schedule, fares, reservations, and
flight ops, using the Orbitz booking and search engine. Weekly Cybersaver
specials offered, book through the web site for the lowest price. On-line
store offers a $12.99 plush moose and a $279 1/100 scale 747-400. That's only
$10/inch!
Pan Am (http://www.flypanam.com) flies 727s has its hub at Portsmouth NH and
flies between the northestern US and Canada and Florida and the Caribbean.
It's owned by the parent company of the Boston and Maine railroad and has no
connection to the old Pan Am other than buying the logo. Online schedules,
reservations, and destination info.
Royal Airlines (http://www.royalairlines.com) has shut down.
Song (http://www.flysong.com)is Delta's low-cost airline within an airline.
Their web site is all fluffy and beautiful and offers the same stuff as
everyone else, schedules, reservations, flight ops, and online checkin. For
some unfathomable reason, Delta's regular web site doesn't include Song
flights.
Southwest Airlines (http://www.iflyswa.com) has schedules and fares, and now
reservations and ticketless ticketing. The graphics are still too big, but the
site loads faster than it used to. Mailing list for weekly specials.
Spirit (http://www.spiritair.com) is a low-cost airline that flies between
Florida and the northeast and midwest, and also from Detroit and Chicago to
California. Has schedules, reservations, and weekly "syber" specials. You can
change the name on any ticket for $25. Wow!
Sun Country (http://www.suncountry.com/), a regional airline headquartered in
Minneapolis, stopped scheduled service as of December 8th. They still do
vacation charters.
Ted (http://www.flyted.com) is United's low-cost airline within an airline.
Their previous attempt, Shuttle by United, failed dismally, but what the heck,
maybe the laws of economics are different this year. The web site is United's
with minor cosmetic changes. Either the United version or the Ted version
shows you the same flights and fares. Join the Ted Club which appears to be
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