New FlightChecker Feedback

MSE_Martin · 19 September 2007 at 9:40PM

We've rebuilt the FlightChecker - now called the Budget Airline FlightChecker.

It's now a honed tool which aims to very easily allow you to find when to go away to get the cheapest price. Prices now include taxes and charges, and there are more airlines - including easyjet.

We've still some more tweaks before it officially launches next week but I need your help.

What do you think? Is it easy to use? Any glitches? Any feedback.

All welcome - i hope this is a much more powerful tool than the old checker and much easier to use.

The FlightChecker

Please help us make it perfect

Martin

Streeet · 19 September 2007 at 9:56PM

Doesn't seem to work for me?
I tried to find flights to Newcastle.. i just get bounced back to the original screen with all the boxes reset

Additionally:
Why is the 'All flights between' and 'Or, Exact dates' different text. (Other than ones an image and the other is plain text?

More info:
The error only occurs if I select 'London - ALL' as the departure and 'Newcastle' as the arrival

ukmonkey · 19 September 2007 at 9:59PM

Thanks for funding the production of a great tool Martin! :beer:

My thoughts:

Layout just doesn't look right. Can't pinpoint it down to anything in particular, it just isn't easy on the eyes.

You really should have the airport shortcode in brackets after the airport name. For example, If I know I want to travel to DSA, I might not know what airport DSA is. But if the flightchecker said "Doncaster-Sheffield (DSA)" I would know!

The results it produced were great, and I see no faults there. I must confess I couldn't be bothered to do a manual search to check if the results were 100% correct (i.e that there were no cheaper flights that the flightchecker didn't see).

One thing though, I may well be going mad, but I'm sure when I first went into it and search from Doncaster airport to Orly, it defaulted to "less than £50". It found no results, but then when I ticked the "I'll go anywhere" box (nice touch, and one that few travel agents websites have, such mucho kudos for that!) it defaulted to "less than £20". Like I said, I may be going mad, but I'm almost certain that's what happened....

All in all a great tool, I for one will be using it next time me and the boss (her indoors) fancy a short break away.

ukmonkey · 19 September 2007 at 10:02PM

I'd seriously URGE you to put in the shortcode for the airports Martin, it really is important!

Also, Londonderry is referred to on there as "City Of Derry" for some reason...! I'm guessing this is just a mistake or something??

squidworth · 19 September 2007 at 10:22PM

Looks cool!

You've asked for comments so here goes...

Call me lazy but the day of the week (sat/sun/etc) in the date drop down list would be nice.

Changing the departure airport seems to untick the destination "i'll go anywhere" box which confused me (ok easily done i know) as then checking the flights simply returned no flights found. Took me a couple of goes to realise it was unchecked, I thought there were no flights.

Dont know if its practical, but any chance we can see the times of flights instead of just "3 flights found"... really useful for day trips (would like to go from luton to dublin to research family tree stuff)... edit: aha, its only when "i'll go anywhere" the times are hidden, select a destination and its fine

These are just niggles, this page is great and well done!!!

Derek

ps. not a biggie request but i guess could be a pain to program, is it possible to select multiple airports on the departure side? for example i can visit birmingham and east midlands just as easy as stansted etc

meher · 19 September 2007 at 10:22PM

That's brilliant, Thank You! And the color code is perfect too by keeping the outbound different to the inbound.

but er the layout isn't appealing - in the sense the column Is the FlightChecker right for you? could be fitted beneath I suppose and the focus to be on find your flights and the results alongside - just a suggestion

I haven't gone through the list so not much to comment for the moment and the ones I checked didn't seem to have any obvious glitch though occasionaly came up with no results - could be that I didn't give sufficient information for search.

But as someone has already mentioned I suppose we need to know the airport codes or names from your list.

budgetflyer · 19 September 2007 at 10:39PM

I don't really understand the duration bit ? What difference does it make as all flights are one way anyway

Also the results - the couloured bands are very heavy on the eyes (especially empty ones).
A simple list, as before with just the relevent dates and prices within the search parameters worked so much better for me.

I think its great getting more airlines on board, a major scoop being Easyjet:T
It didnt need jazzed up, just added to
FUNCTIONALITY and READABILITY is what I am after.
The old layout was always better IMO than Skyscanner. It just didn't have enough airlines included.

magyar · 19 September 2007 at 10:41PM

Seemed to work fine for me.

Firstly, love the "I'll go anywhere!" box - because often we really don't care!

Secondly, well done for getting Easyjet (although stupid Easyjet for missing out for so long)

We mostly want to go to Cyprus to visit family, and of course much of the good deals there are charter airlines - will they be picked up too?

Some negatives:
I thought the "all flights between" and "exact dates" boxes were slightly confusing, although the functionality of them is great. Maybe it's just a layout thing. Also, there were a couple of times the radio buttons 'flipped' the wrong way, so the top box was saying 'all flights between' but had the bottom text boxes for the 'exact dates'.

It doesn't retain all the information when you click 'back' (I know you can just scroll up, but it took me a few goes to realise that)

Final idea (and I'm sure this is FAR from easy) but many people always forget that there's no point getting the cheapest flight if you have to pay hugely to park, or it's miles away etc. etc. - what I'd LOVE is a checker where you also put in your postcode and it also worked out the full cost including driving and parking. I know, I'm greedy. (Actually, I notice 'cheap parking' isn't on the checklist to the right of the checker)

Generally speaking, invaluable. Thanks for commissioning it.

sertav · 19 September 2007 at 10:57PM

I wonder, when looking for all destinations, if a certain country could be excluded.

Example: Flights from Manchester to any destination, on dates X to Y, except Spain.

MarkyMarkD · 19 September 2007 at 11:06PM

There's a bug.

It shows the odd INBOUND flights in the OUTBOUND column.

If, for example, I ask for any flights to anywhere in the world from Birmingham, the OUTBOUND column includes Stuttgart-Birmingham and Prague-Birmingham.

melipona · 19 September 2007 at 11:40PM

How about a "leave from anywhere" box, well not exactly, more of a multiple departure option.

For instance heathrow, bristol, cardiff, eastmidlands, birmingham and manchester are all easily drivable for me. So it would be great to select a preferred destination and be able to see what my departure options are.

Magyar has already commented on charter flights, my quick test suggests that these are not included, although seasonal these are usually timetabled and it would be great if they could also be included.

Otherwise an excellent job, easy and intuitive interface, hmm maybe dim the colours slightly.

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