RIP Sidestep

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

The Sidestep site for airfares has been bought by and merged into Kayak. This will be a big downgrade. Sidestep could be trusted to show everything availible, and I often used it for that purpose for CO, since the CO site does not always show every CO option availible. I could turn to Sidestep to find them. But I know from trying the site myself and for others here that have done so, Kayak does not necessarily show you all options. At least of intra-Europe they do not. Sidestep would even sometimes pull up consolidator fares. Kayak does not even show all of the fares offered directly by legacy carriers. For example, Lufthansa regularly has some good fares from here connecting to various places through Munich. You can find them easily enough on the Lufthansa website but you would never know they existed from Kayak. I have seen them on Sidestep.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I used to use them but I like Bing more.

[MargeS Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close MargeS]

For years Sidestep was my best bet for airfare and car rentals. The past year or so, somewhat close to others (except they do show more options). I will miss that source as well...

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Does anyone know a reliable third party site like Sidestep that shows all options availible? I fly CO, but CO's website does not show all options. The most direct flight from the city where I work back to the states almost never shows on the CO flight, and it is the only one without an overnight layover, even though it has plenty of seats and is priced at the lowest price for the that route. CO is the only airline I have run into this problem on. AA, DL, and the old NW site showed every possible routing.

Does Bing show all flights?

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Still interested in suggestions for a good site for this purpose.

Found a good IAD-IST fare today for a relative on CO for $610 all-in RT and wanted to compare so I went to Kayak, and the best fare they showed was over $200 more. Their airline list on fares found did not even include CO. Kayak is a pale shadow of what Sidestep used to be.

[bnoble Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close bnoble]

Does anyone know a reliable third party site like Sidestep that shows all options availible?

Try itasoftware.com. They are the search provider for Orbitz and a few other sites, but also offer a raw search tool direct to consumers. They have a fairly sophisticated query language that, if you learn it, will allow you to construct mileage runs or other odd routings conveniently. They were recently purchased by google but as far as I can tell, they do not filter fares/flights.

Disclosure: one of the principals was a colleague of mine from my grad school days. I have no financial interest except as some indirect GOOG holdings in various mutual funds.

[Dori Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Dori]

I miss Sidestep too. Before I became a SW fan, I used Sidestep a lot for flights and car rentals. I don't like the new Kayak nearly as well.

Dori