Hipmunk needs to ramp up on usability

I could not disagree more vehemently.

1. Default sorting by agony has been wonderful for me. I'm willing to pay a moderate amount more for a flight that doesn't suck - whereas most travel sites would rather assume I'm a complete scrooge that wants to squeeze every last dollar off the price, redeyes and multi-airline connections be damned!

Hipmunk lets me look at pricing and "quality of experience" at a glance. The nifty bars also let me make my own decision about the "agony" of the flight instead of simply trusting Hipmunk's own metric.

2. IMHO, nonsense. I've never been once confused by the "from $XXX" term on Hipmunk - it means that the price can vary depending on what I select for the other leg. Secondly, the problem with Kayak's approach is that I have to sift through endless pages of the same departing flight, but with varying returning flights - or vice versa. That's not empowering, that's tedium. If I could count the times on Kayak where I've had to compare prices, then compare if the two have the same departing flight... or the same returning flight... argh.

3. I don't even know how to respond to this one. Everyone I've shown Hipmunk to, ever, has been ecstatic about being able to pick the legs separately. Methinks the blog author falls into an edge case and is not representative of the general population. Hell, I think this is one of those things that will make Hipmunk win.

4. So why is the precise departure or arrival important when deciding which flight you want to book? Does 9:05am vs. 9:20am really make a salient difference? From what I can tell, the whole point of Hipmunk is that it gives you a more powerful overarching view of your choices, instead of getting you stuck in the details. Getting the precise time is as easy as clicking on a choice - but when I'm making a decision on the quality of a flight I sure as heck don't need to know my times down to the minute.

5. I'll agree on this part. Being able to specify departure/arrival time ranges is pretty powerful.

6. Could not disagree more. One thing that's I've liked about Hipmunk is the ability to run multiple searches in parallel. Kayak on the other hand forces me to open a new tab, fill in everything all over again to do the same. The fact that Kayak will time-out your (very, very bodacious) search results after some time makes this doubly annoying. Kayak dumps you a metric ton of data and expects you to comb through it in how long?

7. Agreed.

Bottom line: I think the author is disconnected from what consumers want out of flight searches. Or rather, what a large segment of consumers want, who are under-served by the current players in the market - that is to say, the people who are willing to pay some premium for a flight experience that isn't painful, and want a tool that will allow them to make this decision easily.

Kayak was a godsend when it first came out - it was so, so far ahead of what we dared call online flight booking. But, it's starting to show its age - lately I don't even want to go to Kayak, the search results page is like nails on chalkboard.

Here's a suggestion to Kayak that (IMHO) would massively improve the UX: group flight pairs by departing flight. Give me each departing flight, then for each departing flight give me the available returning flights and the corresponding package prices. That would make the results so much easier to parse. As it is I get 10 different results that are all actually the same departing flight paired with every possible returning flight under the sun. It's annoying.

A year ago, I tried multiple times to use Hipmunk, only to be turned off by the site. I don't think I "got it" then. Like the author, I found sites like Kayak or Bing easier to use. It returned the data I needed (cheapest price!) and did it well.

And then one day I needed to find flights based on departure times. As I played around with Hipmunk, I realized how much better the experience was. From the various sort methods (price, time, agony) linking to seatguru.com for research, and allowing me to purchase my trips in two steps, I've become a believer. My last three fights have all been booked through hipmunk without even considering visiting the other sites.

Basically, Hipmunk allows me to book flights that work for me (I want to leave Thursday at 4:45PM and return Friday at 6:40PM) rather than something that accommodates me (For 449 dollars, I can leave Thursday at 2:15PM and return Friday at 9:45PM. Or, if I'm flexible, I can save 50 and leave at 6:00 AM and return Friday at 4:00 PM... I guess I'll do that...)

I agree. I tried using Hipmunk but I keep going back to Kayak. I find it more usable and pretty. I can exclude certain airlines or f.ex. flights with more than one stop with the checkboxes. Plus changing departure and destination airports is a breeze. (I often browse available flights without having my mind set up on a destination.) The diagrams are useful, too.

I haven't used Hipmunk because Kayak has always delivered results quickly and painlessly.

Hipmunk reminds me of Macro Economics in college, and how I had to extract so much information from lines on a graph. I'd break out in a cold sweat when asked to do so in front of the class. I hated it.

The Hipmunk graphs look like homework to me. I don't want homework. Just state the information clearly so I can move on with my life.

> Plus changing departure and destination airports is a breeze. (I often browse available flights without having my mind set up on a destination.)

Hipmunk's "new search" starts from your previous search. Just close the current tab (or click the new one) and change the destination airport. Even allows you to keep multiple searches open in different tabs to make your choice.