Databases: Air Fares: dohop Flight Planner Gets a Makeover
Good stuff from Iceland. The dohop database has been around for a couple years. dohop aggregates air fares for more than 660 airlines around the world including many of the low-cost carriers including the never ending stream of new low-cost air carriers in Europe that don’t provide data to other travel database services.
Last month, dohop released a new user interface (available in several languages) and a bunch of new features.
+ One-click to convert fares into 60 currencies.
+ Type ahead features offer suggestions as you enter a city name or airport code.
Note: In some cases, a search by city might offer more a choice for more than one airport. For example, a search for New York City offers one option to see flights from JFK, EWR, and LGA,
+ Filter results by:
+++ Time (click the link and sliders appear to make time modifications fast and easy)
+++ Stop(s)
+++ Airline
+++ Airport (including airports where a change of planes/stop will occur)
+++ Aircraft Type (Large, Medium, Small)
+ Sort Results by:
++ Rank (Fastest
++ Departure Time
++ Arrival Time
++ Duration
++ Map specific flight using Google Maps mashup
You’ll book the actual flight directly with the airline or one of several services that are listed in the fare info block. Registration (not required) allows you to store your default location, currency, etc.
dohop is a powerful tool with a clean and crisp UI. Even though, timetable and fare info is available for more than 660 carriers, many more air carriers exist. For example, Southwest info is not included in dohop. To find which airlines (including low-cost carriers) fly to various destinations, take a look at:
+ Air Ninja
Global in scope. Which low-cost airlines fly between various cities. You can also browse by airline or city.
+ WhichBudget
Global in scope.
Remember, no air fare database is either perfect or always home to the lowest fare. That said, dohop is an excellent choice to include in your research. However, it’s still important to use at least two.
