Oct 12, 2007
Even for flights within the United States, a Danish-based search engine (yes, a Danish search engine!) seems to come up with the best fares
I've tried every search engine there is in the eternal search for the best airfares. And after testing the wares of the top American firms (Kayak.com, Sidestep.com, Farechase.com, and others), I recently concluded that the European website known as Mobissimo was more likely to do the best job.
But that was before I ran tests on a Danish service called Momondo.com (www.momondo.com). It claims to search more than 600 airfare sources (upstart airlines, budget airlines, big and little airlines, other airfare websites, consolidators and "aggregators"), which is two to three times the number scanned by any of its competitors.
But claims are one thing, results another, so I ran several of the best-known search engines through a series of tests of popular routes: a domestic flight (New York to Los Angeles), a transatlantic flight (New York to London), and an inter-European flight (London to Rome).
And would you believe it -- Momondo saved the most! I won't bore you with every pricing detail, but suffice to say, the little Danish-based Momondo was the clear winner every single time, finding fares that ranged from 20-40% cheaper than the next closest results.
On the domestic route, while almost all the others agreed that the lowest fare between fare New York and L.A. was $299 on American Airlines, Momondo showed me I could fly on Southwest for $182 or AirTran for $196. What's more, Momondo also found that American Airlines flight, but took its price from an Expedia.com sale: $196.
For the transatlantic flight, while the others were finding fares at $489, $497, and $655, Momondo quickly returned with a Virgin Atlantic fare of $392.
On the London-to-Rome flight, most of the others found only $141 on British Airways or $168 on Alitalia. Momondo dug up a Ryanair flight for $71. (To its credit, Skyscanner.com -- which fared most poorly in the other searches -- also found the Ryanair flight, but oddly the price was $2.31 higher).
One note: once I clicked over to Ryanair itself, I found an even better rate of €35.99 ($50.38), which means the best course of action, as always, is not just to click on that single lowest price, but to take the three or four lowest fares these aggregators find and check them all out.
To use a firm headquartered in Copenhagen may seem an odd tactic for finding air bargains between New York and California, or between Atlanta and Chicago. But there it is -- those canny Danes are something else!
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But that was before I ran tests on a Danish service called Momondo.com (www.momondo.com). It claims to search more than 600 airfare sources (upstart airlines, budget airlines, big and little airlines, other airfare websites, consolidators and "aggregators"), which is two to three times the number scanned by any of its competitors.
But claims are one thing, results another, so I ran several of the best-known search engines through a series of tests of popular routes: a domestic flight (New York to Los Angeles), a transatlantic flight (New York to London), and an inter-European flight (London to Rome).
And would you believe it -- Momondo saved the most! I won't bore you with every pricing detail, but suffice to say, the little Danish-based Momondo was the clear winner every single time, finding fares that ranged from 20-40% cheaper than the next closest results.
On the domestic route, while almost all the others agreed that the lowest fare between fare New York and L.A. was $299 on American Airlines, Momondo showed me I could fly on Southwest for $182 or AirTran for $196. What's more, Momondo also found that American Airlines flight, but took its price from an Expedia.com sale: $196.
For the transatlantic flight, while the others were finding fares at $489, $497, and $655, Momondo quickly returned with a Virgin Atlantic fare of $392.
On the London-to-Rome flight, most of the others found only $141 on British Airways or $168 on Alitalia. Momondo dug up a Ryanair flight for $71. (To its credit, Skyscanner.com -- which fared most poorly in the other searches -- also found the Ryanair flight, but oddly the price was $2.31 higher).
One note: once I clicked over to Ryanair itself, I found an even better rate of €35.99 ($50.38), which means the best course of action, as always, is not just to click on that single lowest price, but to take the three or four lowest fares these aggregators find and check them all out.
To use a firm headquartered in Copenhagen may seem an odd tactic for finding air bargains between New York and California, or between Atlanta and Chicago. But there it is -- those canny Danes are something else!
Write and read comments about this post.
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
