Online travel agencies like Google Flights, Kayak and Expedia will cease to exist if it were up to the airlines.
These third-party travel sites allow customers to browse multiple flight options at once. This is a win for travelers, but a loss for individual airlines who miss the data and online engagement.
Some airlines, notably Southwest Airlines, even prohibit the display of fares on third-party sites and apps. This explains why Google flights doesn’t show any listings from Southwest at all.
In response to the tedious inconvenience, a young entrepreneur set out to build a free-to-use Chrome extension that attempts to simplify buying airline tickets online.
“Southwest Airlines is the second largest airline in the United States, but I can’t see fares on Google Flights. I want TravelArrow to automatically convert Google flight searches to Southwest so I can compare deals.” I did,” the account avetisyan818 posted on Reddit earlier this week.
Travel Arrow is a pop-up that updates Google Flight Search to immediately include results for Kayak, Skyscanner, and Southwest Airlines, often leading to previously unpublished lower fares.
Jaideep Patil self-introduction Co-founder of Travel Arrow, noted that the browser extension has been installed over 30,000 times in the last two months. Travel Arrow has disclosed to Google that it does not collect or use your data.
As Reddit user sophonaroap commented, simple fixes don’t last forever:
“FYI, Southwest is pretty strict about this. I had a friend ask Southwest to call it off for a very similar project. Get Southwest Airlines flight info outside of their website.” There’s a reason why we can’t.”
May our online airfare shopping remain open and competitive until the cease and desist letter reaches Patil.
