Routehappy Compares Flights

Oct. 8, 2012
Website keeps tabs on amenities, on-time arrivals, airports

Have you found yourself satisfied on one trip and unhappy on another, though you're flying the same airline to the same destination?

A new website, Routehappy, now tells you why by scoring each flight on 700 airlines, and showing how services and amenities vary widely within a single carrier.

For instance, Routehappy gives Delta flight 2365 from Los Angeles to Honolulu 3.5 stars out of five, largely because the 767 aircraft offers audio and video on demand, and most of the seats have power outlets.

But Delta's other two flights on the same route earn scores of 2 stars because the in-flight entertainment is overhead, which Routehappy characterizes as "shared video screens, just like the olden days," and there are no outlets to plug in your laptops.

Routehappy, a New York-based start-up that launched a beta site in March and offers an iPhone app, recently introduced these Happiness scores for each flight. It analyzes a flight's amenities and services from seat comfort and Wi-Fi to in-flight entertainment and on-time perfor-mance. It also has passengers' ratings and reviews.

Routehappy says it scores flights on Southwest and RyanAir, although information and schedules on the two carriers are absent from most third-party websites. Its analysis covers routes to and from 223 countries and 3,561 airports.

Its mission, it says, is to improve passengers' flying experience, because "all flights are not created equal." And it does a great job by going well beyond what other sites and apps, such as SeatGuru, might do.

You can search routes from economy to business, and view the scores and a detailed amenity breakdown for each airline's flights.

If you want to fly economy from Newark to Sarasota, Fla., on a typical Friday, for example, you can view the one-stop flights that JetBlue, US Airways and Delta offer.

Routehappy's value is in giving you a clear picture of what to expect on each flight before you buy a ticket. If you've already purchased a ticket, at least you'll be forewarned if a flight has no Wi-Fi, cramped seats and a history of arriving late.

To weigh your choices on the Newark to Sarasota trip, Routehappy shows that flying Delta takes you through Atlanta, which has a higher rating (7.4 out of 10) as a connecting airport than taking US Airways through Charlotte (7.1) or JetBlue via Boston (7.0).

But you'll also find that the US Airways flights to Charlotte on A321s and the JetBlue flights to Boston on E190s have roomier seats than do the Delta flights on 737s through Atlanta.

And if you choose to fly JetBlue through Boston, you'll find that flight 1172 that departs at 8:35 a.m. may be prudent because it has a a 93% on-time performance rating compared with a 60% rating on JetBlue flight 1176 that departs at 5:40 p.m.

Although Routehappy makes fliers better informed about each flight, it comes up short in several ways.

It provides no fare information, which obviously drives many purchase decisions, especially if the fares vary significantly. You also can't book flights through Routehappy.

There's also no way to compare airlines' flights and characteristics side by side in the same view, which necessitates scrolling and toggling between pages.

This may soon change. "We're in the early stages and are working on more and better ways to help fliers compare flights of interest rather than scrolling up and down," says Robert Albert, Routehappy's founder and CEO. "Stay tuned."

More

to offer

Routehappy's Happiness scores and analysis of

amenities are just one aspect

of the product.

It also publishes tips from fliers about the check-in process, crew and food by airline and flight, and then rates reviewers on the quality of their contributions.

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