Comments on: vayama

vayama

chunking express — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:32:16 -0800

vayama is a very slick flight booking site.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:39:00 -0800

I like that it'll search entirely international flights (some engines won't) but it doesn't seem to have super cheap airfares. Unless I'm missing something. I'm all about cheap airfares.

By: rxrfrx

rxrfrx — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:44:28 -0800

Kayak gave me better fares, and with a shorter search time.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:45:09 -0800

It's so pretty!

By: chunking express

chunking express — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:45:54 -0800

I was getting good results for Toronto to Sydney, and thus extrapolated that the whole site must be awesome.

By: ORthey

ORthey — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:49:43 -0800

Oh. I thought you said "a very SICK flight booking site" and I was holding my breath for something unseemly. I was disappointed. But then after, I looked around, and it's not so bad! So what I'm saying is, is that you sent me on an emotional rollercoaster.

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:52:48 -0800

I also read it as "sick." i thought they were going to be making a lot of crash jokes or something.

By: jeremy b

jeremy b — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:58:42 -0800

I just wound up buying two tickets to Mumbai while trying to book a trip to Vegas. I suck at geography and apparently you need to be able to find where you want to go on a map in order to book a flight there.

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:59:23 -0800

Can you please explain what makes this worthy of a front page post?

By: mdonley

mdonley — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:01:23 -0800

I really wanted to like it, but: - $10 service fee per passenger, not per order - couldn't actually make it to a type-in-your-details-to-purchase-this screen - the map is pretty, but useless - I already know where my destination is, thanks - didn't display similar fares I found on ITA Software, current king of fare hunting - using "specials" page, map doesn't display stops en route; a San Francisco-Hong Kong fare with a stop in Vancouver didn't show the stop in Vancouver, which is kind of deceptive Maybe when they flesh it out a little more, it'll be great, but really, I'm looking for efficiency, not people's photos or blog entries. Oh, and Pepsi Blue.

By: chrisamiller

chrisamiller — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:23:22 -0800

I'd like to try it, but can't. The date popup doesn't work in firefox on ubuntu. It remains hidden behind the map.

By: mdonley

mdonley — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:25:36 -0800

One feature I didn't see before - trying to look at tickets from London Luton to Newark on Silverjet (which, by the way, they use for their photo of business class seats on the front page near the bottom, but don't seem to sell tickets for), I was presented with a train to Gatwick and a flight from Gatwick to Newark. The train's name, though, "accesrail", was displayed under the image of an airplane, so a less savvy traveler might think they were flying from Luton to Gatwick, which, um, they wouldn't be, and Luton Airport itself doesn't even have a railway station - it's about a mile away, at a place called Luton Airport Parkway. Some kinks to be worked out yet, then.

By: pupdog

pupdog — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:33:01 -0800

I'll take your word for it, I guess. I got some really long page loads, and not the greatest of deals. I don't see much other than a very slick interface that seemed to make for slow pageloads. Maybe that's just me (I know, beta site and all, but if it's live, it should work). Their 'About Us' page is kinda vague about what makes them special. It has a whiff of 'we're special because we say we are, trust us' about it. Another site to watch I guess, but nothing that makes it jump out at me.

By: pupdog

pupdog — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:35:50 -0800

I also just noticed that the 'New York - all airports' is just LGA and JFK, leaving fairly easily accessible Newark out of the loop entirely. Most other sites include it as an option.

By: genghis

genghis — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:35:51 -0800

You can't display anything on top of a Flash app on *nixes. So it's not possible to pick a date. So it's not possible to get off the front page. FAIL.

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:41:58 -0800

Pepsi Blue. Is there a flag for that?

By: ORthey

ORthey — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:42:49 -0800

Please stop saying Pepsi Blue. It's like commenting "politics" if we have a post about politics, or "relationship" if we have a relationship-y AskMe.

By: rush

rush — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:02:59 -0800

Is this something Americans would have to know geography to understand?

By: chunking express

chunking express — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:18:07 -0800

Is there a flag for that? "Other" I suppose. You can also flag crap off-topic comments as noise or derail.

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:49:16 -0800

It's visually neat, but a load of shit after that. 10 dollar booking fee, my asscrack! I like kayak better because while it's neat to see the map, I generally know where the place it before I decide to buy tickets to go there.

By: imperium

imperium — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:53:17 -0800

One buggy calendar. And it rejected my manual entry. This is even less use than the crappy auction site I FPP'd earlier.

By: mirv

mirv — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:35:03 -0800

The map is very slick, but overall, the site sucks. I think it managed to find the worst possible deals, and completely overlooked the one non-stop flight I was looking for. What I really want is a site that combines the slickness of a map, but tells me where I can fly from a city. I'm approaching 100,000 frequent flier miles (I put everything--including $.99 tacos--on my mileage credit card), and I like to dream about all the places I could go, for example, with the Star Alliance airlines (United Airlines). United lets you have one extended stopover if you're flying between two different geographic regions, and I'd like to see my options. What about a trip to from U.S.A. to Beijing, with stopover on the way back in Shanghai? Tokyo? Kyoto? Seoul? Or how about a trip to Singapore with a stopover in Berlin? Frankfurt? Or a trip to South Africa, with a stopover in Portugal? I would spend hours on a map site like that.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:25:11 -0800

I like the map because it shows how bad the connections you get really are. Like if you're flying from NYC to Costa Rica, is it better to go through Houston or Miami? OTOH, the initial page load was pretty staggeringly bad, with a blank page for 30 seconds.

By: misha

misha — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:44:51 -0800

Qixo has none of the slick interface, but always finds me the cheapest fares. Kayak is a pretty close second.

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 07:44:53 -0800

Even the map didn't work for me and it told me there are no direct flights from Montreal to New York. Oh, well. I am going stick with sidestep.

By: greytape

greytape — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 10:06:24 -0800

www.skyscanner.net

By: mr.marx

mr.marx — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 10:41:31 -0800

greytape: that's more like it. thanks!

By: misha

misha — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 10:50:05 -0800

greytape: wow. Thanks. I have a new favorite.