[DavidGordon10]

Does any forum member know of a website that will give clear, comparative and reliable timetable information?

It used to be that if you entered “flights cityA to cityB” into Google, you were given a simple list of all the flights between the two points, which airlines, times and so on. That sometimes still works, but often not.

For example, if you enter “flights London Budapest” it does not tell you that Flybe does this route, and from the very convenient (for me) airport at Southend.

What I want is to be able to see everything reasonable that is available, as above, in a clear format and not lost in a mass of booking websites and adverts. Often if you follow a link into “search flights” it goes into a booking engine: I don’t want that, I just want the timetable.

[FaroFlyer]

Skyscanner allows you to enter UK to Budapest, or London to Budapest and you can tick “Nearby airports” which would cover Southend.

Another option is ItaMatrix where you can also enter Southend as departure point, and then select the distance from Southend that is acceptable to you.

Hope this helps.

[capetonianm]

FF beat me to it, I was going to suggest Skyscanner where the ‘nearest airport’ option is useful but not 100% reliable or practical.

Travel agents have the possibility to do it on the GDSs, for example by requesting a timetable display LON NYC for a specified date, they would get all flights between all LON airports and all NYC airports, showing carrier, frequency, times, and period of effectivity. I am not sure if there is a similar facility in the public domain.

[FDOS_UK]

David, another options is ITA matrix (peversely owned by Google, these days).

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

[FaroFlyer]

[quote quote=870563]David, another options is ITA matrix (peversely owned by Google, these days).

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/[/quote]

Hi FDOS, I mentioned ITA Matrix which used to be excellent. However it does not seem to include the LCCs. Also their pricing is often hopelessly inaccurate as they now try to push you towards Google flights, but just for routing options, on legacy carriers, they are still good.

[FDOS_UK]

FF

Sorry either missed your post or our posts crossed.

have a good day.

[LuganoPirate]

I use Flightradar24, click on the airport and you see all the airlines that fly to/from a particular airport. This one misses nothing but does not show if the service is daily, bi-weekly etc.

[MartynSinclair]

David, I go to Kayak then speak to someone on a Brighton number 🙂

[DavidGordon10]

Thank you everyone.

I had an example today. Does the normal daily AC flight from Geneva to Montreal operate on Friday 3 August?

Google was useless: the AC booking site said it seemed not to be operating (“dates invalid”): the AC PDF of its complete timetable says that it will operate: Skyscanner also said yes and offered a price. Skyscanner (which I have not used before) was the quickest but of course, it is not primarily trying to give you timetable information it is trying to sell you the ticket.

I don’t want the sale yet, thanks, I just want to be able to tell the people that I may see in Montreal that I might be able to get a direct flight there on that day.

Oh for a simple timetable without being battered by the sales, oh for the old days of the ABC railway guide…

[Swissdiver]

I am using Kayak for years now and find it is a good starting point. Then I double check on the airline’s website. One annoying thing Kayak includes by default (but it is possible to opt out) are hacker fares that are often difficult to implement. There your flight is shown (AC835, 12:40 pm ‐ 2:45 pm).

[ghlotus]

OAG is still the “gold standard.” It is expensive, but worth it if you travel as much as I do (100+ flights per year).

https://www.oag.com/airline-schedules

[IanFromHKG]

I will put in a work for Hipmunk. Available as an app or online at hipmunk.com, it includes LCCs (I just did a random search for London to Gdansk and it picked up the non-stop flights by WizzAir and Ryanair, as well as connecting flights on LOT, Lufty, Finnair and others.

One thing I really like about Hipmunk is that it shows search results on a time chart, so you can instantly see departure times, duration, the length of stopovers, etc. It makes it really easy to check schedules and prices at the same time.

I must confess I have never actually booked through Hipmunk, but I do really like the format they use.

[LuganoPirate]

Just remembered another one I subscribe to, is expertflyer.com This not only gives all the info but also shows seat availabilty in all classes. It’s free for a limited number of queries + reams of advertising, or else about $90 a year unlimited and no ads.

1 user thanked author for this post.

travelsforfun

[Swissdiver]

kayak.com now belongs to booking.com, it seems. Not sure how it does impact the search results, but for a little while now, I found them a bit biased. I guess I’ll switch to a new service.

[capetonianm]

Kayak is excellent for looking up schedules and fares but I would never ever book through them because some of the booking sites they take you to are seriously dodgy.

I would rather pay more for my ticket booking direct with airline than risk anything through some of those third-party websites. Often the airline is not more expensive and can even be less.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Jacob

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