MR. KOJO NNAMDILooking for the cheapest airfare from D.C. to some warmer destination? You think it was simple. After all, we have more tools than ever to buy airfare. You can log on to Expedia or Travelocity. You can use metasearch sites like Kayak, auction sites like Priceline. You can log on to the airlines' websites themselves or you could call up an old fashioned travel agent. But none of these high tech tools turns out gives us what most of us really want, the ability to compare fares apples to apples. Why is that? Behind the scenes, a handful of companies control almost all of the data that powers those sites and those companies are in the midst of dispute that could change the way we buy airfare. Joining us to discuss this issue is Henry Harteveldt, vice president and principal analyst with Airline & Travel Research at Forrester Research. He joins us by telephone from San Francisco. Henry Harteveldt, thank you for joining us.

MR. HENRY HARTEVELDTMy pleasure.

NNAMDIYou would think, in the age of the internet, we could find out much more information about what seats are available on which flights and how much they cost. But everyone seems to agree that this industry is not very transparent. Why is it so hard for consumers to find out how much a fare costs?

HARTEVELDTWell, I think, as you pointed out, you listed all of these different options at the beginning. There's the traditional travel agent. You can call. You can go to an airline's website. You can go to a metasearch site and so on. It's very complex and it's becoming more complex because the airlines are choosing to strip things out of their airfares that we used to get and then charging us extra. So whereas a few years ago, the ticket price, let's say, $99 from point A to point B meant that's, you know, your total cost. Now, that's just the starting point. And baggage may be extra depending on where you want to sit on the plane. You may have to pay an extra fee and so on. The airlines are turning to these optional services to make money.

NNAMDIThat's making me very cranky. And joining us now by telephone from Irvine, Ca. is the writer of the Cranky Flier blog, Brett Snyder. Brett Snyder, thank you so much for joining us.

MR. BRETT SNYDERThanks for having me on.

NNAMDIBrett, as we speak, there are two feuds pitting some of the biggest players in the airline industry against each other. If you're looking for an airfare on American Airlines and you're searching on Expedia or Orbitz, you're out of luck. AA stopped posting their data on one and the other has retaliated against AA. What's going on?

SNYDERWell, there are actually, I think, a lot of different fights going on here. It's basically...

NNAMDIIt's a brawl.

SNYDER...between the airlines and the reservation systems, the third party providers that power sites like Expedia and Orbitz to some extent. So it's an issue of the airlines trying to lower their distribution costs and have more control over how they display information. And part of that is these sites like Orbitz and Expedia getting caught in the crossfire. But another part of that is just the sites like Orbitz and Expedia are looking to make sure that wherever they get their data from -- that they're able to make, you know, as much revenue as they can depending on the different source where it's coming from.

NNAMDIAm I wrong or does it seem that American Airlines seems to be involved in a fight with just about everybody?

SNYDERWell, American is distinct. They are the only one that are currently taking on the travel agencies and these reservation systems, the intermediaries that run between the airlines and the travel agencies. But I think it's also fair to note that American's disputes are with just Orbitz and Expedia. You can continue to buy American Airlines tickets on Priceline, on Travelocity and, of course, through many traditional travel agencies.

NNAMDIIf you'd like to join this conversation, call us at 800-433-8850. Do you have a question about how fares are generated online? 800-433-8850 or ask that question at our website, kojoshow.org. Another major fight brewing in this industry is now under review by the Federal Antitrust Regulators. Google wants to buy a company called ITA. Most of us have never heard of ITA, but we've all used it. What does ITA do and why does Google want to buy ITA, Brett?

SNYDERSo what ITA does is they power a lot of the searches for pricing for variety of different websites. Many airlines, if you go to their websites, it's actually ITA's outlet that's running in the background and pulling up the information. Sites like Orbitz, as well, Kayak, metasearch sites that, you know, bring you results from multiple sites and let you compare, a lot of these are using ITA software's backend software to power those. So it's of great concern to a lot of people. The concern is that if Google takes over ITA, that there will be a monopoly. Google will want to keep the ITA information for its own purposes and will cut off some of -- or almost these other third party sites from using that algorithm. And that will, you know, create a monopoly and have less competition in the industry.

NNAMDIIf you have been trying to make travel plans recently and running into some confusion, call us 800-433-8850. If you want to know what to do to try to avoid that confusion, call us, 800-433-8850. Henry Harteveldt, how do these feuds between airlines, online travel sites and backend companies end up affecting us, the consumers?

HARTEVELDTWell, they make it more difficult and more complicated potentially for you to -- for all of us to find the airfares and do side by side comparisons. We, as consumers, value convenience. And our research at Forrester shows that nearly 6 in 10 of us use a general search engine site like Google as part of our planning, almost as many research on a travel agency site and then nearly half the people who research on a travel agency site go to an airline's website to buy. If an airline doesn't appear on a travel agency website, it's harder to make the comparisons.

HARTEVELDTAnd for an airline like American, which has not only sold through travel agencies forever, but actually invented some of the reservation systems with whom they're in a dispute now, it's going to make it more difficult for us potentially to find the American Airlines flights. And what's interesting also is airlines like United and U.S. Airways have recently come out and said, we -- or they continue or intend to continue selling through the travel agencies. I think some airlines are realizing they're benefiting from American's decision to be more restrictive in how they sell.

NNAMDIOn to Fran in Laurel, Md. Fran, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

FRANHi, Kojo. I got a simple question. It used to be in the old days you could book your flight in advance, months in advance and you would get the lowest rate. Is that -- can you still do that today and is that really the best way to guarantee you get the lowest rate for your flight?

NNAMDIBrett?

SNYDERWell, you usually don't want to do it too far in advance. You know, if you book maybe a year out for certain times of the year, you might not get the benefit of some of the sales that will come later on. That's not necessarily true if you're booking at a really peak time, like, you know, the Christmas holiday or something like that. But generally, you do want to book further in advance. The airlines have set up their pricing structure knowing that a business traveler is more likely to book at the last minute. And business travelers are the people that are willing to pay more for their travel. So, you know, in the two-week to two-month span is probably the sweet spot for most travel periods of the year.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Fran. Allow me to play out a scenario. I log on to a travel site online and I ask how much is it going to cost me to fly on a given date to St. Lucia in the Caribbean. It gives me one price. I log on to the official airline site, in this case American Airlines. It gives me a different price. I log on the next day and both have different fares, maybe higher, maybe lower. I guess American Airlines might not be the best example. But let's say Continental, which I can get on Expedia.com and then I go to Continental.com and the fares vary from day to day both on the online travel site and on the official airline site. What's going on there, Henry?

HARTEVELDTWell, airline prices are dynamic. And airlines manage their flights real time using very sophisticated computer software programs to make sure, frankly, that we pay the maximum amount possible. It's not like going to the supermarket or, for example, and buying a can of peas where the price rarely changes. This is dynamic and it reflects how many people are booking a flight and how many of those people may be connecting from other cities and so on. Airlines also update their fares sometimes three or more times a day. They're constantly changing.

HARTEVELDTAnd so it makes it extremely complicated for us, as consumers, to plan, which is, again, one reason why, you know, when Brett just said you want to plan your trip potentially two weeks to two months out, you got to do a lot of shopping to get that best fare. And my advice, having worked for several airlines in the past before Forrester Research, if you see a good fare and it's in your budget, buy it. It may not be there in five minutes.

NNAMDIAnd why two weeks to two months out is the best time, Brett Snyder, as opposed to six months to a year? Because six months to a year out, you miss sales?

SNYDERWell, first of all, I'd say I agree with Henry. If you see a price that you're comfortable with, buy it and, you know, just stick with it. And I used to actually do airline pricing and there are two things that change. There's -- on the one side, you actually change the fares, but they also are only willing to sell a certain number of seats at each fare. So the fares might not even be changing, it's just, you know, maybe from one day to the next several of the seats were sold and now the higher fare is the only one that's available.

SNYDERBut going back to your question about two weeks to two months, the airlines, I would say probably in the last decade, maybe Henry can correct me on this, but people have started booking closer and closer in to when they travel. So the airlines, when you're a year out, they're not really managing their flights for a year down the line unless there's a special event or a holiday. So they're really just looking at it, you know, a couple two, three plus months in advance to say, okay, well, this is booking better than we thought, worse than we thought. Do we need to stimulate the market by putting a sale fare out there? You won't see that a year in advance.

SNYDERSo they're really just looking at it, you know, a couple -- two, three plus months in advance to say, okay, well, this is booking better than we thought, worse than we thought. Do we need to stimulate the market by putting a sale fare out there? But you won't see that a year in advance.

NNAMDILet's move on to Kathy in Clifton, Va. Kathy, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

KATHYHi. Thanks for taking my call. I, like most travelers, am so frustrated at what seems to be the randomness and the restrictions on travel. And I am not affiliated with any web -- any company or anything, but I have consistently found Kayak to have significantly lower fares than any of the airlines themselves, or like the Orbitz's or Expedia's and all of that. And when you say that Google may buy that up and I might lose that, that's very concerning to me.

KATHYAnd one other point is, I recently booked a flight to Europe and for the first time, I saw something -- I believe it was called One World, and they basically, on Kayak, wouldn't tell me the time of the flight exactly or what airline it was, and it was almost more like a Priceline kind of a thing.

NNAMDIBrett, could you talk about what Kayak is and why Kathy could not get the time of the flight?

SNYDERSure. So Kayak is one of several what are called metasearch sites where the idea is that when you go to Kayak, you do a search, Kayak searches several different sites. They'll search the direct airline websites, they'll search some online travel agency sites and they'll bring all that back to you so you can compare. So in one case, maybe you see one flight where you want that, and it will show you here's how much it would cost on the airline's site, here's how much it would be through some of the online travel agent sites.

SNYDERSome airlines aren't really happy with that type of comparison, but the idea is you're going to one place and you're getting all of this information aggregated for you. What Kathy's talking about, I -- I think, and I'm not sure -- I hadn't seen this on Kayak, but they do have fares where if you're willing to commit without knowing the airline -- if she saw what it said as One World, that's an alliance that in the U.S. is lead by American and British Airways in Europe.

SNYDERAnd so my guess is that it would have been on one of the One World airlines, maybe they wouldn't tell what flights it was, but the idea is that they're willing to give you a lower fare if you don't really care about some of these things. It's a way that the airlines are able to, I guess, price discriminate and say, well, this is a true leisure traveler if it's someone who doesn't care what airline they're flying and what time they're even flying. But, you know, they're price sensitive. And so that's how they look at it.

NNAMDISo you get price rewards for your flexibility?

SNYDERRight.

NNAMDIAnd thank you very much for your call, Kathy. Who might be able to explain this might be Robert Birge, who's calling from Connecticut. Robert Birge is with Kayak.com. Robert Birge, can you explain what Kathy's -- to Kathy what her question was or can you answer her question?

MR. ROBERT BIRGEYeah. You know, I'm a little confused. I actually did a search from JFK to -- to Paris and there are -- there are a handful of fares that will come up sometimes that someone will -- will offer that will have some special restrictions and we will show them. And so I'm sorry that that one was confusing, but I'm going to take it and make a note to make that a little bit easier for folks like Kathy to find out. But...

NNAMDIRobert Birge, what...

BIRGE...I appreciate her kind words about Kayak to begin with.

NNAMDIWhat do you do with Kayak.com?

BIRGEExcuse me?

NNAMDIWhat do you do with Kayak.com?

BIRGEOh, sorry. I'm the chief marketing officer at Kayak.

NNAMDIOkay. Thank you so much for calling in. We talked about the major fight brewing in the industry between -- because Google wants to buy ITA. What is Kayak's take on this?

BIRGESure. Well, we've been fairly public in the market, and I think, you know, some of your opening statements I agree with in that flight pricing is complicated and that the online travel world is complicated. But what I would also say is for the most part it continues to be more transparent and easier and, you know, the airlines are competing hard for people's business, and ultimately that's good for consumers.

BIRGEAnd I think a lot of these things will clear up. But that's fueled by competition and there's been competition in this industry for 15 years. And the concern about this acquisition is that it will harm competition in a number of ways, and specifically, this will put Google in a very powerful position over the industry, both in terms of the ability to degrade the quality of our products and other -- other competitors like ours, as well as use their monopoly in general search to steer traffic to their product and then, you know, by way of that, taking a dominant position in the industry.

NNAMDIHowever, on the other hand, Henry Harteveldt, some people think this could be good for air travelers because Google has been so innovative in its approach toward e-mail and mobile platforms, maybe Google can create cool products we've never seen before.

HARTEVELDTRight. Google is a very creative, very innovative company, and -- and if this helps Google do things that will improve the product, that's great. But a point that Robert made, you know, Kayak has had a long relationship, as have many other with ITA software. And the concern that companies like Kayak have is a legitimate one. They're working with -- excuse me, with ITA, and they want to be assured that they will continue to have access to ITA's products on commercially acceptable terms and we're frankly there, you know, Google won't snoop, if you will, on anything that competitors are doing or use their data in an inappropriate way.

HARTEVELDTYou know, competition is good when it's fair. It's not good when it's biased or when it's restrictive. Now, there are competitors to ITA out there, but the problem is they're small or they're start ups or they don't have the penetration that ITA does. And so it will be interesting to see even if the Department of Justice allows the merger to go through and requires Google to make concessions to companies like Kayak. Will these companies, long term, want to continue to do business with ITA or will they choose to look at some of these other companies that are start-ups or that may be products sold by different companies out there?

NNAMDIBrett, where should the cranky flyer come down in this?

SNYDERWell, you know, I do get excited about thinking, well, what could Google do to, you know, make this a better experience for people? I'm of the opinion that if ITA is really the only one that's out there that's providing a good product that sites like Kayak want to use right now, you know, if there is a vacuum created because Google decides that all of a sudden it wants to control all of the data for itself and doesn't want to share with anyone -- which I would be surprised it that actually happened.

SNYDERBut anyway, if they did, there will be an enormous effort to create a competitor that will be able to provide, you know, a similar service to what ITA is providing today.

NNAMDIRobert Birge, we should point out that federal anti-trust regulators are looking at this. Can you give us a date by which you expect it to be resolved?

BIRGEYou know -- you know, unfortunately, I can't. And I really agree with a lot of what Henry said. I challenge the last comment about the ability of competitors to create a product. I think this is clearly a unique asset in the market. And just to give you a little perspective, you know, this company took five years before they actually launched a commercially viable product, which was the launch of Orbitz in June of 2001.

BIRGEAnd since that time, the entrenched competitors in the GDS's companies have not been able to replicate this in nearly every online -- major online travel site that's come into the market since that launch of Orbitz has chosen to ITA and they have a number of things that, um, are not replicable in the market. Most specifically, their access to real-time seat availability data into the airline databases.

BIRGESo the concern of Google having this is a quite real one, and we agree and we respect Google a great deal. They are an innovative company. What we would say is that Google could have very easily chosen to license this technology and innovate on top of it, which is what companies like Microsoft, like Kayak, like some of Expedia's owned companies have done, rather than put themselves into a position where they could control access to this product.

BIRGEAnd as Henry rightfully said, this is a highly customizable software that they could easily look at what we're doing and look at our proprietary technology for how we use this software.

NNAMDIRobert Birge is with Kayak.com. Thank you for calling in. We're gonna take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue this conversation with airline fares on the web, and what it all means for you. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDITaking about the battle between airlines and travel websites and it's likely affect on consumers with Henry Harteveldt, vice president and principal analyst for Airline & Travel Search with Forrester Research and Brett Snyder, writer with the Cranky Flyer blog. On to the telephones again. Here is Alissa in Silver Spring, Md. Alissa, your turn.

ALISSAHi. I'm wondering, in particular about the squabble you mentioned earlier with American Airlines, and I'm wondering if this can benefit me as a consumer in the coming months in terms of pricing.

NNAMDIBrett Snyder?

SNYDERWell, it certainly could, theoretically. It's a little early to know how this is going to work out right now. But for American, part of this is, as I said, trying to lower distribution costs. If they can keep their costs lower, theoretically, that helps lead to lower fares. And then, in addition, the idea is to try and be able to display -- this is what they're publically saying. Their idea is to try and display more of these ancillary types of fees that are out there, you know, pay for priority boarding, for all these things.

SNYDERPut them in an easier way for customers to use. And so, you know, if that's the case, then this could make it more of a user-friendly experience as well. Now, we've seen American start using this direct connect, as they're calling it, with sites like Priceline. Nothing has changed so far in terms of the -- the use interface, but -- so it's just - it's early on. But there are potential benefits.

NNAMDIAnd speaking of the extra fees, we got a tweet from Jen Jackson. Is the new Southwest Airline Fee Court Campaign going to force change other airlines approach to bag fees, changes, fees, et cetera, Henry Harteveldt?

HARTEVELDTYou know, I don't think so. We have seen Southwest now for a few years advertise how they do not charge for checked baggage. None of the other airlines have backed away from their business practices of charging you for checked bags. Jet Blue does let you check one bag for free, but airlines like American, US Airways and Delta charge you for checked luggage. I think we need to get used to the fact that your airline ticket will come with a lot of fees or give you the option to buy a lot of optional services.

HARTEVELDTIn some ways, I have to tell you, I think it's good. It may be annoying, but you end up not paying for things that you wouldn't otherwise use. It just does make it very hard, though, to really figure out what your airline ticket will cost as part of your budget. And I think the airlines have a responsibility to us as consumers to do more with their websites in helping us understand what the costs are. Let us figure out what they are, budget them, and so on, so we can see the true cost of the trip, regardless of whether we're going to the website, their call center or travel agency or any other point of sale.

NNAMDIHere is Hal in Fairfax, Va. Hal, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

HALThank you. One man said, speaking of Southwest -- Southwest, I was just booking a ticket while I was actually listening to this and I almost exclusively -- I don't use the mainline carriers any longer and I've almost always found them or AirTran to be universally less expensive. And from the standpoint of Google, if they can get the information and they can make it so that I can compare across the board in real-time, then great.

HALI mean, I don't -- it doesn't matter to me if they have, you know, a monopoly because I feel like that's what's needed is we need to be able to compare. And I guess my question is, I've -- I've gone on to airlines and, you know, known my destinations. I've gone on a couple of months in advance and something has happened and I've had to wait and I've booked it, you know, a day or even two days beforehand, and found that it's actually cheaper. That's happened to me several times. Have you heard of that? Because I've always been told to book way in advance, but I've...

NNAMDIWe were discussing that -- we were discussing that earlier in the broadcast with Brett Snyder. And Brett, again, you might want to respond to him, but talk a little bit about Southwest's business model and if that's likely to be emulated by other airlines because on the one hand, consumers might think it good. On the other, it could lead to a lot of confusion.

SNYDERYeah. Southwest is interesting, you know. It has this brand halo. It's a great brand. It's a consumer friendly airline, all of this. But it's one of the hardest compare to other airlines because you can't get a Southwest fare anywhere online except for Southwest.com. So they've really gone with this model of saying, look it costs us extra money to sell through third parties and we don't want to have to pay for that. And so they've spent a ton of money on marketing and advertising to get people to understand come directly to Southwest, book our fares here.

SNYDERIt's a strategy that a lot of airlines have taken in the past when, you know, low cost carriers start up. They're trying to keep their costs as low as they can so they can keep their fares low. But what a lot of a airlines have done over time is that there's enough of a benefit, in particular, working with some of these reservation systems that are used by -- brick and mortar travel agents or corporate travel agents, where to get some of this high dollar traffic, some of the big business travel, you have to actually go and work with these third parties.

SNYDERAnd Southwest actually does that as well with some of these third-party reservation systems for brick an mortal travel agents to use. But they still stuck with only Southwest.com to book online.

NNAMDIAnd this final question, Henry Harteveldt. We got an e-mail from Natasha who says, "Is it true that you should delete your search history because sites like Expedia can tell how interested you are in fares to a certain destination and then they make the lower fares unavailable to you?"

HARTEVELDTI'm not aware of that practice at all. The -- the sites -- the travel agency sites and others are pulling these fares on a real-time basis. Now, you know, I suspect many of your listeners drive and they've noticed the price of gasoline is going up as oil...

NNAMDIWe're running out of time, you only got about ten seconds.

HARTEVELDTOkay. You know, prices changes, the sites don’t cache your history so you don't need to delete your search.

NNAMDIHenry Harteveldt is vice president and principal analyst with Airline & Travel Research with Forrester research. Brett Snyder is writer with the Cranky Flier blog. Thank you both for joining us, and thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.