I'm a big fan of extra amenities while flying. The availability and pricing of things like wifi, power supply for my electronic devices and refreshments are key factors in my choice when booking a flight. Currently I rely on my knowledge of airline products (i.e. Porter has free glasses of wine or beer, Norwegian in Europe has free wifi, most Delta flights in the US have wifi but there's a fee to access the service). Is there a search engine or booking site where I can compare the availability and or pricing of such extras as wifi or refreshments when booking a flight?

I know Google Flights does indicate the availability of wifi, but they don't differentiate between flights where wifi is free (Norwegian) vs. where there is a fee for this amenity (Delta), moreover I've never seen them indicate that Lufthansa's transatlantic flights offer wifi, but most do.

  • I found this similar point about searching including baggage allowence travel.stackexchange.com/questions/9921/… – Carl Jan 12 '15 at 7:01
  • seatguru.com ? they have a lot of the info – user87166 Jan 15 '15 at 7:47
  • @user87166 it's a great site, I check there, but ideally I'd find something like that incorporated into a fare search so I could filter the results. – Carl Jan 15 '15 at 16:52

I don't think its feasible to know all of this information because a lot of the stuff you are searching for (wifi, power supply) are not dependent on the flight, but rather the airplane being used on that flight (and that is subject to change without any notification).

You might be booked on a 777 for Flight A, but they have to change the aircraft to a different (older/newer) 777 due to any number of reasons - some equipment may have failed, crew reported an issue on last flight, etc. etc. and the aircraft you end up getting may not have wifi/power supply. Its a hit and miss situation and I doubt can be guaranteed by any search engine.

This is why sites like seatguru only lists data for the fleet, and not the flight. Unless you know exactly which aircraft will be flown on your particular flight (this information is not supplied in travel booking engines, but it may be available on sites like flightaware.com) it is difficult to know exactly what amenities will be available.

Finally, even if they were available on that airplane; they may be switched off for other reasons.

Until airlines offer such filtering on their booking sites, I don't think other search engines can offer the same.

  • I'd be happy with a site showing any (but not necessarily all) of these amenities, like google flights attempts to show wifi. There are sites that show plane type at booking, while the conditions of carriage say this is guaranteed, it's still likely to the the aircraft you'll fly on. – Carl Jan 15 '15 at 14:19
  • When they say plane type, they mean it's a 777 or A340 they don't tell you which of the many of those aircraft will be used for the flight. An airline rarely has only one type of aircraft for very long. – Burhan Khalid Jan 16 '15 at 7:16
  • I forgot to mention that the conditions of carriage don't guarantee amenities. – Burhan Khalid Jan 16 '15 at 7:17
  • My bad, don't guarantee is what I meant to write. – Carl Jan 16 '15 at 14:40
  • I disagree about this not being feasible, since airlines can let me see the seat configuration before I book they have a good idea of exactly which aircraft they're planning on using. Of course it's always subject to change, but having an idea would be a huge help. – Carl Jan 22 '15 at 19:19

Have a look at http://business.skyscanner.net/ as well. You can find the documentation of API offered by skyscanner

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    I've long been a fan of your, but I don't see anything either on your site or in the API docs that offer amenities info. Could you share more? Or let me know if someone has used your API to build something that would display this info? – Carl Jan 19 '15 at 15:52
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    While your API is impressive, I also cannot find anywhere in the API docs that specify this sort of stuff for flights. We'd appreciate an update, thanks! – Mark Mayo Jan 20 '15 at 7:10

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