Skyscanner Flights Review

In this article, we review Skyscanners powerful flight search engine and highlight its most important features and potential downfalls.

Skyscanner flight search is one of Europe’s leading flight search engines. Their website gets over 50 million unique visitors a month and their popular mobile app has been downloaded over 40 million times.

It was launched in Edinburgh in 2001 by three founding partners. The Metasearch engine has gone from strength to strength over the years and now has an extremely strong presence in the UK. They also have a strong presence in a number of international markets and have a dedicated Chinese domain at Tianxun.com

Skyscanner Flights Pro’s And Cons

Pros of Skyscanner Flights

Fast and Comprehensive flight search.

Skyscanner flight search is fairly fast and comprehensive… they cover hundreds of airlines and many travel agents in seconds. You are given the option of booking with the site of your choice and filtering is quick and easily accessible via sliders on the left-hand side of results. They also have links to airlines and travel agents showing direct and indirect routes at the bottom of their results so you can visit them directly if you so wish.

Powerful and seamless web app.

Their web app was launched in February 2011 and has quickly become one of the most downloaded flight search apps online. It features a very fast flight search similar to their desktop version and allows for quick and easy flight filtering. They also feature their very powerful flexible date flight search which allows users to see the cheapest flights per month.

Flexible flight searches

This is probably one of the most powerful features of Skyscanner. They enable consumers to see flight prices per month or even the entire year simply by selecting a flight route. They even have a function which shows the cheapest flights out of any departure airport (if you are looking for ideas) and even best flight routes to a destination (leaving from different departure points). The only downside to this function is that it only shows you a price if another user had searched for that route before. This means that popular flight routes contain more flexible flight data whilst less travelled routes contain less.

Strong affiliate programme

Skyscanner has a number of “SkyTools” which allow other website owners to quickly and easily add their flight search functionality to their sites. Site owners can implement a number of widgets from Skyscanner including a “flight search tool” and a “who flies where tool” which allow flight searches to take place directly from their websites. This has gone a long way in expanding Skyscanner’s presence around the globe. In fact, they now have a dedicated business portal that offers powerful white label and API solutions for startups around the world.

Cons of Skyscanner flights

Inaccurate pricing on occasion

Probably the biggest complaint by consumers using comparison sites is the discrepancy between the flight price displayed and the actual flight to be found on the booking site. No meta-search engine has really escaped from this problem as there are so many sources being searched simultaneously that sometimes inaccurate data can be displayed.

Can be beaten by other aggregators on various routes

Skyscanner flights are not always the cheapest. There are a number of other flight aggregators on the market that can and do beat Skyscanner flights on occasion. Other aggregators which occasionally beat Skyscanner on price are Momondo, Jetcost, Dohop, Fly.com and Kayak.

Questionable partners for searches

Another point of concern is the actual flight partners that Skyscanner has chosen. A number of partners show cheap prices but are unheard of and do not imbue much confidence in consumers to complete the actual flight booking. Complaints have been raised by consumers which have gone through to book a flight via a site that was featured on Skyscanner only to face a number of problems post-purchase. Here is a recent article in the Guardian newspaper which highlights potential downfalls with chosen travel partners - Read the article

In conclusion

Skyscanner flights are generally an excellent source for finding flights but like most sites has various pros and cons. Their pros outweigh their cons at this moment in time but the downsides present real questions of concern.

At Flights Finder, we do not advocate going to one particular flight comparison site every single time.

The fact is that it is highly unpredictable which flight comparison site will find the cheapest flight online. Not only that but sometimes one comparison site will miss a deal only for another flight comparison site to find it. It is due to this fact that we advocate a process of comparing multiple flight comparison sites to be sure of getting the absolute best flight deals online.

This enables you not only to find the cheapest possible deal but also allows you to broaden your booking options - if you don't trust a site listed on Skyscanner you can simply click another search engine and book through a more reputable site at the same, if not better price if available.

Our flight search engine enables you to do this quickly and easily. We compare 10 of the absolute best flight comparison sites including Skyscanner, Kayak, Momondo, Jetradar, Kiwi.com, Cheapflights and many more to make sure no flight deal ever passes you by.

Why not try it out now – FlightsFinder.com

Happy searching!