Wow – That’s a Low Price!

Cheap flights are evolving and Jetto continues that trend.  Today Travis Sherry from ExtraPackofPeanuts launched a new app that promises flight deals from a variety of major cities in the United States.  Until now, my favorite app for the best deals is Hopper, but Jetto shows promise.

At first I thought the app only showed flights from one of 5-6 cities on the East Coast, but that was just a selection made during the account creation process.  Once you’re logged in with an existing account, you can see flight deals from nearly any major city in the U.S.  Currently there are 30 US cities and 5 in Canadian featured in the app.

How it Works

I connected with Travis shortly after the launch (today), and he said that the flights are brought forth by monitoring other major flight deal sights and recreating those deals.  Those deals are tested in Google Flights and Momondo to make sure they work and to see if alterations/greater availability exist that other deals may have missed.  They also try and exclude deals with long layovers from the results.  With a test use, I clicked on a low priced flight ($308 from Chicago to Geneva, Switzerland posted a few days ago), which then linked me to Momondo’s booking site where I could pay for the website.

Clean and simple design. 30 US cities available for flight deals.

Costs & How the App Makes Money

There is a free and paid version of the app.  The free version has limited flights from the city of your choosing, while the paid version has more deals (how many more is unclear thus far).  Both allow you to view flights from the city of your choosing.  Pricing for the paid version is $4.99 monthly or $39.99 per year (which is 4 months free).  When I logged in the pricing noted that “this is special pricing” that will basically expire in 7 days.  Charges are billed to your iTunes account.

Summary

The app is very clean and looks to be well done and thought out.  The app is only hours old, but at this stage the concern that I have is that the app seems to at best piggyback deals from other websites and at worst literally steal them, rebrand and repackage them as their own, then make some small commission on the flight deal.  If that’s true then basically this app is making money from other’s work and flight deals.  Those flight deals cost money to find too, whether they are found by hand or through automated processes.  If the app is finding original deals of its own, then it’s fabulous.  Right now though, it sounds like it’s using deals from other websites.

I’m not an attorney, but I don’t believe that taking flight deals from other websites is actually illegal. ScottsCheapFlights has been accused many times for stealing flight deals from other sites and marketing them as his own.  It’s become a wildly popular resource, as most people don’t know about his controversial deals.  I post flight deals on my website from other flights but redirect users to the original flight deals on the websites who found those deals.  I simply provide a link to the original source and don’t take credit or monetary incentive to do so.

Hopefully the Jetto app features original flight deals, but even if it doesn’t, I’m guessing that most consumers won’t know the difference (or even care).  Stay tuned, as I learn more I’ll write about it.