Air travel is in a downward spiral. Not literally of course, but clearly and consistently, and everybody knows it. The airlines know it, the airline employees know it, travel agents found out a while ago, and consumers sure as Hell know it. There are a lot of reasons for it, but this post talks about just one: Expedia.com.

Airlines claim the degradation in quality comes from increased competition. They say they are forced to cut corners and reduce features in order to stay competitive. Does this make sense?

What about other industries?

Well, if it did make sense, we might expect to see a similar pattern in other industries. There is certainly vigorous competition in the auto industry. Car companies struggle to meet their profit margins. And yet, over the last twenty years, cars have gotten more reliable, full of more features, and more fuel-efficient, when you compare similar models. Competition has hurt the auto workers and the bottom lines of the auto companies, but it has made the product itself better for the consumer.

Why has this not happened in the airline industry? Cars and flights are clearly two very different products, but what is the difference that accounts for this discrepancy? The main factor, I believe, is the way people make their purchases. When buying a car, a potential purchaser reads all the specs, he goes to the dealership and test-drives the car and kicks the tires. When the same person buys an airline ticket, he types the itinerary into Expedia.com (or Travelocity, or Orbitz) and gets a list of flights, ordered by price. He picks the cheapest ticket and steels himself for a miserable experience.

"Well," contend the airlines, "people only care about the price of a flight, so we sacrifice the customer experience to meet the demand for lower prices." They now even resort to secret fees for checked bags, in-flight meals, even headphones to watch the movie. This is a sneaky trick to manipulate the search engines. Those extra fees do not show up in the results page. I challenge the assertion that consumers only care about price to the exclusion of other factors. I think the real problem is that price is the only piece of information they are given.

The proof of the pudding

Try it. Go to expedia.com. Fill out the query form. Notice there is no field for the number of checked bags, there is no field for whether you will be having a meal, there is no field for whether you will want to watch the movie. These are important factors that you would want to take into account, but you are not given the opportunity.

Now submit your search. You're presented with a list of flights, with the price in big black numbers and the flight schedule. That's it. No information about leg room, customer satisfaction, on-time performance, in-flight food and entertainment options, cancellation policies, or baggage handling. If you had this information, you would take it into account, but since you don't, you have no choice but to base your decision on price alone.

When I go to Amazon.com to buy a fifteen dollar book, I can read four pages of user reviews telling me about the book. When buying a 600 dollar cross-country flight, I don't see a single user review. There is nowhere for me to enter a review if I want to. The technology is here. It's everywhere. Everywhere except the airline search engines. Why?

Why?

Maybe the airlines are scared to let the consumers have a voice. Maybe they don't want user reviews, because the reviews would be overwhelmingly negative. If so, they are wrong. They're not wrong about the tone of the reviews; they would certainly be mostly negative, at least at first. They are wrong about the effect the reviews would have. In the long run, providing a way for consumers to compare flights and airlines based on more than just price will make flying a more pleasant experience for all. It will allow airlines to compete based on quality, not just price. And it's smart business.

Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz are not going to change. They are the Big Three of flight searches. They are cleaning up while the airlines are suffering. There is not enough competition. The only way we will see an improvement is if somebody else steps in and offers us an alternative way to shop for flights. Google, are you listening? Amazon? Apple? Give us more information. Please.