I’ve covered U.S. airline booking engine travel hacks before, but now I’d like to take a broader look into things. How do the United States-based airline flight search experiences stack up, and is there any reason to be optimistic?
There are three main attributes I want to see in any U.S. airline booking engine. (Really, it’s all booking engines, but today’s post is expressly about those in the United States.)
The three-part checklist is:
– redeem miles
– multi-city/open-jaw functionality
– the slug
The first two might be a given for most of us, but the latter is where I can really cook with gas. Briefly, the slug is the part of the weblink that specifies a page. For instance, whereas the complete link is https://noworkalltravel.com/2025/08/26/which-u-s-airlines-booking-engine-is-best/ the slug for this post is “which-u-s-airlines-booking-engine-is-best.”
***Learn some three-letter airport codes, and your searches on some airline websites will be expedited.
n.b. I’m not going to go into the deeper dive of finding out which partner airlines can be booked on each website, for that’s a different issue.
Alaska Airlines
On Alaska Airlines’ homepage, redeem miles is clearly marked. Multi-city is hidden behind the “all search options” button.
I’ve had mixed-success with their multi-city, because it occasionally asks for a third and fourth flight to be added before a search can be realized.
That’s where I curse the system, and avail of the slug. Yes, fortunately Alaska Airlines rolls with the airport code slug.
Replace the three-letter airport/city codes (in this case, CHI is Chicago, and GDL is Guadalajara), and you’re set. Phew!
American Airlines
American Airlines’ booking engine is a painful chapter.
You’d never know that at first glance.
Redeem miles and multi-city are clearly marked.
The search goes off without a hitch.
But then, what if you want to search another routing? Ugh.
You have to click “new search,” which takes you to another page, which then takes you back to the flight results page.
Message to all airlines: let us modify the search on the same page as the results page. Dealt.
Oh, and American Airlines’ slug is 100% user-unfriendly.
Their website begs you to start at an OTA (e.g. Google Flights), then send you on a shortcut to the booking page on the official American Airlines website.
Delta
How about that?! On Delta’s homepage, not only is redeem miles visible, but also one can easily choose between Round Trip, One-Way, and Multi-City.
You can even modify the flight search parameters on the flight results page. Delta’s “sort & filter” option is woeful, but that’s a horse of a different color.
As for their slug, seems Delta is bedfellows with AA.
You can’t win ’em all.
Frontier
As more of a point-to-point carrier than one focusing on hubs (although there are “hubs” like Denver), Frontier doesn’t quite do the multi-city thing. But redeem miles, that’s an available option.
Like Delta, Frontier also wants to relieve your wallet of excess funds, so their modify flight search feature overlaps with the search results page.
But their slug, well…it just laughs at you.
In other words, they can’t lay a claim to my wallet just yet.
jetBlue
Hmm, although it is ironically the one U.S. carrier I don’t enjoy flying, thus far it seems that they have the most NoWorkAllTravel-friendly booking engine.
On jetBlue’s home page, one can redeem miles, and seamlessly choose between one-way/roundtrip/multi-city options.
Even modifying flights is a cinch. Just click on the downward-facing caret (arrow), and switch up the itinerary.
Get this, the slug is practical (from a user experience perspective), too.
If only jetBlue had a more robust network, then I’d have to consider them again.
Southwest
Not a particularly useful airline for me, nor did I like hearing about their “enhancements.” Nevertheless, I should probably take a gander at their website again.
Multi-city and redeem miles are present, so that’s a start.
In unrelated news, I just noticed the Cruises tab. I don’t want to imagine a cruise with Southwest’s current boarding arrangement (i.e. if you boarded too late, no berth for you).
At least Southwest makes it easy to modify a flight search, right on the flight results page.
In theory, I approve of their website slug. For pragmatism’s sake, it’s tricky. Note that the destination airport code comes before the origin airport code. Which paragon of back-end development intellect hatched that idea?
Spirit
Spirit is in the uh-oh camp these days. As in, uh-oh, who’s financing them?
Meanwhile, how does their homepage look?
Redeem miles & multi-city can quickly be selected. If only I still had “status” with them, I…really don’t know how they’d help me cross the Pacific.
I was surprised to see that Spirit has the most accessible modify flight search screen. It’s right there, above the flight search results.
Buuuut, the slug kills me. 2 for 3, Spirit.
United Airlines
In spite of being my used airline website, United Airlines’ version is more eldritch than welcoming. In my experience, for years it has been plagued by bugs.
For example, here’s the Jekyll side of their homepage search engine.
And the Hyde.
Why is it Hyde? How is 29 August not a valid departure date?
In any event, United Airlines’ flight search box shows where you can redeem miles, and hit up the multi-city option. Good.
Modifying the airports and date is also seemingly approachable, since it’s right there on the flight results page.
However, as mentioned earlier, United’s website is really buggy.
To wit, when I changed the origin airport from UIN to Denver DEN, the dreaded slug bug manifested.
Obviously, these are all desktop versions of U.S. airline booking engines. I’ve had routinely bad sessions using airline apps. Not to mention, many apps just don’t have all of the capabilities as desktop websites do. (e.g. Alaska Airlines sent me away from its app to use my Wallet) Moreover, absent are a number of smaller carriers, namely Breeze and Avelo.
As I much prefer to book airline tickets on the official airline website, I don’t have much other choice here. Thus AA can continue to look like a contemporary with Prodigy, and United has no reason to quit being the airline analog to Goldeneye.
I reference above a slight cheat, that is, using Google Flights to get you to the booking page on an airline’s website. Of course, that, too isn’t foolproof. Many times, I’ve tried booking a flight overseas, only to be told that the price has increased due to my credit card not being from the country of departure.
It pains me to say it, but it looks like jetBlue has won the mind-numbing battle of U.S. airline booking engines.
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