A tool, not a service

Flight Search, and Exactly Whose Search It Is

This is the one page on the site that does something rather than saying something. Read the two paragraphs under the form before you use it, because they explain who runs it, who is paid and what happens to what you type.

Before the form

Two things, and then the form.

We do not run it. The search below is operated by an outside booking service. When you press the button, a search request goes to that service on a subdomain of this site, and from that point onward you are dealing with them and not with us. Their terms and their privacy handling apply to what happens there. This publication does not take reservations, does not hold money, never sees a card number and cannot change, cancel or refund anything.

We may be paid. Search here, book with them, and a commission on that booking can be paid to this publication. That is a material connection and US advertising rules require it to be disclosed where you can see it rather than buried, which is why it is in the second paragraph of this page and printed again directly under the form. What you pay for a ticket is the same whether you came through this page or went straight there.

What the form does before you press the button

Nothing leaves your browser. The place suggestions come from a list of about four thousand cities and stations that is part of this page, downloaded with the page itself, so typing two letters searches a file on your own machine. There is no request to anybody while you type, and there is no third party script on this page at all.

When you press the button, one query string goes to the booking service. It contains what you filled in: two place codes, one or two dates, a cabin, and how many adults, children and infants. Nothing else, because nothing else exists to send. The privacy policy says the same thing in its own section, and the storage policy lists every item this site keeps in your browser by name.

What we cannot help with

• Anything about a booking you have made. That is between you and the booking service, and we have no record of it and no access to it.
• Prices. This publication does not publish prices, does not know them and does not compare them. The search shows what the service shows.
• Airlines. We do not name them, recommend them or hold an opinion about them worth having.
• Changes, cancellations, refunds, baggage, seats, check in, or anything else that happens after a booking. All of it belongs to the service you booked with.

Why a publication about lift bridges has a flight search on it

A fair question, and the answer is ordinary. Nearly everybody who reads this is somewhere else and is thinking about coming here to look at something they cannot look at at home. The subject is the reason for the trip, and a trip starts with getting here. So there is one search, on this page and at the foot of the front page, plus one on getting there where somebody planning an arrival would actually look for it.

What there is not: a search on every page, a price in any of our writing, a comparison of services, or a single word suggesting this publication is a party to any transaction. The whole site is around twenty thousand words of writing and one form.

The rest of the arrangement, in writing

The disclaimer sets out the commission arrangement at length. The terms of use explain that no contract for travel is formed with us and that we sell nothing. About states how this publication is funded, and says that if that ever changes it will be written there before it happens rather than after.