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 Find Discount Airfare Deals
Traveler Tested: Vayama.com
How to Save on Your Next Flight
 How Would You Rate Yapta.com?
 Despite having made some best-of lists in 2007, Yapta.com is still a bit off the beaten path for most price-savvy travelers -- perhaps because of its inscrutable name, or because the site requires a software download to take advantage of all its features. However, if tracking flight prices is a habit, hobby or necessity for you, Yapta's airfare alert system will do much of the grunt work for you.
For committed airfare bargain hunters who have by now tired of doing search after search on booking sites to track fares, Yapta hopes to save you time and money by continually scanning flight prices so you don't have to.
 The Basics
Yapta apparently stands for "Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant," although the company seems intent on using Yapta as a verb, as in "how do I Yapta," "I Yapta'd my last flight and got a refund," etc. According to Yapta's pitch, the average airline ticket price fluctuates by 400 percent from the time it goes on the market until takeoff 330 days later. Yapta's "How Do I Yapta?" page describes the process pretty succinctly: "Install Yapta and comparison shop at your favorite airline Web sites. Tag the flights you want to track and Yapta will e-mail you when prices drop."
If you have already purchased a ticket, Yapta makes an even stronger promise to alert you if prices go down, and assist you in getting vouchers or refunds for the difference: "Guaranteed Airfare Rules entitle you to rebook if a lower fare is available -- you get the difference as a credit for future travel. Simply add your ticket information. Yapta will e-mail you if the price drops below what you paid, making you eligible for a voucher or refund from the airline."
Competitors
Most of the major booking engines (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc.) will e-mail you when prices on routes you have flown or searched on their sites drop. Yapta differentiates itself by tracking the specific price on the specific flights you want to take, rather than just general price trends between two city pairs. More specifically, Yapta will track fares for your flight after your purchase is complete, scanning for price reductions that could qualify you for a voucher or refund. These other sites have no incentive to do this -- they are decidedly not in the business of giving your money back to you.
Test Drive
It was my intention first to try out Yapta in the Web-only, no-download-required mode. I soon found out that while the flight searches went just fine this way, many of Yapta's most useful and convenient features really do require you to download the site's browser add-on software.
So I bit the bullet and downloaded Yapta. I found the download painless and clean, and more importantly did not experience any instability with my computer after the download or while using Yapta.
On my first attempt to use Yapta, I hit my first roadblock; the application works only when searching specific airline sites, not when searching the major booking engines. In my case, however, I live about halfway between two major airports and fly from both frequently; this situation strongly favors an application that allows you to search nearby airports or switch quickly between city pairs. Typically, when I start looking for airfares, I don't even know which airport I might use, let alone which airline. This may not be an issue for all travelers, I understand. For example, if you fly exclusively from a single major airport or if you generally fly only one airline, this may actually play to your hand.
I solved the issue thusly: I went to my preferred major booking engine, put in a couple of searches, figured out which airlines flew the desired routes and then went directly to those airline sites. I suspect that most leisure travelers will find themselves doing the same sort of legwork, since many of us don't know which airlines are best for our itinerary until after checking a booking site or aggregator.
 When the airline site loaded up, the Yapta window automatically opened in the same space that the Explorer bar options appear in Internet Explorer, such as the History or Favorites windows. I put in my first search of dates and city pairs and still didn't see much happening, so I went ahead and chose an outbound flight, and clicked to the next screen. At this point, a "Tag It With Yapta" button appeared underneath each return flight option, right on the airline Web site.
I picked my favorite return flight, and the complete itinerary immediately popped up in the Yapta Explorer bar window. The "Tag It With Yapta" graphic on the airline site changed to "Tagged With Yapta"; the other flights still permitted further tagging. I "Yapta'd" another return flight, and another itinerary, this one numbered (2), appeared in the Explorer window. It looked like this:
2/23-2/25 EWR to BOS
Depart: 02/23/08
Airline: Continental
Price: $449.00 Buy It Now
2/23-2/25 EWR to BOS (2)
Depart: 02/23/08
Airline: Continental
Price: $499.00 Buy It Now
I then reran the search, chose a different outbound flight and repeated the above until I had four different itineraries (two outbound flights, each with two possible return flights) that were possible winners for me, all tagged by Yapta.
I then went to the site of the airline that flew from my other preferred airport, and did the same. The result:
2/23-2/24 PHL to BOS
Depart: 02/23/08
Airline: US Airways
Price: $677.00 Buy It Now
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