What I really want Hipmunk to integrate is low-cost carriers, like Southwest.
If I want to book a flight from NRT to SFO, it's often cheaper to fly through LAX, but the big carriers don't offer that many runs between LAX and SFO. Southwest, on the other hand, has a plane every few hours, and they're really good about rescheduling should I get stuck at customs for an insane amount of time (which is a given, because LAX).
We would love to integrate Southwest! Unfortunately, they don't let anyone do that. You'll find other low-cost carriers on Hipmunk, though.
Southwest offers a lot of flights between SFO and LAX, but it's not true that the big carriers don't. I did a search on June 25 one-way SFO-LAX. Southwest has 12 non-stops. Delta has 11, and United has 16.
I use Hipmunk for every flight to find the best day, time and route. But I never buy thru them.
They are simply too expensive. It is always cheaper to purchase thru another portal and that is unfortunate because their tool is hands down the best...
I tried using hipmunk the other day, and I liked it but I didn't see any obvious way to filter by time. Just something like eliminated all flights that departed before 7pm. Did I miss something obvious?
I'm not sure if you're talking about their mobile apps or their website, but on the website the answer is yes. You can resize the time box by dragging the left and right edges (see the arrows at the top?) and then there is also a "Filter by Time" drop-down in the upper right that gives you a few pre-set options like "no morning departures" or "hide red-eyes".
If I want to book a flight from NRT to SFO, it's often cheaper to fly through LAX, but the big carriers don't offer that many runs between LAX and SFO. Southwest, on the other hand, has a plane every few hours, and they're really good about rescheduling should I get stuck at customs for an insane amount of time (which is a given, because LAX).