How to make Skyscanner, Kiwi, Kayak include ground transfer in the search?
I'm looking for how to get from Porto, Portugal to Lviv, Ukraine on December 28th. There is a quite inexpensive and reasonably-long option:
Porto — Warsaw around €80 with Wizz Air or Ryanair,
and then Radom — Lviv on the next day with SprintAir for €34.
Overall under €110 and 24 hours.
Why don't any of the search engines I know of show me the itinerary I found?
Kayak does know that Radom is close to Warsaw (it's a 2-hour train ride) — it shows me flights from Radom when I click "include nearby" for Warsaw — Lviv search.
Best Answer
Why don't any of the search engines I know of show me the itinerary I found?
Several reasons. One is that low cost carriers are not well represented in flight search engines (eg your other recent question).
But the main reason is time, both in computing a vastly larger number of possible routes and in variability once surface travel comes into play. By road can vary according to traffic conditions as well as bus schedules. Hence connections cannot be assured.
Flight search engines exist to advertise air tickets and there is next to no incentive for them to offer journeys that include legs by private car (say Porto to Lisbon) or by taxi (say Warsaw to Radom).
If you choose Lisbon as your starting point then Rome2Rio does offer a selection of flights to Lviv.
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What is self transfer Skyscanner?
Self-transfer flights are booked by a travel agent. That means that, although the airlines won't be able to help if your flights get delayed or cancelled, the travel agent will. So, as soon as a problem occurs, you must call the travel agent so they can help you with rebooking the flight or flights.What is self transfer ticket?
Self-transfer (or self-connection) is another word for an unprotected connection. It means that, instead of having a ticket from A to C via B, you have two separate tickets, one from A to B, and one from A to C. Your baggage won't be transferred, you will need to go landside and back airside to collect and re-check it.How do I know if my flight is self transfer?
But if you look at the boarding passes, you'll see that each one of them has their own reservation number or so called booking reference. That means it's a self transfer. Mostly flight search sites tell it somewhere, if it's a self transfer. When you buy flights from several airlines, it's going to be a self transfer.What is Kiwi Self transfer?
If you have a self-transfer in your trip, your connections are not covered by the carriers. We combine separate flights, trains, or buses to offer you more options and better deals. Our Kiwi.com Guarantee service protects all transfers. You can add it when you book the trip.Best Cheap Flights Websites NOBODY is Talking About | How to Find Cheap Flights 2022
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Answer 2
Because people searching for flights from A to D, want to fly from A to D, they are not usually interested in flying A to B, then catching a train from B to C, then getting back on a plane from C to D simply to save a few dollars.
And since the folks willing to put up which such a convoluted route are budget travelers, off which they make very little profit, no one wants to invest in the complicated programming required.
Answer 3
You ask how to make the flight search engines to include connections for which you need to travel between airports and/or from the arrival airport to your destination.
Several search engines have the option 'include nearby airports' or 'allow for ... distance' to the airport, or 'all airports in this country'. That helps with finding flights which bring you to an airport from where you can take local transport to your final destination. You need to know about that transport to effectively search for it, but a site like Rome2Rio can help you when you set it to the right search terms.
For your described travel, you will need to be creative yourself, look for options and enter stopovers to see if there are useful routes.
The only way to get better results from the search engines without having to jump though hoops is to ask the search engines to improve and tell them what you need and how you want to find it. But I do not have high hopes your connection, taking about 24 hours, with ground transport will ever be one of the results for a normal search.
Flight engines do not do ground transport, apart from a few cross city transfers which many people prefer to exclude.
It is sites for all transport, Rome2Rio being the best known, which should be able to find your route for you.
If they do not yet include it, write them, inform them of the options and ask them to adjust their searches to include them.
I do see a lot more options now than there were when I first met them. Still not all options, still not good for details but improving.
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