Does Kayak Become Unusable Without American Airlines?

American Airlines is pulling its flight listings from Kayak.com, the travel site based in Concord, MA and Norwalk, CT.

American, which apparently knows that I've bought tickets from the airline by clicking through from Kayak, sent me an e-mail last night. The subject was: "American Airlines Ends Relationship With Kayak."

I think this will hurt American a tiny bit, since some travelers are accustomed to starting their airfare searches at Kayak, which until now has been comprehensive.

But I think it will hurt Kayak a lot, since American is the #2 airline in terms of domestic passengers carried, and #7 in terms of international, according to Wikipedia. Kayak is really not usable without American prices in the database. As of today, Kayak doesn't show American's fares, but it does offer an "Info" link that takes you to CheapTickets.com, which then shows you the fares. Not all that useful for a comparison-shopping site...

There's no news about the change on Kayak's blog,

Kayak posted a statement on their blog, but the search results presented to travelers don't make what's going on very clear.

(Here's a Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog post about the spat.)

SideStep, Kayak Get Over It and Get Hitched

Kayak, the "meta" travel search site based in Concord, MA and Norwalk, CT, is merging with SideStep, based in Santa Clara, CA, according to GigaOM and Kayak co-founder Paul English. From the Wall Street Journal report:

Analysts aren't convinced the deal will greatly benefit consumers -- or Kayak. The market appears to have plateaued, says Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc., noting that 12% to 15% of online leisure travelers use meta sites, roughly the same share as in 2006.

I wrote about the two companies two years back, when SideStep founder Brian Barth told me about some fishy meetings he'd had at General Catalyst while that firm was incubating Kayak.