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Rating flights is a very tricky business. Airlines already have some dodges to get around automated reports of things like on-time percentages (for example, if

Rating flights is a very tricky business. Airlines already have some dodges to get around automated reports of things like on-time percentages (for example, if a flight is chronically delayed they can change its flight number and that will wipe the performance history of the flight on several trackers). And rating the aircraft itself is wading into really dangerous territory given aircraft swaps and mixed fleets. For example, American's 777-200 varies depending on refit status: some are 9-across in economy, but the new configuration is 10-across with narrower seats. You wouldn't want to book based on a review for the old config and wind up jammed into the new. So while it's nice to offer as a gesture, I don't think it's going to be particularly feasible/useful; the data curation necessary to make the reviews accurate won't just be hard, it'll be essentially impossible.

MichaelBurjack 10y ago
Don't forget about SeatGuru (http://www.seatguru.com http://www.seatguru.com), a TripAdvisor company, which specializes in collecting and curating exactly this kind of data. They're not exactly n00bs at this kind of thing…
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  Seatguru can tell you "the 777-200 config version 1 looks like this", but can't tell you "the flight you're booking will have that aircraft in that configuration". They can tell you that historically it often is that aircraft/configuration, but that's not actually enough to project forward into the future with full reliability. And that's the hard part. It's even worse for the more common case of domestic flights, because those get swapped way more often than long-haul international.
  - jpalomaki 10y ago
    I have been hoping that EU would force airlines to disclose things like leg space. The market is not working from consumer point of view, becsuse you don't really know what you are getting when booking the ticket.

MichaelBurjack 10y ago

Don't forget about SeatGuru (http://www.seatguru.com http://www.seatguru.com), a TripAdvisor company, which specializes in collecting and curating exactly this kind of data. They're not exactly n00bs at this kind of thing…

ubernostrum 10y ago
Seatguru can tell you "the 777-200 config version 1 looks like this", but can't tell you "the flight you're booking will have that aircraft in that configuration". They can tell you that historically it often is that aircraft/configuration, but that's not actually enough to project forward into the future with full reliability. And that's the hard part. It's even worse for the more common case of domestic flights, because those get swapped way more often than long-haul international.
- jpalomaki 10y ago
  I have been hoping that EU would force airlines to disclose things like leg space. The market is not working from consumer point of view, becsuse you don't really know what you are getting when booking the ticket.