Get away!

I sympathise with people whose job is to pick the prize-winning novel from a sea of mediocre manuscripts, or cast the lead role from amongst the starlets who strut their stuff to so little effect.

My sympathy arises from the fact that we get sent suggestions for new websites for the Gateway, sometimes from the actual promoters of the sites. We always try to give these a fair consideration, but for a variety of reasons – too commercial, too narrow, just crap – we have to reject quite a lot of them. But there are exceptions…

Fly me to the moon… or Malaga if it’s cheaper

We got a request to include airlinedestinations from Paul Keogh-Davies who, with his partner Rachael, aims to provide

"an independent, impartial guide to 'who flies where' and aims to help people get the best information and save money by listing every flight, on every airline (scheduled/budget or charter) out of all the UK's airports -(large and small, from Heathrow to Inverness)."

I was a bit surprised that this information is not readily available already, but a bit of digging proved that it is indeed difficult to find. Although you can find information on where Airline A flies to, or which airlines serve Airport B, there is a distinct lack of websites which pull it all together.

airlinedestinations takes it a stage further by listing flights regionally, so you don’t have to scratch your head trying to remember which nearby airports you should check out. The flight map shows which airports constitute each regional cluster. Click on a region to get an index of countries served from that region, and click on your preferred destination to get details of who flies there and from which airport. Slightly confusingly, the indexes are based on a standard, catch-all list, so a destination is only served if its name is underlined as a link. But as soon as you realise that, it ceases to be a problem.

Extras include travel advice, featuring links to and tips from the Foreign Office, some wise words on why you need insurance, and the sort of packing checklist which you sneer at before you go, and wish you’d printed off when you arrive at the poolside without your swimsuit.

What’s in it for the website promotors? They get a small rake-off every time you click on any of the adverts. But they do not plug these companies in the text, and the ads are at the bottom end of the annoyance range.

If there are snags, I haven’t found them yet. Paul and Rachael seem to have identified a gap, and used their professional experience to fill it. Good stuff.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Transport & tourism". airlinedestinations is under "Other Links/Air".)

Picture credit: hotblack/morguefile.com