There’s clearly some sort of massive upheaval going on in the travel world, if the rash of new flight planning applications are anything to go by. Our guess is aggressive cost cutting is masking a slow but steady fall in numbers, which is forcing the industry to sponsor new ways to attract customers. One way to do this is make backend flight routing data more easily available to app makers.

Adioso is a new cheap flight finder with a difference. Instead of focusing on specific flight dates, the search engine promotes a more casual time slot approach, with the result that it can often find bargain round trip flights that you may miss with a conventional search.

The nice looking interface pays homage to Hipmunk again, as so many do, and the large font, and easy to scan results page make it silky smooth to select any of the cheap flight options that pop up. We particularly liked the hover filter function, which lets you change parameters on the fly to obtain different results.

This is the kind of cheap flight finder which is what Lastminute.com should have been, had they had access to the web technology we have now, and it’s a great way for non business travelers to find interesting and low cost options for their family vacations.

If we’re to be a little picky, it would be to say that all this clever front end tech does exact a toll on performance, as the site is not as snappy as one would like. But it’s a small point, and it doesn’t detract from the overall pleasant user experience. All booking is done off site, which means you’ll need to keep an eye out for any 3rd party traps in terms of add-ons that may sneak in, but that’s the same with every flight planning service nowadays.

All in all, a great effort, and one we would like to see flourish, perhaps to include hotels and other forms of vacation accommodation such as apartment time share. Nice.