The Internet has revolutionized how we search for airfares and book flights, and now this revolution is available on your smartphone or tablet while on-the-go. Virtually all the major online airfare comparison websites have mobile apps, but here are a few noteworthy ones.

Airfare comparison

Kayak.com set the standard for comparing multiple airfare search sites into a simple integrated platform, and their app (Android, iPhone, iPad, Nokia, Windows Phone, HP Touchpad, and mobile site) includes flight and car search, hotel search and booking, Flight Tracker, and My Trips to easily manage your itinerary. Kayak’s app also allows you to search for multiple flight segments, a feature I often use for my more complicated multiple-destination trips.

Date and time comparison

Hipmunk now has an app (Android, iPhone, and mobile site)! We first noticed Hipmunk for its excellent map functions, which lets you superimpose available hotel rooms on heatmaps based on interests such as “food”, “sights”, and “shops”, but Hipmunk’s flight search also has an angle: along with sorting your flights conveniently by price, it also charts out the flights by date and time. There are also options to sort by “agony”, “cost”, “departure”, and “length”.

Low-cost airlines

Years ago I was introduced to Skyscanner.net, an airfare search site that has lots of options for budget travelers. These include searching from and to whole countries rather than specific cities (to help find those budget airports outside of major city centers), searching for open dates (to help find the cheapest time of year to travel), and includes many low-cost airlines (over 1000 airlines in total). Skyscanner’s app (for Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone, and mobile site) does not disappoint. The app gives you the choice to be flexible on when you travel, and where you travel. Other features include charts that illustrate the cheapest travel days for your travel locations,  “explore” that helps you map out travel deals around the world.