We don't often delve into the inner workings of the travel industry here at AviationBull because it's very well covered by other sites and better writers... That being said I do travel quite a bit and I pride myself in being able to hunt down a great deal using the myriad of travel search engines that are floating around the internet. This typically involves hitting up the big players and then drilling down into the websites of the individual airlines. Tripbase put together this infographic outlining just how common this deal hunting is for travelers.
I was surprised to learn two things; first that two out of three Americans research travel online and second that Google was looking to buy ITA Software. The implications of the my first revelation explain why Google would go after a company that's behind most of the travel search engines you might use. Orbitz and Hotwire use QPX (that's the engine behind the searching), so if Google breaks into the business they'd be able to immediately leverage that capability into their already comprehensive search results!
To me that means a possible one stop shop for finding the best fare. No need to hit the "deal" sites because I'll have the fare direct from the airline w/o the middle man. The next step would be to integrate user reviews, which is just the angle Tripbase is taking... hence the infographic. Heck, if it saves me time and money I don't really care where the data comes from.
When I think airline engines only two names come to mind: Pratt & Whitney and General Electric. Although they have a huge military market, P&W has been suffering in the commercial airline market in recent years. According to the 
If these winglets weren't being developed by API, I would probably think they're a joke. However, I don't remember the last time I saw a 737 without a set of winglets designed by 
