Azuon Overview

What is Azuon up to?

Azuon is a Windows application that communicates with our server as well as with airlines' databases in order to answer most comprehensively your highly-tunable search queries for low-cost flights. Low cost airlines usually work independently, sometimes even independently from themselves (e.g. when they don't offer customers to book or even see their own possible connection flights). Azuon puts it all together, compares existing fares fairly, and further computes and explores an entire multidimensional space of 'invisible' multileg itineraries.

Azuon has lots of unconventional search options with which you can obtain hundreds of flights for different routes at the same time, in just a couple of clicks. Therefore, Azuon suggests where to travel too - it does not simply execute your queries. Here are some of Azuon's distinct features:

Systematic search of an arbitrarily long date range, instead of the exact dates of travel (which are often unknown or unimportant)
Search from multiple origins and/or to multiple destinations, including search of entire countries or cool user-defined regions such as Mediterranean islands
Radius search in any number of kilometers around your favorite airports
Saveable and exchangable searches. You can save your search parameters (as an XML file) and use them to re-search later; and you can save all found fares (in CSV format). CSV format is viewable and editable further by a spreadsheet program such as Excel
Automatic generation of best round trips as well as open jaw trips (trips whose inbound parts do not start/end where the outbound parts end/start, respectively) according to a specifed minimum and maximum time to spend at destination
Multileg flights with user defined allowed stopover duration and other criteria
Search for departures at particular time frames of a day, up to a single hour, as well for on particular weekdays
Displaying of total, final prices that you are in fact paying. Azuon prices simply include all taxes and fees as well as charges for your kind of credit card
Any found fare is bookable through airlines' webpages to which Azuon automatically links
User interface comes in twelve languages: English, Polish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Czech, Spanish, Serbian, Russian, Hungarian and Lithuanian
Support for all European currencies and major world currencies
Fast performance: all found fares are cached in a central database and immediatelly available to other Azuon users
Many other hidden slash not-obvious features

Take a look at screenshoots of Azuon in real action and see how all this was implemented in a user-friendly and intuitive graphical interface.

Airlines supported

Azuon currently supports the following low-cost or semi low-cost airlines: Ryanair, easyJet, Wizzair, Airberlin, Germanwings, Niki, Vueling, TUIfly, Aer Lingus, airBaltic, AirAsia, Windjet, Tiger Airways, Jet4you, Transavia, Norwegian, SkyExpress, IcelandExpress, Spring Airlines, Smartwings, Blu-Express, BlueAir, Sun Express, Jet Blue, Air Arabia. The list is constantly growing, and we claim: from July 2010 we shall add one new airline each month as a bonus for all our continuous users!

Why not simply use an existing online search engine?

@ Because prices of round trips Azuon creates simply rock (and they are real)! We know to combine flights of exclusively 'low-cost' airlines better than others, because we know mathematics, for example. There is a self-learning database system behind Azuon which uses historical data about previous fares to try to heuristically predict how promising to search a certain route is (in terms of its flight price). Best combinations of multileg trips are then created on spot via a rather complex algorithm. Other online engines typically bother only to fetch from cache already expired fares or search only main hubs as stopovers. As a result, Azuon will perhaps first show an unortodox but 3 times cheaper Malta - Oslo - Warsaw route, and only then a standard but more expensive Malta - Rome - Warsaw.

# Have you ever wondered why airline-searching websites do not focus on low-cost airlines? Did you know that some well known online engines artificially favor airlines they got deals with, hiding your best fare for their own sake? Reality could be way better. We are unaffiliated and independent: Azuon's aim is to offer you best fares, not to direct you to certain airlines (e.g. Skyscanner and their deal with Jet2 and easyJet).

Why bother installing a program? Web 2.0 is unstoppable!

Our aim is certainly not to stop Web 2.0, let alone its future versions! Here are a couple of advantages of having a desktop application.

% Together we are stronger. In contrast to traditional websites, Azuon takes a U turn in hope to revolutionize airplane ticket search in a similar way as peer-to-peer (P2P) software, backed up with P2P networks, enabled sudden accessibility of free digital content to everybody. Multiple Azuon programs now work together and feed results in a central database of fares that are then quickly accessible to any Azuon client. See more about it here!

^ Azuon program is a local resource and as such, it is a personal tool: it offers options typically unavailable online such as saving your search criteria and found fares locally, or defining your favorite geographical regions to search using an embedded custom editor.

! Because Azuon has no good replacement. Can't get simpler than that.

In action: a video

Satisfied users made videos on YouTube, take a look. More coming soon!

Curious about what's coming in next versions?

Here is a history of our recent Azuon development:

What's new in Azuon App 3.1 [Sept 26th 2011]

New airline: JetBlue!
New tab: Filtering. Redesigned GUI
Filtering the cheapest flights per each route
Payment method per airline
Splitter bar added: increase and decrease fare tables
Window location and size saved
Save dates as offset from today option
More general currency change
Air Baltic: yet another fix. Icon bug fix.
Some translations added: write to us if something is missing :)
Number of luggage items can now be defined
easyJet luggage fee fixed
Sanity check when minimum and maximum stopover times allow are equal
Stopover options now work for multileg flights designed by the airline itself

What's new in Azuon App 3.1 [August 30th 2011]

New virtual airline: Wizz Xclusive club
New airline: Sun Express
New currency: Turkish lira
Fixed: AirBaltic business/economy confusion
Search by continents/regions: Europe, Asia, Middle East, Central America...
Search by any rectangular area using min/max latitude/longitude: e.g. enter '20 30 x x' or '-10 10 0 90' in Flying To/From? boxes
Bugs fixed: min stopover time not taken into account for 3-leg fares nor saved properly in XML
A caching bug fixed
Bug fixed: chain trips with repeating nodes not being searched properly
Increased limitation for max round trips from 999 to 9999

What's new in Azuon App 3 Second Edition [May 18th 2011]

New airline: Blu-Express
Social networks discovered Azuon: let your friends know of a cheap flight you found via Facebook or Twitter
An extra hidden feature: right click on an item in an airport checkbox list to show all airlines of that city/region
Schengen bug fixed
Norwegian fixed
Better credit card fee calculation (e.g. selecting Mastercard Prepaid Debit will omit fee for Ryanair but will add it for Wizzair)

What's new in Azuon App 3 [April 18th 2011]

Faster search for multileg flights: both for 2-leg and 3-leg flights
New airlines: Spring Airlines and Smartwings
Fixed airlines: AviaNova and SkyExpress
Proxy: GUI now shows up even when no internet connection was established to allow access to configuration window (Tools -> Configs) where you can set up proxy parameters.
New option: show outdated prices too when fetching alive fares fails (useful for Ryanair captchas)
Advanced mode now shows X cheapest chain trips, rather than first X random options.
Faster update of routes/currencies. Wizz Air bag fee fixed. Other small fixes.
More accurate minimum and maximum stopover times definition

What's new in 2.9 [March 3rd 2011]

VIA column is now correctly displayed for cached fares too
Jet4you fix: price in MAD displayed as in EUR bug
Ryanair captchas addressed
Germanwings optimized
System.UriFormatException bug on long searches with certain airlines fixed

What's new in 2.8 [February 2nd 2011]

New airline: Iceland Express
New airline: Avianova
New airline: SkyExpress [prices are occasionally approximate]
Enterily new feature: BOOK HO(S)TELS
Multicolumn sorting: hold SHIFT or CONTROL while clicking on column header
Faster and more accurate route updating
Bug fix: excessive memory use when searching per-link multileg chain trips in advanced mode
Bug fix: 0 nights search will now show round trips

What's new in 2.7? [December 14th 2010]

New airlines: Transavia and Norwegian (thanks to Borys and Tamas)
Faster and more reliable upgrade mechanism (i.e. automatic restart when Azuon is upgraded; no setup file; no more 'setup failed' message)
New translations added

What's new in 2.6 SE? [November 25th 2010]

New airlines: Tiger Airways (November) and Jet4you (December)
New, more useful column VIA replaced column LEGS in fare tables
Collapsing and expanding multileg fares from keyboard: use left and right arrow
Airline updated: Germanwings
Refreshing routes updated: Vueling
Aesthetically improved fare tables
Proxy now configured from GUI (warning: parameters have been removed)
Various small bug fixes

What's new in 2.6? [November 11th 2010 - one year in Tenerife]

New airline: Windjet. Note: similarly as with Air Baltic, Windjet website has a low threshold of banning frequent network requests. That's why long searches of exclusively Windjet routes may fail to execute entirely. The best remedy for this is to split your search into smaller pieces or to turn on fare caching.
Aer Lingus major fix (website changed recently)
Air Asia small fix (Azuon could not find website's multileg flights)
A new, more straighforward caching mechanism: we encourage you to turn on fare caching option now (Tools -> Configuration -> uncheck 'Do not cache fares'), especially if you do not search multileg flights. Not only will you be able to see >95% exact prices faster, but also a part of search burden will then be taken by our server.
New option: searching only airline-designed multileg flights.
New option: transfer to any airport within a given km circle. Now Azuon can automatically find connections such as Warshaw - Dortmund [stopover] Duesseldorf - Malta.
Crash prevention mechanism: after 10000 rows have been inserted into fare tables, your search will stop automatically.
Better GUI: wider window, smarter date pickers, correct sorting, smoother progress bar.
Various bug fixes: two sorting bugs; chain trip editor bug; an ancient stopover-switch bug which impeded Azuon to find all possible stopover airport switches; fare caching bug which missed depart date by one year if it's not in the current year;
When Azuon automatically upgrades to new version, an message box with a list of new features and improvements pops up.

What's new in Azuon 2.5? [October 26th 2010]

A new so-called 'advanced mode' has been added. You can now specify 'chain trips', also known as 'multiple destinations' in other, worse, online search engines: trips from one origin to a destination via any number of specified 'via' destinations. Each destination, as well as the origin, can be an entire set of airports, in an already familiar Azuon manner. All existing search options, such as radius search, can be combined together with this mode. However, use multileg search in chain trips with care: multileg options will be applied for each link of the chain and can produce lots of itineraries which in turn take a long time to search.
Login mechanism once again significantly improved
New language: Hungarian, many thanks to Daniel.
Better itinerary ordering: more promising itineraries will be searched first. We decrease waiting time for seeing a happy fare.
German airlines now include new aviation taxes

What's new in Azuon 2.2 Autumn Release? [September 23rd 2010]

Now something quite new: AirAsia added - Azuon's airline for September
Number of legs (flights) of any fare is now always correct, including for multileg fares that are directly sold by airlines. Those fares are still not expandable (the [] signifier in legs column).
Booking flights now works for all airlines and all major browsers
Webpages for booking will now always start in your default browser (rather than in Internet Explorer)
Double login detection improved
Other small improvements and bugfixes

What's new in Azuon 2.2 reloaded? [September 10th 2010]

Air Baltic is back!!
Azuon now saves custom files properly on limited Windows user accounts
New feature: Maximize fare tables
Other minor bugs fixes

What's new in Azuon 2.2? [September 4th 2010]

This is a must upgrade release: a serious multithreading bug on some machines fixed
Aer Lingus and easyJet search improved
Spanish added

What's new in Azuon 2.1? [August 30th 2010]

New airline: Aer Lingus
New languages: Russian and Lithuanian
Air Baltic removed until it's fixed
easyJet fixed: will now report correct depart/arrive times. Booking easyJet fares still doesn't work however.
Smart fare filtering (in Tools->Configuration). This feature actually existed before invisibly, but now you can decide yourself how to filter 'almost meaningless fares'. Thanks to Pedro Rodrigues for raising this issue
More automated upgrade to a new version
New feature: you can now simply drag and drop your XML files to the main window to open your favorite searches!
Bug fixed: Inbound time frame only on selected limit dates now works properly, thanks to Zigo for reporting it
Outbound and inbound parts of trips in Trips table now include flight duration too
Multiple items can now be selected in 'lower' lists of chosen origin/destination airports. To remove multiple items, use right mouse click instead of double click.
Error and progress messages enhanced
Bug fixed: CSV files containing fares from 2011 could not be opened. IMPORTANT: the CSV files format has been changed in version 2.1. You cannot open your CSV files from 2.0 anymore. However, you can still open and use your saved XML searches by simply deleting accompanying CSV files before opening the desired XML file.

What's new in Azuon 2.0 NE? [August 18th 2010]

New airline: Vueling (that was the airline for July, with a little delay ;)
Improved route algorithm now makes more multileg routes
New language: Czech
Some new currencies
"Number of nights" option at destination
Automatic upgrade, without need to click Next, Next
Azuon now blacklists codeshared routes in order to avoid double- search
Stop button is more responsive
A number of little bugs has been fixed (e.g. unresponsive "Add" button in custom regions editor)

What's new in Azuon 2.0? [June 26th 2010]

A new mechanism of cashing and retrieving found fares to a central database. Now the more users search, the faster Azuon searches will get!
A new underlying algorithm for deciding better which multileg trips should be searched, based on historical data about prices of routes in question
User interface got multilingual: now we support different languages! Please report on occasional slips and untranslated sections if you're worried about them
A new editor of custom regions. Now you can define and save your own sets of favorite origin and/or destination airports to search such as European metropoles or South of Spain
Actual search parameters can now be saved and opened in XML files
Azuon now automatically checks for new versions and informs you if one is available
New airline added: Air Baltic
A new currency: Lithuanian litas
Default start-up options can be set
Azuon now redirects to the actual web page where you can book THAT selected fare
An traditional option to search on exact dates rather than an entire date range was added
An enterily new menu structure
Desired duration at destination can now be expressed up to a single hour
Time spent at destination is now shown in trip table up to an hour, as well as in in terms of number of nights at destination
A visually more user friendly fare tables: red color for prices, italic for multileg trips
New column 'age' expressing when the flight's price was valid
Desired departure times can now be set for outbound as well as for return flights, up to a single hour in new 'Time frames' tab
Flight duration is now calculated currectly, even for flights between different time zones.
Numerous other reported and unreported bugs have been fixed. Many thanks to all kind people who reported on bugs!