Cheapair
American online travel agency
CheapAir.com is an American online travel agency, established in 1989 by Jeff Klee. Based in Agoura Hills, California, with an additional office in Chicago, CheapAir is a privately owned company under the parent company AmTrav. According to Travel Weekly, CheapAir.com, under the parent company AmTrav, is ranked #38 on the 2022 Power List of Travel Agencies in the United States.
History
Founded in 1989 by CEO, Jeff Klee, out of his University of Michigan dorm room, CheapAir.com was originally known as 1-800-Cheap-Air prior to the website launch in 2000. In 1993 Craig Fichtelberg became a co-founder and president and began the nationwide expansion from California to Chicago to NYC.
In 2011, CheapAir.com announced Price Drop Payback, a program that guarantees to reimburse any price difference before a flight.
In 2012, after airlines began adding ancillary revenue, CheapAir.com added amenities like WiFi, movies, Live TV, and power ports, to its online shopping display.
In September 2012, CheapAir.com launched “Easy Search”, which lets users enter natural language to search for travel deals, becoming one of the first travel websites to offer semantic search.
In March 2013, CheapAir.com created the first voice-activated flight search app for iOS devices. The app won a Travel Weekly award and was named one of the best apps and websites for travelers.
In November 2013, CheapAir.com became the first travel agency worldwide to accept bitcoin as an alternate form of payment for flights.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cheapair” as american online travel agency. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american online travel agency. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16986884. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 2022, 2000 and 1993.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Cheapair”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Cheapair primary sources, Cheapair archive and Cheapair research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Cheapair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.