[HN Gopher] A flight search engine that combines flights from di...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A flight search engine that combines flights from different
       airlines? (2014)
        
       Author : beatthatflight
       Score  : 80 points
       Date   : 2024-09-20 01:20 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (travel.stackexchange.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (travel.stackexchange.com)
        
       | throawayonthe wrote:
       | skiplagged shows you "self-transfer" flight options, which i
       | think solves what OOP was asking
        
         | nroets wrote:
         | And it has data for some smaller airlines like AJet in Turkey.
        
       | breadwinner wrote:
       | Isn't that what Expedia does?
        
         | lxgr wrote:
         | As explained in the answer, almost always Expedia will issue a
         | single _ticket_ across one or more airlines (the technical term
         | for that is  "interlining"), which is different from an
         | itinerary made up of actually separately issued tickets.
         | 
         | In the former case, there's always exactly one airline
         | responsible for getting you to your destination in case of a
         | missed connection or itinerary changes; in the latter case,
         | you're often on your own.
        
           | fy20 wrote:
           | I used Kiwi.com for this a few weeks ago (combining multiple
           | European carriers, including Ryanair) and it worked rather
           | well.
           | 
           | My first flight was delayed, and it seemed likely I would
           | miss the second leg flight, so they sent me an email with a
           | list of options to reschedule. I'd purchased the 'Premium
           | Protection', so I think I could choose a new option up to
           | EUR250 (+ hotel if overnight) without paying any extra.
           | 
           | I decided to risk taking the first flight, as the second
           | airport was much bigger so figured there would be better
           | flights from there. Fortunately the flight on the second leg
           | was delayed too, so I didn't need to change anything.
        
             | lxgr wrote:
             | What Kiwi.com is doing with their "separate tickets plus
             | connection insurance" model is called "virtual
             | interlining", and it's an interesting alternative in some
             | scenarios (well-connected airports with many alternatives).
             | But I'd still never risk it on an important connection.
             | 
             | I've had a very bad experience with Kiwi.com myself: I
             | booked a Ryanair flight on them without realizing that
             | Ryanair is actively trying to prevent Kiwi from reselling
             | their flights. Kiwi.com apparently works around this by
             | booking tickets on pools of Ryanair retail accounts, to
             | which they don't share the credentials with travelers -
             | making mobile check-in impossible. (And Ryanair at least at
             | the time was charging over 100EUR of a "service fee" for a
             | boarding pass print at the airport...)
             | 
             | This is only marginally related to booking separate
             | tickets, but I suppose the larger point is that it's never
             | a great situation to be stuck between the lines of two
             | companies actively hostile towards each other, when you
             | really depend on their cooperation to get to your
             | destination.
             | 
             | "Official" interline agreements are an explicit statement
             | that two or more airlines will make at least some
             | reasonable effort to get you and your luggage to your
             | destination, and will be on the hook for it (under ICAO
             | regulations) if things don't work out.
        
           | breadwinner wrote:
           | > _in the latter case, you 're often on your own_
           | 
           | If so why would you want this? Isn't the Expedia way of
           | issuing a single ticket better?
        
             | commandlinefan wrote:
             | According to the poster, he found a combo that wasn't
             | available in the online booking system. From what I recall
             | from my time at Travelocity (coming onto 20 years ago, so
             | probably slightly out of date), there are only a handful of
             | GDS 's(Global Distribution Systems), of which Sabre - the
             | owner of Travelocity - was at the time the largest. Those
             | GDS systems are supposed to know about all of the flights
             | from all of the airlines and find the cheapest route across
             | all airlines and for a long time, they did. But as time
             | went on, carriers like Southwest refused to participate
             | with the GDS's and offered direct fares to customers while
             | competitive GDS's sprang up and started to fragment the
             | ones that were being used.
             | 
             | I can't recall exactly which GDS Expedia used (Worldspan or
             | Galileo I think), but I do remember that you could
             | comparison shop between them and us and find lower fares
             | depending on which GDS you were using because they listed
             | some airlines that we didn't and vice versa and even some
             | fares on specific airlines - Sabre was originally an AA
             | subsidiary so tended to have better access to AA fares and
             | was _always_ the cheapest way to fly in or out of Dallas.
             | 
             | So what OP is looking for is what the GDS's would call an
             | uber-GDS - which is, of course, what all of them are
             | angling to become, but are being thwarted by competitive
             | business practices. It's entirely possible that he found a
             | route that was partly available on Sabre and partly
             | available on Expedia that was cheaper than what was
             | available on either, but he had to go poking around for it.
             | 
             | So, why not make a GDS of GDS'es that searched all of them
             | and found combinations like the one OP found? A lot of
             | companies tried - sites like Travelocity and Expedia and
             | Orbitz were online and scrapeable, after all. The problem
             | was, there was no money to be made in them. Travelocity
             | made a lot of its money through travel agency fees -
             | Travelocity acted as a travel agent and got the same
             | commission on tickets that a brick and mortar travel agent
             | would get. I assume Expedia and Orbitz and Priceline did
             | the same. The aggregators, on the other hand, had to charge
             | a fee on top of that to make their site profitable. There
             | are a few people like OP who have a specialized need to be
             | in a certain place at a certain time that an aggregator of
             | aggregators could come up with, but not enough that were
             | willing to pay a fee on top of the combined flight. In
             | addition, savvy travlers could search the aggregator... and
             | then go book the individual flights directly on the travel
             | sites (you couldn't do this with GDS flights, at least not
             | back then).
             | 
             | So yes, Expedia's way is better, and the best option in 99%
             | of cases. It'd be great if the airlines would play ball to
             | give consumers what they wanted, but... well, good luck
             | with that.
        
             | josephcsible wrote:
             | You never want that, but sometimes you can't get the other
             | way.
        
               | lxgr wrote:
               | Sometimes one is also significantly cheaper than the
               | other, and if you're flexible and willing to take the
               | risks implied, it can make sense.
        
       | joshuaheard wrote:
       | Kayak.com might be what you are looking for.
        
       | crystal_revenge wrote:
       | Happy to see ITA software mentioned in the comments:
       | https://matrix.itasoftware.com/search
       | 
       | I still have fond memories of their legendary (pre-leetcode)
       | coding challenges [0] posted on the T (they also hosted the
       | Boston Lisp users group in the early 2000s which was filled with
       | mind-blowingly incredibly brilliant people, everyone there seemed
       | to be an expert in software _and_ had a PhD in some other, non-
       | related field)
       | 
       | Having worked a bit in the travel industry, I _highly_ recommend
       | that you _never_ book through a third party (by all means use
       | their search). Third party apps are not allowed by airlines to
       | charge less than the airline and typically have abysmal customer
       | service, and I can assure you any  "add-ons" offered by a third
       | party are ultimately a scam.
       | 
       | 0. https://github.com/mattbraz/ita-puzzles
        
         | lxgr wrote:
         | > Third party apps are not allowed by airlines to charge less
         | than the airline
         | 
         | How come I regularly see third-party OTAs offer the same
         | itineraries cheaper than the airline then?
         | 
         | Sometimes there's a mystery fee added just before payment, but
         | not nearly always - and I've flown such itineraries once or
         | twice myself (if the difference was significant and I was
         | absolutely certain I wouldn't need any change or extra
         | service).
         | 
         | I was under the impression that these effectively share part of
         | their agent fee with the traveler as a form of kickback (to
         | appear as the cheapest option in search, which in the end might
         | end up a win-win for both).
        
           | EnigmaFlare wrote:
           | One way I've heard is they don't book your ticket immediately
           | but predict when the airline's price will go down and book in
           | then. I imagine they have far better data to enable price
           | prediction than the general public, and can spread the cost
           | of getting it wrong over their other customers.
        
             | lxgr wrote:
             | At least the ones I've used have always sent me a ticket
             | number within at most a few hours, and usually instantly.
             | I'd be surprised if that really was a factor these days.
        
               | anon9u7255 wrote:
               | From what I remember from working in the industry many
               | years ago, the process is actually split into (at least)
               | 3 parts.
               | 
               | 1. Reservation
               | 
               | 2. Booking
               | 
               | 3. Ticketing
               | 
               | Each step has its own expiration dates set by the
               | airline, which can range from "instant" to several
               | days/weeks. They may also set different cancelation fees
               | for each step. A smart travel agent could in theory use
               | this to cancel an old booking and book again if the price
               | is reduced, but I think some airlines have changed their
               | practice to avoid this.
               | 
               | Keep in mind that I mostly worked for the European
               | market. I know US airlines operate a bit differently from
               | the rest of the world. They usually have more flexible
               | rules around flights and exchanging of tickets.
        
               | rockostrich wrote:
               | >A smart travel agent could in theory use this to cancel
               | an old booking and book again if the price is reduced,
               | but I think some airlines have changed their practice to
               | avoid this.
               | 
               | This is called churn and airlines are pretty on top of
               | it. If you do this often then it will completely ruin
               | your relationship with the airline. Maybe individual
               | travel agencies can get away with it if they're trying to
               | book a handful of tickets each week but OTAs can't.
               | 
               | > I think some airlines have changed their practice to
               | avoid this.
               | 
               | AFAIK even direct connections still use the pattern of
               | creating a PNR, confirming the booking, and then issuing
               | a ticket. Even so in the US, airlines have to guarantee a
               | full refund if a domestic flight is cancelled within 24
               | hours of booking.
        
           | t0mas88 wrote:
           | One trick they use is to book via a different country. Flight
           | from A to B when booked on the main English website in
           | dollars can be a higher price than the same leg being booked
           | on the Russian website in rubles.
           | 
           | Two reasons for that, one can be because the airline is less
           | known in that market and whats to price more aggressively,
           | and the other is that the ticket conditions are slightly
           | different. For example your right to get compensation in case
           | of a delay (and how much) may be different between those
           | tickets.
        
         | throwaway290 wrote:
         | Airlines own systems are often awful UI and in case of some
         | asian low costers your data is immediately sold to spammers
         | (and they collect as much your data as they can too).
         | 
         | Depends on exact case but if traveling on a budget going with
         | low costers and connections a good third party can be better
         | than an unknown shitty airline's system.
         | 
         | I used Expedia a few years back, got a lower price and could
         | cancel for full refund within a day but they probably don't do
         | that anymore. Kiwi seemed okay. Ctrip now owned by China.
        
           | muststopmyths wrote:
           | Expedia still offers refunds within 24 hours. At least for
           | every flight I've booked originating from the US in the last
           | few years.
           | 
           | I thought it was because of the DoT rule, but apparently they
           | wouldn't be subject to that.
        
           | lxgr wrote:
           | I'd be very careful with Kiwi. They don't have official OTA
           | agreements with all the airlines they resell; at least
           | Ryanair at one point was actively hostile towards them, and
           | Kiwi was working with personal Ryanair accounts to get around
           | their roadblocks. This in turn meant I couldn't access
           | Ryanair's mobile boarding passes and had to find a printer on
           | short notice at the airport.
           | 
           | While airlines can apparently not legally completely prevent
           | such "uncooperative" third-party resellers, and I do have
           | some sympathy for the business model, it's not great to be
           | stuck between travel agent and airline when things go wrong.
           | 
           | Other OTAs like Experian actually take the role of a good old
           | travel agent (the entity historically doing much of the
           | ticketing work the airlines are now doing directly) and will
           | usually only sell you itineraries of interlining (i.e.
           | cooperating) airlines, and also only of airlines that accept
           | travel agents as business partners in the first place.
        
           | anonzzzies wrote:
           | I have bad experiences with Kiwi and ctrip and a bunch of
           | other ones. The support is indeed terrible and if anything
           | goes wrong, the airline will tell you to contact the 3rd
           | party agent... which has horrible support so there you are,
           | stuck somewhere in asia. I had multiple occasions in which I
           | just booked another ticket because of their incompetence,
           | losing a few $100 as I could not take the risk of being late.
           | Now I only book directly at the airline: at that time the
           | company was booking and they just took what google flights
           | gave them, which is often not directly at the airline.
        
         | tomhoward wrote:
         | > Third party apps are not allowed by airlines to charge less
         | than the airline
         | 
         | Technically true in that they can't undercut the airline on the
         | same fare class.
         | 
         | But there are many different fare classes and some of them are
         | only offered via 3rd parties, so you can often get much better
         | deals via e.g., Expedia than you can by going direct to the
         | airline.
         | 
         | Just this year my family flew Melbourne-Madrid then Milan-
         | Melbourne, both legs on Cathay, but this route was only
         | available on Expedia (and maybe other OTAs too, I don't
         | remember) - all I know was that it was impossible to even
         | search for this route on Cathay's own website. We didn't have
         | any issues, but if we did I don't know if I'd worry about
         | Expedia's customer service being much worse than an airline's
         | own service.
        
           | maccard wrote:
           | > We didn't have any issues, but if we did I don't know if
           | I'd worry about Expedia's customer service being much worse
           | than an airline's own service.
           | 
           | The problem (speaking as someone who has to deal with Travel
           | Agents many, many times) is that Expedia will say it's
           | Cathay's problem, and Cathay will refuse to speak to you and
           | tell you it's Expedia's problem.
        
             | ddoolin wrote:
             | This has happened to me so many times with both flights and
             | hotels. Now I very rarely book through third parties (only
             | search) unless the discounted rate is compelling enough.
             | 
             | It just happened to me 2 weeks ago. I booked a resort in
             | Cancun through Chase Travel at a heavily-discounted rate
             | and made an error in booking, for one person versus needing
             | two. Chase said they couldn't change it and to call the
             | resort, their middle agency said they couldn't change it,
             | and the resort said they couldn't change it and to call the
             | agent! It eventually got fixed after hours of calling and
             | essentially pleading.
        
               | Workaccount2 wrote:
               | Who was the one who eventually was able to change it?
        
               | maccard wrote:
               | It's always the travel agent.
        
         | pelasaco wrote:
         | > Having worked a bit in the travel industry, I highly
         | recommend that you never book through a third party (by all
         | means use their search). Third party apps are not allowed by
         | airlines to charge less than the airline and typically have
         | abysmal customer service,
         | 
         | That's not always true. I've often used services like
         | Skyscanner to find a flight, then checked directly on the
         | airline's website, and the prices didn't match. Sometimes, it
         | depends on which country you're in too. For example, I once
         | looked at the same flight on Lufthansa's German site and on a
         | localized version for another country, and the price was
         | different due to taxes. By a third part, I never had a
         | different price depending on which country you are buying it.
         | 
         | However, nowadays, I still prefer to book directly through the
         | airlines, though, because when they cancel your flight--and
         | they've been doing that quite a lot since COVID--you have a
         | better chance of holding them accountable.
        
         | rockostrich wrote:
         | Disclaimer: I've worked for the OTA Hopper for 7+ years.
         | 
         | > Third party apps are not allowed by airlines to charge less
         | than the airline
         | 
         | This is not necessarily true. OTAs are not allowed to list a
         | price that undercuts the airline but there are definitely ways
         | for them to undercut the price that the booker ends up paying
         | e.g. offering credits that they can redeem on future flight
         | bookings. In this scenario the airline still gets paid the full
         | amount for the ticket and the OTA makes up the difference.
         | 
         | Airlines are fully within their right to withhold inventory
         | from OTAs that do this, but that entirely depends on the
         | relationship that the OTA has with the airline. In some cases
         | airlines actually run discount campaigns through OTAs in order
         | to capture a bit more market share or fill inventory that
         | they're not seeing being booked through their first party
         | website.
         | 
         | >I can assure you any "add-ons" offered by a third party are
         | ultimately a scam
         | 
         | This is definitely not true. Any kind of insurance product
         | offered by third parties are essentially just that. Hopper's
         | "cancel for any reason" insurance is essentially paying a
         | premium to make your ticket fully refundable. Typically airline
         | inventory managers price refundable tickets at a fixed premium
         | and there's an opportunity there for OTAs to essentially
         | undercut that premium because it's a naive model.
        
         | neilv wrote:
         | > _I still have fond memories of their legendary (pre-leetcode)
         | coding challenges [0] posted on the T_
         | 
         | Those ITA puzzle ads on the T (Boston MBTA subway) got my
         | interest. They were so much better for introvert thinkers, than
         | getting ambushed in a Google interview context, and there was
         | also no interference from a bad-loop interviewer.
         | 
         | > _they also hosted the Boston Lisp users group in the early
         | 2000s_
         | 
         | IIRC, those meetings were organized by Fare Rideau.
         | Volunteering meeting space was maybe ITA (then Google) and
         | Northeastern University?
         | 
         | (I made the small contribution of building the the Boston Lisp
         | announcements email list, by promising a lot of people, wary of
         | social media, that it would be announcements-only. This
         | included famous people, who I'd read about as a kid, such as in
         | the Steven Levy book, or knew only from their names on books
         | and standards documents.)
         | 
         | Incidentally, speaking of brilliant big names in programming...
         | in a few weeks, Gregor Kiczales, Hal Abelson, and Gerald
         | Sussman are speaking at RacketCon 2024. https://con.racket-
         | lang.org/
        
         | hilux wrote:
         | > Third party apps are not allowed by airlines to charge less
         | than the airline
         | 
         | I've paid much less (on international round-trip flights
         | originating USA) on justfly.com than I could find on the
         | airline's own site.
        
       | aero-glide2 wrote:
       | Skyscanner
        
       | azurezyq wrote:
       | I think Google Flights can do that?
        
         | lxgr wrote:
         | They can; this usually shows up with a remark of "separate
         | tickets".
         | 
         | There are considerable caveats when doing that - it's generally
         | not advisable for connecting flights (you're essentially on the
         | hook for missed connections etc.), and even just for separate
         | outbound and return tickets it can mean trouble (e.g. if the
         | outbound flight is cancelled, there is no obligation for the
         | separate ticket to be refunded to you).
        
           | trash_cat wrote:
           | Granted I only travel with hand luggage, I never had any
           | issues with cancelled or delayed flighs when booking separate
           | tickets. Even so they are relatvely cheap. It is even cheaper
           | if you book your return flight ticket separately.
        
             | thrdbndndn wrote:
             | You need to be more clear about what you meant by saying
             | "never had issues".
             | 
             | The point is there might be issues because the second
             | flight has no obligation to refund you if you're late (but
             | they might still do out of generosity).
             | 
             | It's not like it's gonna happen all the time. So having
             | data points saying that didn't happen is kinda pointless.
        
             | carlosjobim wrote:
             | > Granted I only travel with hand luggage
             | 
             | That makes an enormous difference, since you usually can do
             | your check-in online a day or more before departure.
             | 
             | I just had a flight where I had purchased my connections on
             | separate tickets. When I arrived at the baggage drop-off,
             | it was closed and no staff from the airline was anywhere.
             | So I had to bring my big suitcase along through security
             | and then the airline staff at the gate was friendly enough
             | to check it in for me for free.
             | 
             | But if you're bringing anything in your checked luggage
             | that security doesn't like, you will have to just leave
             | that item at the airport. You might also have to pay a high
             | fee to bring it to the gate instead of checking it,
             | depending on airline. I had purchased my ticket directly
             | from the airline, so maybe they treated me better because
             | of it?
        
           | gowld wrote:
           | "separate tickets" are for 2 1-way tickets instead of a
           | round-trip, not splitting a 1-way across a connection.
        
       | mattkantor wrote:
       | I worked on this for tripstack a while ago. They offer it through
       | their partners. Kiwi is the other one who made it a thing. Now
       | it's more common to see it all over.
        
       | parpfish wrote:
       | One search feature I wanted was a way to look up a list of all
       | flights leaving an airport on a certain day.
       | 
       | In the early stages of vacation planning, it's be fun to see a
       | list of all possible direct flights to evaluate my options, but
       | the use case of doing flight searches with an unknown destination
       | isn't too common. Basically, i want to be able to browse flights
       | like a bus schedule and just see what the possibilities are from
       | a particular start point
        
         | jsight wrote:
         | You could use flightaware.com for this. Just search a date and
         | a departure airport. The caveat is that the list will be fairly
         | large, with a lot of repeats.
        
         | kmoser wrote:
         | You can get something similar from
         | https://www.kayak.com/explore/ except the results are shown on
         | a map rather than as a list: you specify an origin (and
         | optionally a departure date) and the map shows price icons at
         | all possible destinations.
        
         | mhitza wrote:
         | > One search feature I wanted was a way to look up a list of
         | all flights leaving an airport on a certain day.
         | 
         | Skyscanner does this pretty well.
        
         | yunohn wrote:
         | Google Flights does this really well - just leave the
         | destination empty or use something generic, like Europe/USA. I
         | do this all the time to find new places to go to.
        
         | jakub_g wrote:
         | Not exactly what you want, but
         | https://www.flightconnections.com is nice to learn "where I can
         | fly from airport X in 1 hop / 2 hops".
        
           | cozzyd wrote:
           | Yeah though not all flights are daily
        
         | dagw wrote:
         | Google Flights seems to do this. Just leave the destination
         | field empty and select direct flights only.
        
       | robertclaus wrote:
       | The leading response does a good job calling out that this is
       | pretty risky for the traveller. Similar to skip lagging, if
       | anything goes wrong you can end up is a pretty difficult
       | position.
        
         | coffeebeqn wrote:
         | Even if you have insurance that can cover the cost of the low
         | cost connection ticket you just missed.. try buying a new
         | ticket at the airport for that same day or same week even and
         | you've now spent more than getting a regular ticket in the
         | first place. And that regular ticket airline is responsible for
         | getting you to your final destination.
         | 
         | I did some extreme budget flying as a youth and you might just
         | get stranded at a random airport so you better be very flexible
         | with your plans. If it's inside the US maybe you're fine to
         | rent a car or take a bus or something but if you happened to
         | layover in UAE or something then it gets trickier
        
       | tomhoward wrote:
       | It's called "virtual interlining".
       | 
       | The startup I co-founded (Adioso - YC W09 [1]) tried to do it,
       | including having discussions with a travel insurance provider
       | about offering "layover protection" - so that if one leg was
       | delayed causing you to miss your onward leg(s), your costs are
       | covered. Kiwi.com does this now.
       | 
       | We worked on it from about 2008 till 2013 then basically gave up,
       | as it was too hard to offer a service that customers could really
       | love and trust. (It wasn't for nought; the technology we
       | developed was valuable, and the company was able to rebrand and
       | pivot and now does important work for airlines to optimise loads
       | and fares [2], though I left when the rebrand/pivot happened).
       | 
       | The thing that makes it hard to do is it's basically impossible
       | to get all the flight inventory, including fares and seat
       | availability, that's complete and up-to-date enough to deliver a
       | service that customers can trust.
       | 
       | The engineering challenge is one thing - solving a multi-
       | dimensional travelling salesman problem (price and
       | distance/duration) highly repetitively - but you can solve that
       | with enough smart engineers and "compute", which ITA did in the
       | early 2000s, and on a smaller scale, our team did a decade later.
       | 
       | But you could build the most beautiful routing engine the
       | universe has ever seen, and still have a user experience that's
       | kind-of garbage because the industry just keeps the flight
       | inventory data so locked down.
       | 
       | These days there are APIs and feeds available from the major
       | distribution platforms - Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport, but it's
       | still not comprehensive. You often still need to negotiate
       | individual agreements with major airlines in order to be able to
       | publish and sell their fares. And even then, many of the low-cost
       | airlines (which are often most of interest to travellers who want
       | to find the cheapest route and deal with self-transfer) are not
       | available through these distributors, and some, like Southwest,
       | have blanket refused to be on 3rd party search sites, only
       | starting to relax that position very recently and only with the
       | dominant platform [3]. Kiwi.com has only recently come to a
       | partnership agreement with Ryanair [4] after being in legal
       | battle with them for years [5]. (I hate the thought of having to
       | be at war with your most important partners).
       | 
       | Others have mentioned Skyscanner, which was always the closest to
       | us in what we were each trying to offer (we talked briefly with
       | them about being acquired by them).
       | 
       | Right from the beginning when we got funded for Adioso, my mind
       | became fixated on the thought "if only you get every single
       | flight in the world loaded into one big graph database, what
       | could you do with it?", but it turned out to be a very big "if".
       | 
       | [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/31/adioso/
       | 
       | [2] https://amadeus.com/en/blog/articles/creating-a-private-
       | resa...
       | 
       | [3]
       | https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffwhitmore/2024/05/25/southw...
       | 
       | [4] https://media.kiwi.com/company-news/kiwi-com-and-ryanair-
       | ann...
       | 
       | [5] https://www.travolution.com/news/kiwi.com-celebrates-
       | three-w...
        
         | MichaelZuo wrote:
         | Why would airlines even want penny pinching customers to snag
         | the best deals via a third party?
         | 
         | At the very least it would make more sense to let their own
         | frequent flyers snag such deals.
        
           | Ekaros wrote:
           | One reason I could see is to keep perceived price level for
           | the frequent flyers. If they don't see best deals they won't
           | expect those. And the hardcore deal hunters are not loyal to
           | you or your brand.
           | 
           | Giving frequent flyers very good deals make them expect them,
           | thus not be so willing to pay "regular" price.
        
             | MichaelZuo wrote:
             | They could easily position it as a reward for loyalty for
             | FFs who spent more than $X in the last calendar year with
             | them.
             | 
             | The loyalty reward in this case would be treating virtual
             | interlining tickets as if they were an actual interlined
             | ticket.
        
               | Ekaros wrote:
               | Virtual interlining is really dangerous model for them
               | and their brand. It basically means that they would be
               | reliant on someone else without any guarantees in case
               | there is delays or problems.
               | 
               | And with different alliances they already have fully
               | functional interlining model. So trying to extend outside
               | this is not beneficial for them.
        
               | MichaelZuo wrote:
               | Well someone at the airline does need to crunch the
               | numbers to figure out at what $X of spend the risk
               | becomes sensible to take on.
        
               | scarface_74 wrote:
               | Those flyers don't care. Most frequent flyers are using
               | other people's money (business travelers) or are not
               | price conscience.
               | 
               | We don't even compare prices for domestic flights and we
               | fly a lot on our own dime (15x-20x+ a year since mid
               | 2021). We instinctively just book Delta where we have
               | status and lounge access.
        
               | MichaelZuo wrote:
               | They do care when there is no valid routing from point A
               | to point B via official codesharing/interlining/alliance
               | partner airlines on a given day, forcing an overnight
               | layover, or virtual interlining.
               | 
               | Usually this happens when flying long haul business class
               | from smaller airports to another small airport on a
               | different continent.
        
           | coffeebeqn wrote:
           | To fill empty seats ? Still better than nothing
        
             | doctorpangloss wrote:
             | People say this, and yet we see vacancy everywhere all the
             | time.
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | Eventually there just isn't someone who wants to go at
               | any price, but the airplane still needs to fly.
        
               | recursive wrote:
               | The last ~10 times I've flown have been completely maxed
               | flights. I can't remember the last time I saw an open
               | seat anywhere.
        
               | mattgreenrocks wrote:
               | Yep, post-covid it seems like airlines are favoring fewer
               | flights that are more packed. I don't fly a lot (couple
               | times a year), but when I do, it's very rare to see a
               | flight that is not at least 95% full.
        
               | Espressosaurus wrote:
               | Yeah, for the routes I've flown over the last 5-10 years,
               | significant numbers of empty seats are very much the
               | exception rather than the rule, and it got worse post-
               | covid.
        
               | eastbound wrote:
               | I remember a Lyon -> Bangkok on A380 on April 2nd 2010,
               | we were 50 in the plane (capacity 530). Less than 10%
               | full. With 20 stewards.
        
               | r00fus wrote:
               | Overbooking is still an industry standard approach to
               | profit maximization. The opportunity cost of being
               | overbooked (rebooking/refunding) is way lower than having
               | a few seats empty because of the average cancellations.
               | 
               | tl;dr - airlines are happy to sell you a seat that's
               | taken, betting some % of other people cancel.
        
               | mrgoldenbrown wrote:
               | Curious what routes you fly, I have been on full flights
               | consistently in the past few years, mostly Boston to
               | Denver
        
             | bityard wrote:
             | I haven't flown in a number of years, but when I was, it
             | was common knowledge that all airlines intentionally
             | overbooked their flights. If you ended up being one of the
             | unfortunate last 5% (or whatever) to check in, you were
             | effectively turned away and offered a voucher for your
             | trouble.
             | 
             | Is that still done?
        
               | WildGreenLeave wrote:
               | As far as I know this is a true American problem, I have
               | never heard about this, or have experienced this in
               | Europe or Asia.
        
               | telesilla wrote:
               | A friend was bumped on a full flight from London to
               | Europe last week because he didn't check in early enough,
               | but I haven't heard of it happening on the continent
               | side.
        
           | phreeza wrote:
           | Same reason they offer deals in the first place, price
           | discrimination and yield management.
        
             | NovemberWhiskey wrote:
             | But that's exactly the opposite of what is happening -
             | allowing third parties to construct itineraries that
             | compete with the ones that are being sold by the airlines
             | results in a competitor; not an enabler; for yield
             | management purposes.
        
           | tomhoward wrote:
           | It's an ongoing tension. Direct bookings are ideal but are
           | only adequate if your brand awareness and loyalty is strong,
           | like AA and Southwest. To whatever extent that's not the
           | case, you need to be available via partners/agencies and on
           | metasearch sites in order to be found.
           | 
           | Our pitch to airlines when we were trying to establish
           | partnerships with them was that we could find flexible
           | travelers to fill seats that would otherwise be empty, and we
           | had unique ways of doing that (which is why the company was
           | able to pivot to enterprise), but we weren't strong enough
           | for them to feel the need to partner with us (and they don't
           | want to help a small player grow into a big player).
           | 
           | Flight revenue optimization is an art and science at least as
           | old as industry deregulation, and funnily enough is now
           | something my old company is providing a lot of help with. If
           | you can't beat 'em, join 'em as they say.
        
           | scarface_74 wrote:
           | Once an airline schedules a flight, each additional passenger
           | is 0 marginal cost.
           | 
           | Besides the people who have high status with an airline are
           | usually price insensitive business travelers.
           | 
           | The people who aren't penny pinching customers who do fly
           | often on their own dime are either going to pay for business
           | class or first class seats or are going to get auto upgrades
           | for free once they book. At least that's how it works on
           | Delta.
           | 
           | They surely aren't going to sully themselves by sitting in
           | the "cattle class".
           | 
           | For instance, Delta releases cheap economy seats to their
           | partners like Virgin and KLM. I routinely book short flights
           | between MCO (Orlando - current home) and ATL (former home)
           | all of the time for 5500 points via KLM/AirFrance to fly
           | Delta (cash price $230 one way) and to see my parents in
           | small town south GA (MCO - ATL - ABY) for 8500 points (cash
           | price one way $358).
           | 
           | The tickets that Delta releases to partners are the least
           | desirable times and they take away even tho use three weeks
           | before the flight because they can jack up prices.
           | 
           | As an example, there are at least 15 flights a day between
           | MCO and ATL on Delta. Three of those flights may be available
           | on KLM or Virgin
        
             | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
             | > price insensitive business travelers.
             | 
             | I've done paid travel for several companyies and they've
             | all still been price sensitive. They usually have some
             | policy where they'll detect some "reasonable" itinerary but
             | then let me choose my own as long as it's within a certain
             | dollar amount of their "reasonable" itinerary.
             | 
             | Who are these "price insensitive" companies?
             | 
             | What's always been especially annoying to me is that I've
             | never had an option to pay out of pocket to upgrade my
             | seat. Company travel portal only lets me book an economy
             | ticket, and if I ask the airline about upgrading, they say
             | to contact the company travel portal, who of course tells
             | me to contact the airline. $eyeroll_emoji
             | 
             | Of course, the companies always have a strict "ALL TRAVEL
             | MUST BE BOOKED THROUGH THE PORTAL" policy, so I couldn't
             | even just pay the ticket out of pocket and get a portion
             | reimbursed.
             | 
             | > I routinely book short flights between MCO (Orlando -
             | current home) and ATL (former home)
             | 
             | That's only ~450 miles. I'd just drive that.
        
               | scarface_74 wrote:
               | Why would I drive 6.5 hours when I can just get dropped
               | off by the airport, whiz through Clear + TSA Precheck,
               | hang out at the Delta lounge where I get free food and
               | alcoholic drinks, hop on the plane and be there in an
               | hour and a half?
               | 
               | Especially since it is essentially free?
               | 
               | Besides I work remotely and we have been down to one car
               | since mid 2020. If either one of us are going by our
               | self, we wouldn't want to leave the other without a car.
               | 
               | As far as price insensitivity , what are the chances that
               | the cheap routes are going to be available when and where
               | the business traveler needs to go?
               | 
               | I assure you that the travel policies that your company
               | uses for you aren't the same ones they use for their
               | executives.
               | 
               | I doubt very seriously that Andy Jassy or Bezos had their
               | expense report rejected for a $3 stick of deodorant they
               | charged to the room like what happened to me when I was
               | at AWS (cloud consulting department - ProServe).
               | 
               | But even Amazon didn't make you choose the cheapest route
               | and I could always choose thier "most preferred carrier"
               | - Delta - even if it did cost more.
               | 
               | I could also choose non stop vs layover if it costs more.
        
         | spiffytech wrote:
         | I enjoyed Adioso back in the day. Found lots of cheap flights.
        
           | tomhoward wrote:
           | Great to hear! Thanks for saying so.
           | 
           | I still hope to rebuild it one day but only when I can do it
           | as a passion project. You can't make a living from a site
           | like that.
        
             | zerr wrote:
             | Why not? People make a living from Amazon affiliation
             | websites. Don't the flight companies have the similar
             | programs?
        
         | nomilk wrote:
         | > Kiwi.com does this now.
         | 
         | Sorta, the real pain point is if _anything_ needs changing on
         | any of your tickets, it 's a total PITA. I value 'less hassle'
         | more than I do saving 5-20% of the airfare. For me Kiwi (and
         | other middlemen like it) are a hard 'No'.
        
           | scarface_74 wrote:
           | This is true when going through any third party portal for
           | either flights or hotels.
           | 
           | No reasonable amount of savings is enough to convince us to
           | ever use a third party portal.
           | 
           | My wife and I travel a lot as a hobby - mostly domestically
           | with one or two international trips a year - and _something_
           | is statistically going to change between the time we book and
           | the time we fly on at least one of our trips.
           | 
           | It's a lot easier to make changes directly with the
           | airline/hotel especially when you have status than going
           | through a portal
           | 
           | Just last month we had a flight to Vegas + hotel over Labor
           | Day that we changed at the last minute to go see my mother in
           | law who had been taken to the hospital by our older (adult)
           | son. We were able to change our flights to another city (ATL
           | instead of LAS) as an even swap.
           | 
           | This was Delta airlines.
           | 
           | Then two hours later we found out she had Covid and decided
           | against it and were able to call and change our flight back
           | all without any change in fees and get our hotel reservation
           | back.
           | 
           | Good luck doing that when booking through a portal.
        
             | dumbfounder wrote:
             | It's even worse when using points. Amex now uses Expedia on
             | the back end for hotel booking. I made a res for a hotel in
             | Italy and I tried to change it. Amex says call Expedia.
             | Expedia says call the hotel. The hotel says call Expedia.
             | Soooo frustrating. I think Amex travel is going to poop,
             | and that used to be their thing.
        
               | scarface_74 wrote:
               | At least with Amex you can transfer to airlines and you
               | will almost always get more than 1 cents per point by
               | transferring to an airline.
               | 
               | Unfortunately, Amex's hotel partners - Hilton and
               | Marriott are usually horrible redemptions.
               | 
               | Chase -> Hyatt is the gold standard. But Hyatt has a
               | small footprint
        
           | insane_dreamer wrote:
           | Same reason that while I may use Kayak/others for searching,
           | I almost always book the ticket directly with the airline
           | unless it's such a huge savings that it's worth to go through
           | a third party and deal with multiple airlines. Many airlines
           | will price-match these days so if do find the same flight
           | cheaper through a third-party they'll give it to you at that
           | price (providing all legs were with their airline of course).
        
             | jachriga wrote:
             | My (recent) experience with Kayak is that when you do
             | finally pick a flight to book, it only redirects you to the
             | carrier site where you book it manually. This was once for
             | United and once for Delta. Is that interaction maybe
             | carrier-dependent?
        
           | RSZC wrote:
           | The savings can be a lot more than 20% - last month I had a
           | roundtrip ticket of $2000 brought down to $1300 (and got
           | there faster!) via the switching airlines approach. It did
           | come with some additional stress - needed additional visas
           | and was worried about missing flights.
           | 
           | If things go wrong with Kiwi, they're likely to go very
           | wrong, yes...but on the other hand, if I can keep saving $700
           | per trip, I can afford for them to go very wrong sometimes
           | and still come out ahead.
        
         | piombisallow wrote:
         | Is this the real Aviato?
        
           | tomhoward wrote:
           | Seems likely if you imagine the producers just looked at an
           | alphabetically sorted list of YC companies for name ideas.
        
         | tcgv wrote:
         | The last few times I used Skyscanner, I was disappointed
         | because their "database" was outdated. When I clicked on a
         | flight from the search results, it took me to the airline's
         | website, which then showed a higher price. Often, there's no
         | official fare from the airline, and Skyscanner lists prices
         | from third-party providers I don't really trust.
         | 
         | I'm finding Google Flights more reliable these days.
        
           | neilv wrote:
           | Is Google Flights based on the ITA Software acquisition?
        
             | umeshunni wrote:
             | Yes, you can think of Google flights as a scaled front end
             | on top of the ITA data.
        
               | garaetjjte wrote:
               | Is this actually true? For example Ryanair flights will
               | show up on Google Flights, but not on ITA Matrix.
        
         | shalinmangar wrote:
         | I loved Adioso! I used it all the time to find great deals in
         | Europe. Thank you for building it!
        
           | tomhoward wrote:
           | I love hearing this! Makes it all worth it. Thanks for
           | sharing :)
        
             | medion wrote:
             | Also loved Adioso, while traveling in Europe I used it
             | extensively - the UI was incredible and I could never
             | understand why it was not much much more popular... I
             | haven't traveled much in the last 4 years and it's sad to
             | see it does not appear to exist any longer?
        
         | jonasdegendt wrote:
         | > You often still need to negotiate individual agreements with
         | major airlines in order to be able to publish and sell their
         | fares.
         | 
         | Out of curiosity, what's stopping you from just
         | scraping/crawling this on a daily basis? I'm at a scale-up that
         | offers a BI solution for the hospitality sector, and we scrape
         | well into the tens of millions of data points per day using web
         | crawlers.
         | 
         | They obviously don't want you to, so it's an ongoing cat and
         | mouse game of integrations breaking, but once we we're
         | established and had a customer base, the ability to negotiate
         | data API agreements actually opened up. Especially if you have
         | data to offer in return.
        
           | residentraspber wrote:
           | Some airlines (Air Canada, in particular) are ramping up
           | their attacks outside of just technical means [1].
           | 
           | It's a pretty sad state of affairs, but it seems some
           | airlines would rather throw lawyers at a problem than let
           | their users have a better experience.
           | 
           | [1]: https://onemileatatime.com/news/airlines-shut-down-
           | websites-...
        
         | doctorpangloss wrote:
         | Do you think consumers have a limited appetite for airline
         | bullshit? After all congressmen fly.
        
         | jamestimmins wrote:
         | Adioso was amazing! It was the only flight search engine that
         | let explore possible trips (rather than just looking up flights
         | once you knew where you wanted to go) by searching for regions
         | or "International".
        
           | tomhoward wrote:
           | Great to hear! Thanks for saying so.
           | 
           | Question for you: can Google Flights (or any other flight
           | search engine) give you the same kind of search
           | capabilities/answers/experience you got from Adioso?
        
       | chriscappuccio wrote:
       | A web search engine that combines results from different web
       | sites? (2022) (openai.com)
        
       | Ilasky wrote:
       | One use case I'd love to see is the ability to find the best
       | price for multiple city tickets.
       | 
       | I'm fairly flexible on dates, but getting the best price for it
       | is a super iterative process. Having some similar functionality
       | like excel's solve function would be awesome to find optimal
       | dates within a range for each destination.
        
       | Tepix wrote:
       | kiwi.com is also pretty good at this.
        
       | mmsc wrote:
       | I've never understood the comments on all of the posts like this
       | advising people to never book via a third party. Is it an
       | American thing?
       | 
       | I've probably been on around 250 flights in the past 7 years in
       | Europe and I can't remember one time that it was cheaper to book
       | directly than through some third party. Sometimes it's the same
       | price to book direct, but it doesn't matter either way: the
       | support you're going to get is the same, and the insurance or
       | whatever depends on... exactly whatever you've paid for already.
        
         | returningfory2 wrote:
         | > the support you're going to get is the same
         | 
         | I think this is not true. In my limited experience, if you book
         | a flight through a third party or even a code share agreement,
         | you don't get full access to the flying airline's UI and things
         | like changing your flight or dealing with cancellations are a
         | real hassle.
         | 
         | Just last week I had an issue where I had booked an Iberia code
         | share flight through American Airlines, but then Iberia bumped
         | me from the flight onto an AA flight. Of course, both Iberia
         | and AA support initially claimed it wasn't their problem and
         | that I needed to contact the other airline.
         | 
         | Maybe in Europe it's not as much a problem because (1)
         | modifiable flight tickets aren't as common and (2) passenger
         | rights in the case of delay and cancellations are stronger.
        
           | cozzyd wrote:
           | Yeah, due to thw Fly America Act, I (usually) have to book
           | through a US carrier even if it's a code share for work
           | travel and run into this problem often...
        
         | barrkel wrote:
         | It's often slightly more expensive to book direct but if you
         | want to e.g. buy extra baggage at a discounted online rate
         | (i.e. not an airport mugging), there is no guarantee that a
         | third party will have a UI for that.
        
           | mmsc wrote:
           | I've also never booked a flight through one of the 3rd
           | parties where I couldn't access the booking on the airline's
           | website.
           | 
           | Some time again (as discussed in this thread), Ryanair had
           | some spat with resellers. So I had to upload a picture of my
           | ID to the Ryanair website in order access my booking that
           | way.
        
       | chx wrote:
       | Never book anywhere else but the airline website. It's not worth
       | it, these days. There might be some deals but when and no longer
       | if, IRROPS happens you will face an uphill battle to fix your
       | problem playing a triangle between the airline and the OTA you
       | booked with. Flying has changed: past covid and Boeing-being-
       | shit-revealed there are not enough long range planes, in Europe
       | because of the Ukrainian war Hungarian ATC is overwhelmed which
       | creates ripple effects all over and nothing is on time. And
       | that's just the regions I know about.
       | https://travel.stackexchange.com/q/174173 has more.
        
       | sho wrote:
       | From the great presentation linked:
       | http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...
       | 
       | > Amazingly, the graph diameter is often as high as 20: there are
       | airports that can take 20 flights minimum to get between
       | 
       | I wonder if that's still true. It's hard to imagine. And just the
       | thought of having to optimize that search function made my
       | cortisol levels spike a bit.
        
         | cozzyd wrote:
         | I imagine it must be something like small Pacific island to
         | small town in the Canadian far north or something...
        
           | bluGill wrote:
           | Canada is too rich - there are more likely to be flights.
        
             | cozzyd wrote:
             | Yes probably Russian far north is more likely I guess!
        
           | dmurray wrote:
           | The next line specifies:
           | 
           | > typically this will be a small airport in Alaska or Canada
           | to another small airport in Africa or Indonesia
           | 
           | It's still mind blowing to me. Surely any Alaskan airport
           | would be within 5 hops of Anchorage (or not have scheduled
           | flights at all, fine, but that can't be the case here),
           | likewise surely any Indonesian airport is within 5 hops of
           | Jakarta, and Anchorage-Jakarta can certainly be done in 3
           | hops in a multitude of ways. But one of those assumptions is
           | wrong by 7 hops!
           | 
           | There aren't even that many airports to consider, the same
           | presentation gives 4000 as the number included in the
           | analysis.
           | 
           | Maybe the graph topology is something like a series of tiny
           | airports that each only connect to the next airport in the
           | series, probably by the same flight that makes multiple stops
           | (not unknown in island hopping, and maybe then in
           | Alaska/Canada too). So you don't really board 20 planes but
           | you do require 20 takeoffs and landings.
        
             | dmurray wrote:
             | Thinking about it, I bet you can prove this is the
             | topology. If the graph is generally densely connected
             | (almost all nodes have 3+ destinations) then the diameter
             | can't be that high compared to the size of the graph. Proof
             | left to the reader. So either there are chains like
             | described above at the edges, or there's a chain like that
             | separating two parts of the graph (suppose there was only
             | one route connecting the US to Europe, and it stopped in
             | Newfoundland, Keflavik and Shannon). The last possibility
             | is obviously nonsense, though, we know that major airports
             | are densely connected.
        
             | saratogacx wrote:
             | It may also depend on optimizations. Potentially you may be
             | able to do fewer hops but if the schedules have 1/week
             | flights they may end up taking 2 weeks calendar time for 7
             | hops while 20 hops gets you there in 4 days. If the window
             | used for the graph creation doesn't cover enough schedule
             | time, more optimal routes may fall off the edges.
        
             | cozzyd wrote:
             | Yeah, so far CKX is the airport I can find with the most
             | hops to Anchorage (4, but 3 to Fairbanks which is also
             | fairly well connected). YGZ is likewise 4 hops to Ottawa,
             | and I can't find anything higher in Canada (there are a few
             | that are 4 hops to Montreal in northern Quebec). Nor can I
             | find anything in Greenland more than 4 hops from
             | Copenhagen, Keflavik, or Gatwick (hilariously, that's the
             | fewest-hop big airport for some routes due to flying
             | through Akureyri, which is connected to RKV rather than
             | KEF). There must be some island hopping chain somewhere in
             | the Pacific (or perhaps in the Indian Ocean?) but it's not
             | so easy to find. It seems you're usually a few hops from
             | either Tahiti, Hawaii or Fiji...
        
           | mapt wrote:
           | Has to be worse than that. 20 is still way too many degrees
           | of separation if every region operated on a hub and spoke
           | model.
           | 
           | I would imagine we're seeing two to four groupings of
           | sequential routes which are subsidized access. A floatplane
           | which hits every island in the archipelago, like a bus route,
           | before reaching the international airport with jets. Likewise
           | with bush planes in Arctic villages, and regional turboprops
           | that hit a sequence of rural airports because they only
           | attract a few passengers a day on their entire route.
        
       | nomilk wrote:
       | Google built something amazing in Google Flights [1] (and they
       | haven't ruined it yet).
       | 
       | It's no-nonsense, easy to filter by number of stops, and 'date
       | grid' is great for scoping out savings by departing a day or two
       | earlier/later without having open multiple tabs as other sites
       | necessitate.
       | 
       | Only criticisms are extremely mild ones: it defaults to 'return',
       | doesn't remember your currency, and bizarrely defaults to a month
       | ahead for the departure date (actually, they must have very
       | recently fixed this because it doesn't do that anymore!)
       | 
       | [1] https://www.google.com/travel/flights
        
         | khuey wrote:
         | My biggest criticism of Google Flights is that sometimes the
         | price it shows you is only available through some sketchy third
         | party OTA based out of a foreign country that only offers
         | support through email. Good luck if anything goes wrong or
         | needs to be changed with your ticket.
        
           | nomilk wrote:
           | > third party (online travel agent)
           | 
           | I've used Google flights ~50 times and hadn't seen too many
           | recommendations for flights booked through OTAs, but hard
           | agree with avoiding them (and booking directly with the
           | airline).
        
           | dboreham wrote:
           | Fun fact: sometimes Google Flights will show a (lower) fare
           | on United that doesn't exist on United's own site. But if you
           | click though to United from Google, it magically now does
           | exist, and can be ticketed. I don't know if this happens with
           | other airlines (I look for and book mostly United).
        
             | nomilk wrote:
             | Didn't know this! Although had seen the opposite: flights
             | (/prices) listed on google that are no longer listed on the
             | airline's site.
        
         | dboreham wrote:
         | Google didn't build it. They acquired ITA.
        
       | nomilk wrote:
       | Interesting to see Hipmunk [1] among the suggestions. I believe
       | Steve Huffman (reddit founder) started that and was yc funded.
       | 
       | [1] https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/26833/100794
        
       | bojangleslover wrote:
       | Adjacent plug for a free Chrome Extension: FlyOnTime embeds
       | flight delay probability straight into Google Flights. Very
       | useful when you're evaluating a number of flights from the same
       | origin and destination but at different times.
       | 
       | Helps you really know what you're paying for.
       | 
       | https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/flyontime/mjhocoppe...
        
       | bluGill wrote:
       | I want to search from multiple cities. I have often saved a lot
       | of money by flying out of an airport 1.5 hours drive away from
       | home.
        
         | fckgw wrote:
         | Most major airlines support this. Search for "Los Angeles" on
         | Southwest, for example, and you can simultaneously choose from
         | LAX, Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, or any number of airports
         | across the region.
        
       | dgd123 wrote:
       | tomhoward is correct. It's called "virtual interlining". I
       | started the team that built it at Hopper (started working on it
       | in Fall 2020 and we launched our first version in Fall 2021).
       | They're called Mix & Match fares on the Hopper app. It's a really
       | hard problem. So hard that we didn't even try to solve the "best"
       | flight. We used a bunch of heuristics to find what we believed
       | would be "better" flights. We measured what we called "beat rate"
       | which was the rate that a VI flight was the cheapest on our
       | flight list. When I left the team, our beat rate was around 0.5
       | (so a VI flight was the cheapest half the time).
        
         | rockostrich wrote:
         | Hey DGD, fancy seeing you here. It was a pleasure working with
         | you! -jon
        
           | dgd123 wrote:
           | Great seeing you too Jon! I figure if a thread on something
           | travel-related comes up, there's bound to be Hopper people on
           | it
        
       | traceroute66 wrote:
       | In my experience, these tools have lost their value in the post-
       | COVID world because the airlines have (a) collectively hiked
       | their prices, and (b) have slashed and otherwise aggressively
       | changed their route structure.
       | 
       | I spent many a happy hour <2020 on ITA Matrix. It was well worth
       | learning as a tool back then despite its terse interface and
       | tricky syntax.
       | 
       | But these days? The sorts of clever tricks you could do before
       | are no longer viable for the reasons I outlined at the top, i.e.
       | connections no longer exist and/or the price is no longer
       | attractive.
       | 
       | And before anyone tries to tell me otherwise, my experience is
       | bang up to date. What I said above is based on 2024 experience.
        
         | snakeyjake wrote:
         | During COVID when nobody was flying fares dropped.
         | 
         | But today fares are the lowest they've been in the history of
         | aviation, except for during COVID which should never be
         | factored into trends.
         | 
         | Inflation-adjusted averages for fares, both overall and on
         | specific routes, for the last 30 years are here:
         | https://www.bts.gov/air-fares
         | 
         | Even with fees and taxes airfare is the lowest it's ever been.
         | 
         | Internationally the difference is even greater than the halving
         | of US domestic ticket prices over the last 30 years.
         | 
         | The tricks no longer work because the bottom has been reached
         | and there are no more pennies to pinch.
         | 
         | If one buys a ticket today, right now, for next month one can
         | fly from DC to LA for $98-- round trip. Then they will complain
         | about paying $30 for a bag....
         | 
         | I can fly first class from New York to Frankfurt for less than
         | what an economy class ticket cost when I was visiting my Oma in
         | the 80s and 90s and that's NOT adjusted for inflation.
        
           | aidenn0 wrote:
           | > If one buys a ticket today, right now, for next month one
           | can fly from DC to LA for $98-- round trip. Then they will
           | complain about paying $30 for a bag....
           | 
           | LA<->DC is my most commonly booked flight and I haven't paid
           | less than $300 (net baggage fees) in almost 20 years. On top
           | of that, I end up with less legroom than I did 20 years ago.
        
             | snakeyjake wrote:
             | United App: IAD to LAX tues-tues $208 round trip including
             | fees.
             | 
             | Google flights: BWI to LAX sun-sun $98 on Spirit.
             | 
             | I'd pay the extra $110 for United because my bags and an
             | Economy Plus seat are free with my status.
             | 
             | Even if you've been paying a consistent $300 for 20 years,
             | the cost fallen by a third.
        
               | aidenn0 wrote:
               | BWI is not DC, I don't fly Tues-Tues, and 20 years ago I
               | was paying as low as $150. Flights now are cheaper than
               | for most of that time, but after you adjust for inflation
               | and paying for bags, they were definitely cheaper in the
               | mid-late 00s.
        
           | hilux wrote:
           | > But today fares are the lowest they've been in the history
           | of aviation, except for during COVID which should never be
           | factored into trends.
           | 
           | Not from the US to Asia they're not.
           | 
           | Not even close to the 3-5 years preceding Covid, when
           | competition from Chinese airlines drove prices way down
        
       | dumbfounder wrote:
       | I have long wanted to build an engine that let's you book a
       | vacation on points. You connect all the points programs you have
       | and it shows you how to leverage them to get the best deals on
       | flights and hotels. The trick here is that you can transfer
       | points from credit cards to some airlines and hotels, and
       | sometimes the points are worth more when transferred. But,
       | integrating with all these systems is the problem, and it's a big
       | problem. Especially since there is no way any of the players want
       | this to happen. Maybe it could be built as a browser plugin?
        
         | TZubiri wrote:
         | I dream of a world where we can see a price and choose to pay
         | it or not pay it and that's it.
        
         | xur17 wrote:
         | There are a number of sites that do this that have been
         | released in the last few years. https://www.pointsyeah.com is
         | probably my favorite since their free offering is very
         | workable.
        
       | TZubiri wrote:
       | Aviato
        
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