[HN Gopher] Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning (200...
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       Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning (2003) [pdf]
        
       Author : arnon
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2025-11-04 11:33 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ai.mit.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ai.mit.edu)
        
       | toinewx wrote:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43739547
       | 
       | 6 months ago
        
       | hinkley wrote:
       | I saw a video recently that submitted that the beginning of the
       | end for SouthWest started because their rerouting software was
       | even worse than the intrinsic complexity of the problem.
       | 
       | During a blizzard, their system fell so far behind trying to
       | route planes and crews around it to make sure uncancelled flights
       | could still be honored that they had to do it by hand and they
       | were stranding crews and passengers all over the US by not
       | reacting fast enough to new closures.
       | 
       | After that hit to their reputation the ownership and board
       | shifted to a more extractive model and they have continued to
       | spiral.
        
         | bobthepanda wrote:
         | Most US airline systems are very old. Southwest's particular
         | problem is that because they run a point to point model
         | compared to the hub and spoke of legacy airlines, it is a lot
         | harder to cold start the network from scratch. The legacy
         | airlines can more or less just send everyone back to the hub
         | and take inventory there.
        
         | SpicyUme wrote:
         | Was this during a storm a few years ago? I used to fly
         | Southwest a decent amount but I haven't in several years now.
         | I've heard worse things about them in the last couple years.
        
       | drob518 wrote:
       | This proves to me that companies will pursue revenue optimization
       | to the most absurd lengths, limited only by what the technology
       | can support. And even a bit beyond. I knew this was a difficult
       | problem, but this demonstrates just how difficult it is. That
       | said, I wonder if airlines and other industries aren't tripping
       | themselves up with complexity. Would a simplified pricing model,
       | going back to basics, allow them to make more?
        
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       (page generated 2025-11-08 23:00 UTC)