Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/17/google-flights-will-now-tell-you-when-fares-will-increase-help-you-find-cheaper-tickets/
169 comments
Fares and rules come from ATPCO (http://atpco.net). Flights come from OAG (http://www.oag.com). Seat availability requires data directly from the carrier, usually via a live query to the carrier's reservation system.
The GDS companies get this data from these sources and then in turn provide (crappy) APIs for customers to use to query it.
In general, if you're doing bookings you can get small amounts of the data (a query at a time) from a GDS. Otherwise you're looking at millions of dollars per year. And then you need to write code to parse it and price tickets using it (approximately 1M LoC if you're terse about it -- more like 30M if you're a GDS).
(I know all this because I co-founded ITA Software, whose software now powers Google Flights.)
The GDS companies get this data from these sources and then in turn provide (crappy) APIs for customers to use to query it.
In general, if you're doing bookings you can get small amounts of the data (a query at a time) from a GDS. Otherwise you're looking at millions of dollars per year. And then you need to write code to parse it and price tickets using it (approximately 1M LoC if you're terse about it -- more like 30M if you're a GDS).
(I know all this because I co-founded ITA Software, whose software now powers Google Flights.)
This is what I love about HN. Someone asks a good technical question and literally one of the most qualified people in the world answers it.
I love the fact that literally one of the most qualified people in the world answers it and my first response is hmmm... hasn't OAG been replaced by Innovata as a schedules provider by now?
Thank you for building ITA Matrix - it is amazing tool and I don't know what I would do without it.
Lots of other people did a lot more of the actual building than I did, but on their behalf, "You're welcome!"
> Thank you for building ITA Matrix - it is amazing tool and I don't know what I would do without it.
Honest question (I swear I'm not trying to troll): what do you actually do with it that you can't do (or do as well as) with Google Flights or Kayak or some other site like that?
I ask because I've used ITA Matrix and never managed to find a cheaper flight than I can through "normal" means... but I rarely fly multi-destination (and basically never do more complicated stuff) so I'm not sure if the use case is beyond mine or if I just don't know how to utilize it in a useful manner.
Honest question (I swear I'm not trying to troll): what do you actually do with it that you can't do (or do as well as) with Google Flights or Kayak or some other site like that?
I ask because I've used ITA Matrix and never managed to find a cheaper flight than I can through "normal" means... but I rarely fly multi-destination (and basically never do more complicated stuff) so I'm not sure if the use case is beyond mine or if I just don't know how to utilize it in a useful manner.
- Time bars (incredibly handy for optimising for things like tight connections, which can be essential when flying international and missing a connection means being stranded for a day): https://i.imgur.com/RteViUF.png
- Multiple departure/destination airports (you can search SFO,SJC,OAK to LGB,LAX,SNA and back in a single search). To be fair Google supports this on desktop too (but doesn't on mobile).
- Better search for return flights with variable stay lengths (Google only does a 5x5 matrix, ITA Matrix does a full month).
However, perhaps the biggest downside is that you can't actually book through ITA Matrix. It only finds the fare, you have to find it elsewhere to actually buy it (although Hipmunk takes routing codes, which makes it easier)
- Multiple departure/destination airports (you can search SFO,SJC,OAK to LGB,LAX,SNA and back in a single search). To be fair Google supports this on desktop too (but doesn't on mobile).
- Better search for return flights with variable stay lengths (Google only does a 5x5 matrix, ITA Matrix does a full month).
However, perhaps the biggest downside is that you can't actually book through ITA Matrix. It only finds the fare, you have to find it elsewhere to actually buy it (although Hipmunk takes routing codes, which makes it easier)
One of the features I like to use a lot is the ability to specify fair classes. As an example, say I want to fly to Tokyo, and I am an Alaska Airlines mileage plan member. Alaska Airlines does not fly to Tokyo, but it has deals with airlines that do. However, sometimes the fare classes are quite complicated. For instance, "Economy" is broken down into many buckets, and not all are created equal.
For instance, Delta has at least 13 buckets for Economy, and they each 'fare class' award different amounts of mileage to Alaska flyers [1]:
E: 25% Mileage
L, U, T, X, V: 50% Mileage
H, Q, K: 75%
B, M, S: 100% Mileage
Y: 125% Mileage
If you search on Google Flights, these will all be called "Economy". If you search on most of the other OTA's, you can sometimes find the fare class during checkout or even as part of your search results, but you can't filter on it (Hipmunk is one that does support some of ITA's syntax for these filters, but not all). The buckets aren't always strictly more/less expensive, but they're usually not exposed very easily, if at all[2]. So, you're often left crawling from listing to listing, expanding to see if they are going to get you any miles. (I'll save the debate of whether miles are worth all the effort for another day.)
On ITA, it's not unreasonable to construct a query that says "During the month of November, show me round trips that are between 12 and 19 days that are going from Denver to either Narita or Haneda Airports, which will earn me more than 50% miles on either Delta or American or JAL, but also only ones that connect in Portland or Los Angeles, with no prop planes or overnight stops, and no <50 minute connections or 3+ hour connections". (I wouldn't actually specify all of these stipulations, but they're good for the example! :) )
[1] https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/how-to-earn-m...
[2] Delta, to its credit, does allow you to search by minimum fair class on its advanced search)
E: 25% Mileage
L, U, T, X, V: 50% Mileage
H, Q, K: 75%
B, M, S: 100% Mileage
Y: 125% Mileage
If you search on Google Flights, these will all be called "Economy". If you search on most of the other OTA's, you can sometimes find the fare class during checkout or even as part of your search results, but you can't filter on it (Hipmunk is one that does support some of ITA's syntax for these filters, but not all). The buckets aren't always strictly more/less expensive, but they're usually not exposed very easily, if at all[2]. So, you're often left crawling from listing to listing, expanding to see if they are going to get you any miles. (I'll save the debate of whether miles are worth all the effort for another day.)
On ITA, it's not unreasonable to construct a query that says "During the month of November, show me round trips that are between 12 and 19 days that are going from Denver to either Narita or Haneda Airports, which will earn me more than 50% miles on either Delta or American or JAL, but also only ones that connect in Portland or Los Angeles, with no prop planes or overnight stops, and no <50 minute connections or 3+ hour connections". (I wouldn't actually specify all of these stipulations, but they're good for the example! :) )
[1] https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/how-to-earn-m...
[2] Delta, to its credit, does allow you to search by minimum fair class on its advanced search)
Using ITA Matrix is pretty easy.
Using ITA Matrix to actually find better deals takes a lot of knowledge about how the airline systems work.
If you're only looking at flights out of a particular airport and with a specific (default) routing, you'll probably not find anything better.
If you know that certain airports are hubs, or that a particular carrier has a slightly longer route that takes you via a certain city and maybe have a longer layover then you might be able to find some really good deals.
Being in Australia, I really don't get to take advantage of these things at all.
If you're only looking at flights out of a particular airport and with a specific (default) routing, you'll probably not find anything better.
If you know that certain airports are hubs, or that a particular carrier has a slightly longer route that takes you via a certain city and maybe have a longer layover then you might be able to find some really good deals.
Being in Australia, I really don't get to take advantage of these things at all.
1. there's minconnect -- I can structure flights so I have time to sleep while in transit. You will never find those in a normal search engine, they try to achieve minimal time. There's also padconnect, if you don't like booking right on MCT -- which is often wise! -- then, as the name suggests, this will add N minutes to the prescribed minimal connection time.
2. As recently revealed by the company http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/27265924-post483.html you can avoid connections in certain countries which can be beneficial for visa purposes or certain personal privacy requirements ( I know a German physics professor who refuses to go to the US because of the fingerprinting. )
2. As recently revealed by the company http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/27265924-post483.html you can avoid connections in certain countries which can be beneficial for visa purposes or certain personal privacy requirements ( I know a German physics professor who refuses to go to the US because of the fingerprinting. )
ITA Matrix Powers Google Flights and Kayak, or at least parts therein.
Last time I tried I found the fact I was able to select multiple departure airports and multiple destinations and see a calendar of fares a great way to find the cheapest fares.
A strong second to that, literally my favorite web tool in existence.
If you don't mind sharing, does ITA/Google Flights still use Common Lisp for the backend?
I don't actually know. But porting it would be a huge undertaking.
It does.
30M LoC sounds insane - what is the main reason behind there being so much code?
It requires a lot of code because the rules that govern the use of fares on a ticket are insanely complicated -- literally beyond anything you could possibly imagine a priori. There are dozens of rule "categories", each larded up with tons of complexity. There's even "Rule Category 25: Fare By Rule" which is essentially a complete macro facility for fares, allowing carriers to literally take an arbitrary fare's rules, modify them in all kinds of random ways, and publish the result as a new "virtual" fare.
As for the GDSes, their code is primarily TPF assembly. So now add the LoC blow-up of using a very low-level language.
There are like 25 people in the world who understand this stuff, and half of them likely work at ITA/Google.
As for the GDSes, their code is primarily TPF assembly. So now add the LoC blow-up of using a very low-level language.
There are like 25 people in the world who understand this stuff, and half of them likely work at ITA/Google.
Also people at Sabre (worked there) and I presume Amadeus (those are two main players - surprised you seemed to "forget" to mention them?).
As to the "categories", people at Sabre working with them used to say in some cases you can not even be sure if the calculation (of a ticket price - "fare") will end in finite time, so the "macro language" is apparently Turing-complete!
As to the "categories", people at Sabre working with them used to say in some cases you can not even be sure if the calculation (of a ticket price - "fare") will end in finite time, so the "macro language" is apparently Turing-complete!
I wasn't meaning to slight either Amadeus or Sabre, and indeed they have most of the other half of the people who understand this stuff between them. The others are at various airlines around the world and at ATPCO.
I've written elsewhere that I personally think the original Sabre system was/is one of the most impressive accomplishments in the history of computing. Using modern tools made things easier for us at ITA, though we compensated for that by trying to compute the entire (very large) solution space for every query, where prior systems used heuristics.
I've written elsewhere that I personally think the original Sabre system was/is one of the most impressive accomplishments in the history of computing. Using modern tools made things easier for us at ITA, though we compensated for that by trying to compute the entire (very large) solution space for every query, where prior systems used heuristics.
Just some random question. Can you give some insight on how "Greenspuns Tenth Rule Of Programming" apply in this 30million LoC? thanks in advance
Does all that complexity limit the amount of price competition airlines engage in?
Java boilerplate? Just kidding. :)
What are your favorite travel hacks?
Never set foot on an airplane unless I absolutely have to. :)
Why is that exactly?
I'd imagine after staring at all the convoluted fare rules for a substantial amount of work time, anything to do with air travel becomes far less magical.
Do you know how expert flyer works under the hood? Always been curious about their credit model. Are they charging per query since they're paying per query to the GDS companies?
Hi Brett, we charge a monthly or a yearly subscription fee that at the Premium level includes unlimited searching. Details here: http://www.expertflyer.com/frequent-flyer-programs Email us if you want to discuss more at customercare@
Seconded on ITA Matrix, great piece of software!
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There is a GDS that all (or most) vendors send data to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Distribution_System
Downstream companies then query this data and show them to you. The competition comes from the complex caching and delivery mechanisms that the companies use to get you the best price.
It's not really an area that is ripe for disruption. The margins are extremely low and there are only really two companies that make a majority of the money. Expedia and the Priceline group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Distribution_System
Downstream companies then query this data and show them to you. The competition comes from the complex caching and delivery mechanisms that the companies use to get you the best price.
It's not really an area that is ripe for disruption. The margins are extremely low and there are only really two companies that make a majority of the money. Expedia and the Priceline group.
I think Amadeus is a popular one, matrix itasoftware is another one.
I know that for airlines like easyjet you need to visit their website to get fares though. (Or Google would have to build a site crawler)
I know that for airlines like easyjet you need to visit their website to get fares though. (Or Google would have to build a site crawler)
Is momondo under one of those? At least where I live it is the biggest by far and I always thought it was globally in the top.
> Does each airline have their own way of exporting this data? Is there a single entity that aggregates from all of them?
I work with a lot of smaller airlines, and from my experience I can tell you no. Many of them can't even tell you their actual route list or flight schedule or pricing logic. They typically buy a booking engine solution from just a few major players (Sabre, Amadeus, TravelPort) who do have centralized data, but access to them is slow, expensive (at scale) and restrictive.
I've been told by one of the GDS's that our use case doesn't apply for direct GDS access, and we have to go through the airlines' access method. I don't know if these booking engine solutions include access to an API or not, however most airlines have said either they don't have an available API, or don't know how to share access to one.
Some of the larger airlines do seem to have their stuff together. But we're just starting to work with them, and because of all the bureaucracy involved it will likely be months before anything happens.
The screen scraping method djhworld mentions is a worthwhile approach if you'd personally like to track a few routes. I've done the same to watch prices to NYC (I visit friends often) on a few of the low-cost airlines. It's nice because you can tailor the logic to your preferences. Such as don't bother searching flights that don't include a weekend in the trip; or set my alert threshold 25% higher when the trip involves a holiday or long weekend.
I work with a lot of smaller airlines, and from my experience I can tell you no. Many of them can't even tell you their actual route list or flight schedule or pricing logic. They typically buy a booking engine solution from just a few major players (Sabre, Amadeus, TravelPort) who do have centralized data, but access to them is slow, expensive (at scale) and restrictive.
I've been told by one of the GDS's that our use case doesn't apply for direct GDS access, and we have to go through the airlines' access method. I don't know if these booking engine solutions include access to an API or not, however most airlines have said either they don't have an available API, or don't know how to share access to one.
Some of the larger airlines do seem to have their stuff together. But we're just starting to work with them, and because of all the bureaucracy involved it will likely be months before anything happens.
The screen scraping method djhworld mentions is a worthwhile approach if you'd personally like to track a few routes. I've done the same to watch prices to NYC (I visit friends often) on a few of the low-cost airlines. It's nice because you can tailor the logic to your preferences. Such as don't bother searching flights that don't include a weekend in the trip; or set my alert threshold 25% higher when the trip involves a holiday or long weekend.
We built Hitlist (hitlistapp.com) to make this accessible to laypeople - I used to do the same thing you mention, scraping specific routes I knew I was going to fly. It's far from perfect but makes it easier to browse lots of date/destination options at a time.
What is your specific use case? I used to work managing API's for one of the GDS companies
For screen scraping, there are a number of companies that do this already for multiple carriers. I'd suggest making use of one of these rather than reinventing the wheel. Example: http://xmldocs.travelfusion.com
For screen scraping, there are a number of companies that do this already for multiple carriers. I'd suggest making use of one of these rather than reinventing the wheel. Example: http://xmldocs.travelfusion.com
My project definitely isn't applicable because it requires caching prices, I don't remember why we were declined access for our other teams/products though. I would have to ask them, as it's been a while.
About screen scraping, I guess it depends on how quick you are at writing scraping scripts (and if you find it fun). I could probably write one faster than I could register for that API. You're also adding a layer between you and the prices. You don't know how long Travelfusion has cached these prices for, while it's simple to write a script that opens the real booking engine to get correct prices. I typically only run mine when I'm ready to purchase a ticket, but don't know which dates, rather than running it constantly to find deals.
And if I were doing anything more than a few routes on a few carriers, I definitely would use a real API instead of reinventing the wheel. In this case I just think it's kinda fun.
About screen scraping, I guess it depends on how quick you are at writing scraping scripts (and if you find it fun). I could probably write one faster than I could register for that API. You're also adding a layer between you and the prices. You don't know how long Travelfusion has cached these prices for, while it's simple to write a script that opens the real booking engine to get correct prices. I typically only run mine when I'm ready to purchase a ticket, but don't know which dates, rather than running it constantly to find deals.
And if I were doing anything more than a few routes on a few carriers, I definitely would use a real API instead of reinventing the wheel. In this case I just think it's kinda fun.
Your information is spot on. I have been working with Sabre daily for a few years now, and I don't want to think about the time I have wasted waiting for a Sabre response... it does go down once a week, which I guess is a perk
You should first start reading these great slides from Carl de Macken (ITA Software co-founder, the thing that now powers Google Flights) http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...
…and then decide if you still want to pursue this.
…and then decide if you still want to pursue this.
In Google's case it comes from an acquisition [1]. Not all airlines share data. For example, you won't find Southwest fares except on their own website.
[1] http://www.itasoftware.com/about/
[1] http://www.itasoftware.com/about/
> For example, you won't find Southwest fares except on their own website.
Wrong example. I have worked on the Southwest Project when I was at Amadeus.
Wrong example. I have worked on the Southwest Project when I was at Amadeus.
Southwest has it's own system, but does share their data through Sabre..
Fun Fact.. upto 2005 they still sent us the data hand delivered on a 9 track tape!
I've known "regular" people in the past that have written small scale services for themselves that scrape prices daily from an airlines own booking system and then provide a service so you can track it and see if there are price fluctuations.
Not sure on the legality of it though.
Not sure on the legality of it though.
[deleted]
It is very expensive to get our hands on the technology components that power the core of such applications. [1]
If an airline sells seats, bags, and other ancillary services, why aren't they trying to find more sales channels, to sell more?
I believe that airlines haven't been pushing for innovation, and rather, have been slowed down by their very own current third party providers, or "core business partners".
Travelling technology applications or reservation systems, first appeared a long time ago [2] and because at that time, they were innovations, some airlines signed up for them, to make more sales by globally or regionally distributing all of their flight related information (seat or ancillary availability, fares, code share agreements, etc.). For this reason, we can consider reservation systems as the very first technological airline business partners.
Typically, the reservation systems provided innovation on a distribution factor, which is the travel agency distribution factor. Travel agencies could, and have been connecting to reservation systems and making purchases that increase the number of airline sales, resulting in a win-win, for both agencies and airlines. [3] Reservation systems have other goals, such as flight code share agreements, but these are out of scope. [5]
Today, these third party business organisations do not want to lose market share, so they make things expensive or maintain the old prices, and open very little doors on the borders of their systems.
Therefore, only typical rich individuals or companies can afford to purchase and maintain the costs of direct connections to these providers, which is a win-loss, win for the reservation systems, and loss for airlines.
Fortunately, companies such as Google (with QPX), perform a re-engineering of what these big reservation systems players do, and make it much more affordable and simple to implement [4], and with that, not only they improve the understanding effort of the whole business, but also, provide more sales leads to the airlines, and better user and developing experiences.
The future should be standardised, airlines should distant themselves from the reservation systems (if these do not innovate), and open the doors of their businesses, by creating booking process APIs, that allow, developers and startups, to create powerful and innovative applications, that bring sales.
[1] https://www.tnooz.com/article/why-is-the-travel-industry-so-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_agency [4] https://developers.google.com/qpx-express/v1/pricing [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeshare_agreement
If an airline sells seats, bags, and other ancillary services, why aren't they trying to find more sales channels, to sell more?
I believe that airlines haven't been pushing for innovation, and rather, have been slowed down by their very own current third party providers, or "core business partners".
Travelling technology applications or reservation systems, first appeared a long time ago [2] and because at that time, they were innovations, some airlines signed up for them, to make more sales by globally or regionally distributing all of their flight related information (seat or ancillary availability, fares, code share agreements, etc.). For this reason, we can consider reservation systems as the very first technological airline business partners.
Typically, the reservation systems provided innovation on a distribution factor, which is the travel agency distribution factor. Travel agencies could, and have been connecting to reservation systems and making purchases that increase the number of airline sales, resulting in a win-win, for both agencies and airlines. [3] Reservation systems have other goals, such as flight code share agreements, but these are out of scope. [5]
Today, these third party business organisations do not want to lose market share, so they make things expensive or maintain the old prices, and open very little doors on the borders of their systems.
Therefore, only typical rich individuals or companies can afford to purchase and maintain the costs of direct connections to these providers, which is a win-loss, win for the reservation systems, and loss for airlines.
Fortunately, companies such as Google (with QPX), perform a re-engineering of what these big reservation systems players do, and make it much more affordable and simple to implement [4], and with that, not only they improve the understanding effort of the whole business, but also, provide more sales leads to the airlines, and better user and developing experiences.
The future should be standardised, airlines should distant themselves from the reservation systems (if these do not innovate), and open the doors of their businesses, by creating booking process APIs, that allow, developers and startups, to create powerful and innovative applications, that bring sales.
[1] https://www.tnooz.com/article/why-is-the-travel-industry-so-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_agency [4] https://developers.google.com/qpx-express/v1/pricing [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeshare_agreement
Bing Travel had predictions for fare fluctuations for air tickets back in 2009. It was pretty awesome back when I flied a lot, but they apparently killed the feature in 2014. Now Google's bringing it back, two years later.
I don't understand the future sometimes. ¯\(°_o)/¯
I don't understand the future sometimes. ¯\(°_o)/¯
Similarly, the article mentions that Google Flights is now more closely competing with Hopper, a mobile app for finding flights. Hopper already offers this price prediction service, and it is powered by Sabre's price prediction API: https://developer.sabre.com/docs/read/rest_apis/air/intellig...
Disclosure: I own another competing flight search tool, https://concorde.io
Disclosure: I own another competing flight search tool, https://concorde.io
My issue with Hopper, now I know it is a Sabre limitation, has always been that I can't get predictions based upon more fine grained criteria. For instance knowing that the lowest published fare for a particular departure and return date is going to rise or lower doesn't help me when I am only interested in flights that leave or return between specific times on those days. When I have used Hopper I have not found there is necessarily any strong correlation between shifts in the lowest published fare and other fares.
Even if assume the other fares and the lowest published fare do track there is still an issue. Hopper doesn't/can't track or predict seat availability, so when Hopper gives me a notification that I should continue to wait because prices should fall I can't have any faith that the number of seats I require will be available when they do. This is especially a problem for me because when I fly I am usually purchasing tickets for multiple people.
Given these limitations I find Hopper almost useless for my needs. I would love an app that would allow me to enter a departure date and time window, return date and time window and the number of passengers then provide feedback regarding both future price direction and seat availability. I'm not holding my breath.
Even if assume the other fares and the lowest published fare do track there is still an issue. Hopper doesn't/can't track or predict seat availability, so when Hopper gives me a notification that I should continue to wait because prices should fall I can't have any faith that the number of seats I require will be available when they do. This is especially a problem for me because when I fly I am usually purchasing tickets for multiple people.
Given these limitations I find Hopper almost useless for my needs. I would love an app that would allow me to enter a departure date and time window, return date and time window and the number of passengers then provide feedback regarding both future price direction and seat availability. I'm not holding my breath.
I can recommend Hopper, it did save my parents few hundred dollars.
I've waited out a week to get cheaper flights to from Japan to NZ.
Still was a rip-off though - one way cost more than a return layover flights to Eastern Europe.
I've waited out a week to get cheaper flights to from Japan to NZ.
Still was a rip-off though - one way cost more than a return layover flights to Eastern Europe.
That link to Sabre documentation isn't half bad. I was expecting a flaming mess of docs.
Sabre's REST APIs are actually pretty great; they're well-documented and fairly easy to use. The SOAP APIs [0], which contain the real meat (inventory details, PNR lookup, etc) are another story…
[0] https://developer.sabre.com/docs/read/SOAP_APIs
[0] https://developer.sabre.com/docs/read/SOAP_APIs
The original service was called Farecast before Microsoft bought them. It used to be very good, but the prediction info gradually became marginalized. We may never know the truth, but it feels as if Microsoft caved to pressure from the airlines.
Farecast and subsequent Bing Travel employee here: I had already moved on by the time the decision was made to discontinue the fare prediction service but I think it was mostly due to the amount of work it took to maintain a high accuracy rate and the large amounts of data we had to ingest to do so. Over time, there were less people from the original team working on it and the data options were limited (ITA was a major source of data) so it was discontinued. Glad to see we were ahead of our time!
Kayak has had it for as long as I can recall, and still does.
Ditto. And FYI, those fare predictions came to Bing when they bought Farecast. Fareast launched in '06, if memory serves.
Edit: Memory served: https://web.archive.org/web/20060630050308/http://farecast.c...
Edit: Memory served: https://web.archive.org/web/20060630050308/http://farecast.c...
Kayak has this too. I use it all the time.
I use Hopper[1] for that. It has been accurate so far.
[1]https://www.hopper.com/
[1]https://www.hopper.com/
Yeah, loved the farecast feature of Bing.
The farecast team left and formed Decide, a way predict prices for electronics and other goods. Eventually purchased by ebay.
Bing also had a fantastic thing that let you earn points when shopping through Bing Shopping. That was quickly discontinued as well.
The farecast team left and formed Decide, a way predict prices for electronics and other goods. Eventually purchased by ebay.
Bing also had a fantastic thing that let you earn points when shopping through Bing Shopping. That was quickly discontinued as well.
so around 2007-2009 was the actual liberalization in some data regulation related to air travel
nothing novel has happened since then
web services are just easier to use
nothing novel has happened since then
web services are just easier to use
I think they said they killed it because they said they could no longer be accurate with the rate predictions because airlines started limiting data access and it requiring more staff than it was worth. I used it all the time and was sad when they killed it off. I'm sure Google will abandon this project too in 2-3 years like they do everything else that turns out to not be profitable.
Kayak gives you an estimate of probability of price increase..
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I almost never use anything other google flights when searching for a ticket. The UI is just so much better and easier to use than the ridiculous bloated crap that most travel sites are (especially when they are trying to shove car-rental and hotel deals in your face).
The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the major ones) on short flights.
The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the major ones) on short flights.
>I almost never use anything other google flights when searching for a ticket. The UI is just so much better and easier to use than the ridiculous bloated crap that most travel sites are
Funny, I was just thinking of how dissapointing the Google UI was: it took me three clicks and two page loads to see where and for how long a layover was. Have you tried Hipmunk[0]? Their interface for flight listings is the best I've ever used.
0: https://www.hipmunk.com
Funny, I was just thinking of how dissapointing the Google UI was: it took me three clicks and two page loads to see where and for how long a layover was. Have you tried Hipmunk[0]? Their interface for flight listings is the best I've ever used.
0: https://www.hipmunk.com
What are you talking about? The layover info in Google Flights is right there in the right-hand column of the results list, "1h 48m in IAD".
I don't see how it could appear any sooner unless it telepathically, I mean, machine-learningally knew your destination and dates before you entered them.
I don't see how it could appear any sooner unless it telepathically, I mean, machine-learningally knew your destination and dates before you entered them.
Hm, yes in the case where there's only one layover it does say where and for how long. It doesn't show you that detail for 2+ layovers, and it doesn't show you what the length of the legs are or the local arrival/depature times on the comparison screen.
It takes one click to unroll the flight details which show the layovers and arrival-departure times. The fact that hipmunk doesn't have a monthly calendar with prices makes it significantly worse than google flights for me.
Not to mention a few other missing features, such as google's explore nearby destinations map, which is very handy.
Not to mention a few other missing features, such as google's explore nearby destinations map, which is very handy.
Seconding Hipmunk; incredibly good UI.
Indeed, I decided to try it out (having never used it before) and was very impressed.
Historically my flight booking priorities were pretty much 100% price related, but now they're a combination of price and duration.
Alas most sites only let you order by one or the other (literal example: 35 hour flight for $1850; change the sort to duration; 15 hour flight $3300, scroll through the list for _ages_ to try and find the best combination of the two).
Then select the best option outbound, only to find out the return flight is 36 hours... Or that the 16 hour option adds another $800 to the price.
The HipMunk UI was really nice for finding good duration flights in both directions, whilst also making it clear the price implications of which return leg I used (which to me is uncommon, because so many sites treat them as disparate steps, so a change in return flight means you get kicked back to step one.
Not strictly comparing the experience to Google Flights (as I haven't really used it), but to a lot of other flight search sites I've used (Kayak, SkyScanner, WebJet, Airline sites, IWantThatFlight, HelloWorld, among others).
The HipMunk UI actually facilitated that search really well. Very impressed :-) (And it seemed to have equally good prices for the flights I looked at compared to other sites.)
Historically my flight booking priorities were pretty much 100% price related, but now they're a combination of price and duration.
Alas most sites only let you order by one or the other (literal example: 35 hour flight for $1850; change the sort to duration; 15 hour flight $3300, scroll through the list for _ages_ to try and find the best combination of the two).
Then select the best option outbound, only to find out the return flight is 36 hours... Or that the 16 hour option adds another $800 to the price.
The HipMunk UI was really nice for finding good duration flights in both directions, whilst also making it clear the price implications of which return leg I used (which to me is uncommon, because so many sites treat them as disparate steps, so a change in return flight means you get kicked back to step one.
Not strictly comparing the experience to Google Flights (as I haven't really used it), but to a lot of other flight search sites I've used (Kayak, SkyScanner, WebJet, Airline sites, IWantThatFlight, HelloWorld, among others).
The HipMunk UI actually facilitated that search really well. Very impressed :-) (And it seemed to have equally good prices for the flights I looked at compared to other sites.)
Momondo also let's you sort by "best", which is a combination of price and time.
Hipmunk's UI is amazing if you know what you're looking at.
Yeah. I've never used Google flights. I always use Hipmunk. Off to check out Google Flights for a trip I'm about to book.
To reply to myself, yeah, Google Flights UI leaves a lot to be desired vs Hipmunk. The visualization of flights and layovers on Hipmunk is vastly better.
I like how prominent Google Flights makes the layovers in text form, but it's not visual, and you can't sort by agony.
These days I pretty much only fly nonstop or the shortest possible route if a layover is absolutely necessary. Looking at flights right now, the cheapest flight SFO-Frankfurt is 15h of travel and goes through Dallas (!!) vs 10h of travel for the nonstop. No-brainer, especially when you factor in getting on and off the planes, the risk of missed connections, etc.
I like how prominent Google Flights makes the layovers in text form, but it's not visual, and you can't sort by agony.
These days I pretty much only fly nonstop or the shortest possible route if a layover is absolutely necessary. Looking at flights right now, the cheapest flight SFO-Frankfurt is 15h of travel and goes through Dallas (!!) vs 10h of travel for the nonstop. No-brainer, especially when you factor in getting on and off the planes, the risk of missed connections, etc.
I think Hipmunk wastes a tremendous amount of space, in a project timeline type view that is just plain unnecessary. Google Flights, is a simple list, with filters, and it's fast. The calendar view with the pricing is ridiculously helpful.
> The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the major ones) on short flights.
Not to mention they're missing Southwest, but that's Southwest's fault -- they seem to have some sort of policy against allowing any third parties to list their flights. In addition to being really annoying since I have to make two searches rather than one every time I want to book a domestic flight due to a lone holdout, it also makes zero sense to me. How could not having all that free advertising from flight search engines possibly be a good thing for Southwest? I care enough to go to the trouble of searching in two places, but I doubt most people do.
Not to mention they're missing Southwest, but that's Southwest's fault -- they seem to have some sort of policy against allowing any third parties to list their flights. In addition to being really annoying since I have to make two searches rather than one every time I want to book a domestic flight due to a lone holdout, it also makes zero sense to me. How could not having all that free advertising from flight search engines possibly be a good thing for Southwest? I care enough to go to the trouble of searching in two places, but I doubt most people do.
> How could not having all that free advertising from flight search engines possibly be a good thing for Southwest?
It's not 'free'. See this quora answer for more: (https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Southwest-choose-not-to-offer...)
Short Answer: It costs money to be there and they can control the variables and environment better on their website.
Long Answer: It dates back to Southwest's routes in competing with the car for travel. In order to be price competitive, they did not want to pay travel agents a 10% commission. (This was the 1970s) So they sold tickets by the phone, at the airport, or at their office, but always direct.
As computers evolved, travel agents began connecting to an airlines fares by computer, rather than books and a phone. Airlines began developing proprietary systems for managing ticket sales, allowing other airlines to be in their systems for a fee. The biggest were Apollo (United) and Sabre (American). Southwest still refused to pay the distribution costs of the tickets.
When the internet became more broadly available to consumers, Southwest jumped on the opportunity, becoming the first major airline to sell tickets online. Other airline followed and soon after, 3rd party sites came to be, using the GDS' (Global Distribution Systems) like Sabre and Apollo to display all of the flights and fares. Acting like modern day travel agents, and putting many travel agents out of business.
Today, while Southwest has become a much larger airline, it still does not want to pay the GDS' for access to their systems. However, today Southwest has a much stronger brand which can drive more people to their website. And by having the website as the primary channel of distribution, they can control a lot of things that they could not within the confines of a GDS.
It has been debated whether the GDS' are really necessary anymore as middlemen. And besides Southwest, other airlines are trying to bring more people to their controlled distribution channel. In the past few days, Delta and American have removed their flight from several 3rd party websites.
It's not 'free'. See this quora answer for more: (https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Southwest-choose-not-to-offer...)
Short Answer: It costs money to be there and they can control the variables and environment better on their website.
Long Answer: It dates back to Southwest's routes in competing with the car for travel. In order to be price competitive, they did not want to pay travel agents a 10% commission. (This was the 1970s) So they sold tickets by the phone, at the airport, or at their office, but always direct.
As computers evolved, travel agents began connecting to an airlines fares by computer, rather than books and a phone. Airlines began developing proprietary systems for managing ticket sales, allowing other airlines to be in their systems for a fee. The biggest were Apollo (United) and Sabre (American). Southwest still refused to pay the distribution costs of the tickets.
When the internet became more broadly available to consumers, Southwest jumped on the opportunity, becoming the first major airline to sell tickets online. Other airline followed and soon after, 3rd party sites came to be, using the GDS' (Global Distribution Systems) like Sabre and Apollo to display all of the flights and fares. Acting like modern day travel agents, and putting many travel agents out of business.
Today, while Southwest has become a much larger airline, it still does not want to pay the GDS' for access to their systems. However, today Southwest has a much stronger brand which can drive more people to their website. And by having the website as the primary channel of distribution, they can control a lot of things that they could not within the confines of a GDS.
It has been debated whether the GDS' are really necessary anymore as middlemen. And besides Southwest, other airlines are trying to bring more people to their controlled distribution channel. In the past few days, Delta and American have removed their flight from several 3rd party websites.
I'd be very surprised if Google Flights wanted Southwest to pay for inclusion. It already lists Southwest flights with a note "Prices are not available for: Southwest. Flights with unknown prices are at the end of the list." Instead it really sounds like it's Southwest not wanting it to be easy for people to comparison shop.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, on an unrelated project.)
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, on an unrelated project.)
Google hooks into the systems that want Southwest to pay, it's not directly making that decision.
Even then, though, I'd still be very surprised if Google would respond to an offer of seat availability data from Southwest with "sorry, we won't let people search it unless you pay us".
Google works with a few airlines that don't pay them anything. However, Southwest (probably rightly) thinks that if people get used to finding Southwest fares on Google, they'll visit Southwest.com less frequently, increasing Southwest's reliance on Google in the long term. I'm nearly certain Southwest has sent a specific cease and desist to Google to NOT include its fares in results.
Yes, Southwest asking Google not to include their fares in results seems likely to me.
(This thread started with me arguing that "it costs money to be there" was not the reason Southwest flight prices aren't in Google.)
(This thread started with me arguing that "it costs money to be there" was not the reason Southwest flight prices aren't in Google.)
Isn't Google sending customers directly to airline websites to book?
So the way this is working is: Google, Hipmunk, etc. use GDS for queries, and then send customer to airline to book? Does GDS have any ability to sell tickets?
Has Google tried to scrape data directly from Southwest website and Southwest won't let them? Or is it just that Southwest will not provide APIs to make it easy for Google to pull the data?
So the way this is working is: Google, Hipmunk, etc. use GDS for queries, and then send customer to airline to book? Does GDS have any ability to sell tickets?
Has Google tried to scrape data directly from Southwest website and Southwest won't let them? Or is it just that Southwest will not provide APIs to make it easy for Google to pull the data?
I wonder if it's because people already associate them with being the cheapest, they want people to just default to going to their site and be too lazy to check the comparison sites. If they made it easy to compare, they would lose out on that crowd for any time they weren't the cheapest. Maybe it also allows competitors to beat their prices algorithmically.
Does Southwest selectively offer access to different sites? I know Momondo lists Southwest flights when I search through there. Or is Momondo crawling Southwest's site for prices?
Almost all flight searching / pricing tools have comically bad user interfaces. It's as if the product designers at these companies deliberately went out of their way to limit my options and make me search over and over and over and over.
When's a cheap day to fly to and return from Las Vegas? Sorry. Can't answer that, you need to specify the exact day you want to depart and the exact day you want to come back, and we might let you look at results + or - 3 days, unless you don't specify the exact departure airport.
These sites all seem to be geared toward business travelers who must travel on particular days from and to particular airports. Anything off that beaten path is an exercise in frustration.
When's a cheap day to fly to and return from Las Vegas? Sorry. Can't answer that, you need to specify the exact day you want to depart and the exact day you want to come back, and we might let you look at results + or - 3 days, unless you don't specify the exact departure airport.
These sites all seem to be geared toward business travelers who must travel on particular days from and to particular airports. Anything off that beaten path is an exercise in frustration.
When's a cheap day to fly to and return from Las Vegas?
Sorry. Can't answer that, you need to specify the exact
day you want to depart and the exact day you want to come
back, and we might let you look at results + or - 3 days,
unless you don't specify the exact departure airport.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, on an unrelated project.)
The user interfaces are poor because the quality of the underlying data is poor. The GDS I worked with simply did not offer any useful queries so it was impossible to get good results. A GDS usually charges per request so it quickly gets expensive and slow to aggregate multiple queries into a view that would be useful to the user. Also the terms and conditions of a GDS usually prohibits caching that could be used to make the user experience fast and inexpensive.
Finally the pricing models are non-intuitive and different airlines have different administrators who all type in their respective pricing slightly differently. To get the the best prices you have to tune each query to the particular style used by the administrator.
Finally the pricing models are non-intuitive and different airlines have different administrators who all type in their respective pricing slightly differently. To get the the best prices you have to tune each query to the particular style used by the administrator.
>These sites all seem to be geared toward business travelers who must travel on particular days from and to particular airports.
Yep. They're pretty clearly designed for the 99% or so case and just (ungracefully) throw their hands in the air for the other 1% or so.
As you say, it's hard to really make the system do the work around finding a cheap flight within a set of parameters.
I've also spent hours booking complicated multi-destination flights, especially in Asia when you need to use multiple carriers. Simply booking as a series of one-way flights can end up costing thousands of dollars more than something more optimized. So you need to end up manually trying various combinations of one-way and round-trip flights and then piecing together the separate itineraries at the end.
Yep. They're pretty clearly designed for the 99% or so case and just (ungracefully) throw their hands in the air for the other 1% or so.
As you say, it's hard to really make the system do the work around finding a cheap flight within a set of parameters.
I've also spent hours booking complicated multi-destination flights, especially in Asia when you need to use multiple carriers. Simply booking as a series of one-way flights can end up costing thousands of dollars more than something more optimized. So you need to end up manually trying various combinations of one-way and round-trip flights and then piecing together the separate itineraries at the end.
That's the exact sort of scenario you would want a travel agent for--if you can trust the agent to get a good fare.
Yeah. I actually have broken down and used our company travel service for this. Then at least it's out of my hands. But usually I have too much sunk cost :-) and have sufficient preferences that I just motor through on my own.
> When's a cheap day to fly to and return from Las Vegas?
This is exactly the problem I have addressed with my flight search tool, Concorde: https://concorde.io/sign-up
This is exactly the problem I have addressed with my flight search tool, Concorde: https://concorde.io/sign-up
I don't think its just business travelers, most people in full-time jobs tend to want to leave and return on specific days - i.e. fly out on Friday night, return on Sunday night (not necessarily in the same weekend).
> When's a cheap day to fly to and return from Las Vegas?
Hopper, an app on iOS, has exactly this. You give it a date, and then it gives you a month view with each day color-coded according to how expensive it will be to travel.
It also gives you recommendations about whether to buy a ticket now, or wait until prices go down.
I've bought tickets a few times through Hopper and it worked well. I have no business relationship with them at all--just a happy customer.
Hopper, an app on iOS, has exactly this. You give it a date, and then it gives you a month view with each day color-coded according to how expensive it will be to travel.
It also gives you recommendations about whether to buy a ticket now, or wait until prices go down.
I've bought tickets a few times through Hopper and it worked well. I have no business relationship with them at all--just a happy customer.
I always use SkyScanner - similar UI with options for "find the cheapest flight in a month," but usually way cheaper prices. Also includes Southwest, which Google Flights is missing, if I remember correctly.
https://www.skyscanner.com/
https://www.skyscanner.com/
Whenever I compared prices, SkyScanner hasn't been cheaper than Google Flights for me (domestic flights in the US and flights to Europe) and their website is much, much slower than Google Flights. Do you remember what kind of flights were cheaper?
SkyScanner is often either cheaper or more accurate than Google Flights.
Accurate: Google Flights often leaves out the mandatory "additionals" such as booking fee/credit card free, etc.
Cheaper: SkyScanner has more third party companies offering flights. This depends on which language/country you've set SkyScanner to. Try setting it to the country you're departing from. Flying from Amsterdam? Set it to Dutch! Suggest to try it now, sometimes difference is surprising. Though check out if that third party is trustworthy.
I often do e.g. a long trip (+flight) and then various short trips / flights after that. I book the first one early when on discount. The short ones much later.
Accurate: Google Flights often leaves out the mandatory "additionals" such as booking fee/credit card free, etc.
Cheaper: SkyScanner has more third party companies offering flights. This depends on which language/country you've set SkyScanner to. Try setting it to the country you're departing from. Flying from Amsterdam? Set it to Dutch! Suggest to try it now, sometimes difference is surprising. Though check out if that third party is trustworthy.
I often do e.g. a long trip (+flight) and then various short trips / flights after that. I book the first one early when on discount. The short ones much later.
My favourite is http://adioso.com, it's even cleaner than Google Flights and it has "Anytime" as a choice for date of departure.
I prefer Kayak Explore for flexible itineraries since it basically just shows you the best price everywhere and you can filter by price, time of year, flight length: https://www.kayak.com/explore/
EDIT: And here's a ridiculous itinerary it found for reference:
$286, LAX <-> Oslo Round Trip, December 2 - 6, Norwegian Airlines: https://www.kayak.com/flights/LAX-OSL/2016-12-02/2016-12-06/
EDIT: And here's a ridiculous itinerary it found for reference:
$286, LAX <-> Oslo Round Trip, December 2 - 6, Norwegian Airlines: https://www.kayak.com/flights/LAX-OSL/2016-12-02/2016-12-06/
SO good; thank you. Will start visiting random places.. thinking the formula is AirBNB + friends + random interests (tennis/spin) and long walks at the very least.
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Eh, I prefer Google's calendar search for flights. I also don't care which days I fly and they'll show you the cheapest day to buy tickets.
Hitlist (hitlistapp.com) is also designed specifically with flexibility in mind - we don't have every single route on every day, but we let you set an alert with whatever criteria you have in mind - from 'SFO to London on these days +/- 3 days' to 'a beach in southern Europe for 7-10 days between January 8th and 31st' - and can ping you when fares that match come up.
TIL there are no flights between BWI and Dallas in January.
Maybe it's load but as others have said it doesn't seem to be returning complete (or in my case, any) data.
Maybe it's load but as others have said it doesn't seem to be returning complete (or in my case, any) data.
just tried my monthly delta route for a M-F out and back. no results, changed week, no results. I likely wont be returning to the site.
I like rome2rio.com for their ability to search more than just flights.
I just gave it a try because of this comment. Found the UI rather confusing actually. It only showed me one flight? And, that was almost double the price of what I booked yesterday (and found via http://hipmunk.com which is my personal favorite tool that I think has an excellent interface)
I've searched with Google Flights a few times, but they are consistently more expensive than the flights I find with other services (Hipmunk, specifically). Has anyone else noticed this before, too?
Does anyone know why the prices would be that much different? For the searches I've done, Google Flights is close to $150 more than what Hipmunk shows. Does Hipmunk maybe just have some sort of promo or lower price that Google Flights can't offer?
EDIT: This curiosity also relates to what "karakal" is asking in their comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736433 - Like is this data just universal or do some services get better deals than others?
Does anyone know why the prices would be that much different? For the searches I've done, Google Flights is close to $150 more than what Hipmunk shows. Does Hipmunk maybe just have some sort of promo or lower price that Google Flights can't offer?
EDIT: This curiosity also relates to what "karakal" is asking in their comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736433 - Like is this data just universal or do some services get better deals than others?
My experience is completely different. I've been using Google flights for 2 years now, it always shows me the best price compared to cheapoair/hipmunk. Also I love the clean UI :)
Yeah, totally right, it could easily be subjective to what you're searching for and when/where. I could have just had bad luck with Google Flights vs what I saw on Hipmunk. Just wondering if anyone knows more about the structure/algorithm of it all and why it may be different so much per site. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've found some flights to be $100 more on Google Flights than if I went to the airline website itself and booked a flight straight from their website, so you aren't far out there.
Are you finding the same specific flights have different prices on the two services, or are you finding that Hipmunk is able to find flights that Google doesn't?
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, on an unrelated project.)
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, on an unrelated project.)
Good question. I haven't gone as far as seeing if a specific flight has a different price or not. It is, however, from the same airline that Hipmunk has a lower price for. I do know that. I'm not sure if it's the same specific flight or not, though. I can look into it more...
In general, I based my original comment on what Google Flights show as the "Best Price" vs what Hipmunk is showing as "Best Price." And there isn't any filters on either platform that would be quick to explain why the huge price difference.
In general, I based my original comment on what Google Flights show as the "Best Price" vs what Hipmunk is showing as "Best Price." And there isn't any filters on either platform that would be quick to explain why the huge price difference.
Since you've said it many times this thread, I'm taking the bait: I believe you mean "disclosure".
I try to compare Kayak skyscanner and google flights every time I search for a flight. Mixed results, but anyway after finding a low price, go to the airline site to check.
Likewise, several searches for upcoming trips of mine on Google Flights result in significantly more expensive flights than on Hipmunk.
Will Google Flights tell you if prices are going to decrease in the near future too? You would generally think if they can predict one direction, then they can predict the opposite. However, telling someone that a cheaper flight may exist in the future is going to convince them to leave the site and possibly not come back.
Doesn't Kayak do they same thing? They have the wait buy stuff too.
However my favorite site now days skiplagged. The site united try to sue.
However my favorite site now days skiplagged. The site united try to sue.
I love the interface of Google flights, but I can usually find cheaper tickets elsewhere (usually on skyscanner). I've no idea how ticket pricing works and why one site can be so much cheaper than others, but skyscanner is usually 15-20% cheaper on international flights for me.
Skyscanner also has more airlines than google flights, if I remember correctly. I don't think google flights shows southwest flights, but skyscanner does. I have no idea why.
I take it they do not factor in currency, which would be factor if paying via credit card and exchange rates change if paying in another currency than home.
That would be I feel very dynamic in part, though still something that plays more of a factor in price than other aspects.
I'm not sure how much Airlines adjust for that and given all fuel is ties tot he USD($) then more a factor for non USD pricing with the exchange rate of the USD.
Now a feature that monitored that and fuel cost changes could potentially give people a heads up before the airlines adjust and might be a good feature.
Though I can count the number of flights I have taken on my hands, so not that afay with the dynamics Airlines use to adjust prices and the frequency.
That would be I feel very dynamic in part, though still something that plays more of a factor in price than other aspects.
I'm not sure how much Airlines adjust for that and given all fuel is ties tot he USD($) then more a factor for non USD pricing with the exchange rate of the USD.
Now a feature that monitored that and fuel cost changes could potentially give people a heads up before the airlines adjust and might be a good feature.
Though I can count the number of flights I have taken on my hands, so not that afay with the dynamics Airlines use to adjust prices and the frequency.
Almost every site offers this. Isn't this unhelpful in the last ng run? Consumer behavior will change and the price will smooth out or the window of lower prices will be gone or the percentage of change will become smaller.
It might be unhelpful to the users who know how to take advantage of the current system, but hopefully the net impact will be greater price transparency, which helps consumers in the long run; people will pay more for things which cost the airline more, but not for arbitrary reasons like booking too early.
In general, flight pricing seems rather opaque; I'm always confused by flights from city A to city B that are more expensive than flights from city A to city C with a layover in city B. I'm all for more transparency of the air travel market.
In general, flight pricing seems rather opaque; I'm always confused by flights from city A to city B that are more expensive than flights from city A to city C with a layover in city B. I'm all for more transparency of the air travel market.
The problem is that there is no single price at which you can fill the plane enough and cover expenses. Set the price too low and your plane fills up but your costs are not covered. Set your price too high and you have so many empty seats that even with the handful of people paying outrageous prices you can't cover the cost of crew, fuel, and ground services. This means you have to sell some tickets at low prices, to attract the masses, and some tickets at high prices, to cover expenses. But now you have the problem of trying to prevent the people who can afford and are willing to buy expensive tickets from using the cheap fares. This is what leads to all the obscure rules about saturday night stays and layover impact and time of booking and whatnot. For a lot more info on this, see http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...
Interestingly, low-fare airlines have tried working around the problem by setting prices super low, such that they lose money on each flight by default, but making it up in auxiliary services - either selling addons that cost them nothing on margin to implement (priority boarding, early checkin, seat selection), upselling external high-margin services (car rental, hotel bookings, airport transfer services, insurance, phone cards) or directly extracting money from customers (obtrusive advertising, in-flight sales pitches, extremely punitive charges for baggage/airport checkin/over-weight fees/not following obscure rules). This seems more sustainable than the traditional approach of customer price segmentation if price transparency increases over time.
Interestingly, low-fare airlines have tried working around the problem by setting prices super low, such that they lose money on each flight by default, but making it up in auxiliary services - either selling addons that cost them nothing on margin to implement (priority boarding, early checkin, seat selection), upselling external high-margin services (car rental, hotel bookings, airport transfer services, insurance, phone cards) or directly extracting money from customers (obtrusive advertising, in-flight sales pitches, extremely punitive charges for baggage/airport checkin/over-weight fees/not following obscure rules). This seems more sustainable than the traditional approach of customer price segmentation if price transparency increases over time.
> In general, flight pricing seems rather opaque; I'm always confused by flights from city A to city B that are more expensive than flights from city A to city C with a layover in city B.
That example is pretty simple. If you consider a non stop flight as a different product than one with layover, non stop has less competition, people who don't mind a layover are more price sensitive and if there's a layover the airline will compete with all the other airlines trying to fill their hubs.
That example is pretty simple. If you consider a non stop flight as a different product than one with layover, non stop has less competition, people who don't mind a layover are more price sensitive and if there's a layover the airline will compete with all the other airlines trying to fill their hubs.
Carriers have fleets of yield management analysts whose entire job is to keep the ticket prices from being the fair market price. Don't worry, prices will avoid settling on a steady state.
It will remain helpful because not everyone will use the tool or follow its advice.
It's like coupons. In theory, coupons are pointless because the coupon price just becomes "the price." In practice, a lot of people can't be bothered to deal with coupons.
Like coupons, this becomes another mechanism for price discrimination. People who really want to pay a lower price will use tools like this to accomplish it. People who don't care as much won't bother and will likely pay more.
It's like coupons. In theory, coupons are pointless because the coupon price just becomes "the price." In practice, a lot of people can't be bothered to deal with coupons.
Like coupons, this becomes another mechanism for price discrimination. People who really want to pay a lower price will use tools like this to accomplish it. People who don't care as much won't bother and will likely pay more.
yes there will be some amount of correction, but keep in mind that some travel behaviors are not modifiable. E.g, christmas, winter/summer vacations, etc.
I wish the time horizon on this matched the time horizon on which tickets are available. It seems to be about a month short when I compare to directly shopping for flights on airline websites.
Granted that shouldn't matter quite as much for the "when will fares increase" question, since they have to have a baseline to evaluate the increase magnitude, but it sure matters simply for the "I'm planning to fly in for a popular event a year from now and I know tickets are being snapped up so I want to compare fares for flights as soon as they become orderable" scenario.
Granted that shouldn't matter quite as much for the "when will fares increase" question, since they have to have a baseline to evaluate the increase magnitude, but it sure matters simply for the "I'm planning to fly in for a popular event a year from now and I know tickets are being snapped up so I want to compare fares for flights as soon as they become orderable" scenario.
Is this actual new information it is revealing, or just a way of presenting what had been available in the form of the time vs. price bar-graph that it has had since ancient times.
The bar-graph had been hidden from the usual UI by decree of UX designers (Maths is hard!), but was always available as a kind of easter-egg.
Perhaps this feature is the compromise?
The bar-graph had been hidden from the usual UI by decree of UX designers (Maths is hard!), but was always available as a kind of easter-egg.
Perhaps this feature is the compromise?
Speaking of fares going up, has anyone else noticed fares going up on Google Flights, soon after searching for them?
Fun fact: its search for railway-connections in Germany is by far better than the original site (Deutsche Bahn).
The title is a little misleading. The screenshot shows that Google is showing that "prices will likely increase" which is different than the "fares will increase" in the title. "fares might increase" would be more appropriate here.
As a once frequent Farecast user I was initially excited about this, but realized that for the most part airfarewatchdog has completely replaced this use case in my life.
I wonder if the airlines will start gaming thing. Seeing what people are being told and doing the opposite to catch them off guard.
I've had the experience of switching from a localized google to google.com/ncr and had ticket prices drop ~4X. I think airlines already try to game the system based on country of origin.
+1 for https://google.com/ncr is the first thing I do on any browser.
- Latest version of Google Images
- Better Google Search results
- etc. etc.
- Latest version of Google Images
- Better Google Search results
- etc. etc.
A lot of times, airlines sell tickets based on where the ticket is issued for multiple reasons. If you read some fare rules for these country/region restricted tickets, it'll say something like "valid only when ticket issued in Japan" which leads to people trying to get a flight ticketed on a region specific site of orbitz/expedia/some-airline.co.jp
Tried this once and found that JAL will not sell tickets to anyone with a middle name. (Presumably due to a bug on their website, where you can only enter given and family name for the ticket, but you have to use your middle name for Secure Flight, and when they don't match, it fails. No combination of putting my middle name in the given or family field worked. Ended up booking an AA codeshare for $55 extra dollars :/)
Flight search is an incredibly dumb domain e.g. in this case, the carrier is regulated by the government to keep fares within a reasonable bound, but only for residents of that country. People booking from overseas can be gouged with impunity!
Let's not talk about codeshares.
Let's not talk about codeshares.
British Airlines is already f#cking with Google Flights - looked up a round-trip transatlantic flight, got a quote, proceeded to booking, got "oy vey, so sorry, price changed a bit" and served 2x the quote. It was 100% reproducible in a scope of several days.
Are you sure it was BA's decision? Seems rather unlikely to me, as no-one is going to continue to book a flight when the price has just doubled, especially when you've just come from a price comparison site and one press of the back button will show all the competitors.
I think at least JetBlue is already trying to do this.
This is the daily price graph for a recent flight I was watching. Often the price was changing hugely multiple times per day.
http://imgur.com/a/qaxrX
This is the daily price graph for a recent flight I was watching. Often the price was changing hugely multiple times per day.
http://imgur.com/a/qaxrX
I have time series data from over a thousand gas stations. How can I forecast the price of gas?
If that is all you have then you can't. (Unless you want to try seasonal forecasting, which seems like a bad idea in this case)
This is the average price from my city, which moves in cycles: https://www.accc.gov.au/sites/default/files/fuelwatch/sydney...
The baseline price is also related to the wholesale price of fuel, which is publically available.
It seems like it should be possible to forecast prices.
The baseline price is also related to the wholesale price of fuel, which is publically available.
It seems like it should be possible to forecast prices.
Will it help predict when mistakes are most likely to occur? The $30 RT EWR to HNL?
How hard is it to create a website like Kayak.com?
been using google flights for 1+ years now, it's great! beat all other alternatives for me.
flights.google.com has been doing it for at least a week or two already.
I haven't seen it, but I hope that it also tells you 'when fares will decrease'.
I haven't seen it, but I hope that it also tells you 'when fares will decrease'.
Does each airline have their own way of exporting this data? Is there a single entity that aggregates from all of them? How does the actual data look like? (Is it a dump every X hours, or something more modern like a stream you can subscribe to?).