7 ms·

Tripdelta Finds Cheaper Flights Through “Secret” Airport Routes

56 points by elmalto 11y ago

ape4 11y ago
Did the "team of mathematicians" really physically travel to more than 100 countries.
- daxfohl 11y ago
  And what advanced mathematics is needed?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - tedmiston 11y ago
    I'd like to know the exact name of the problem, but it feels TSP-ish. I'm borrowing this from Vayant (which I think is a B2B competitor) with seemingly similar challenges: > As mentioned above, the computational challenge here is to solve a “traveling salesman” style problem, with costs associated with each graph segment and in fact each combination of segments. Source: http://vayant.com/airline-availability-solving-travelling-salesman-problem/ http://vayant.com/airline-availability-solving-travelling-sa...
    - daxfohl 11y ago
      Heh, seems like the exact name for the linked article would be "The Traveling Mathematician Problem"
AYBABTME 11y ago
Is this some sort of paid-for journalism, posted on HN? What is this more than some ad disguised as legitimate article? It annoys me a lot to see that on the front page.
- astrange 11y ago
  Why would you pay a news website for content? The content is what you pay them with.
jakub_g 11y ago
As others noticed, the connections usually suck and are not guaranteed (looked up a european flight, found a 3h30m layover in London between Heathrow and Stansted - well good luck making that!). That is something I could accepted if I was still a student, but no more (since I did not make a connection one day due to bad weather :) Personal anecdote: several years ago when Ryanair used to offer ultra cheap flights within Europe (as long as you paid with appropriate credit card type and accepted weird dates and times of the flights) I wrote a Ryanair-only poor man's version of this tool, looking for connections through two particular hubs of interest. The code sucked incredibly, but managed to get me two very cheap bookings (well, had to spend some nights in the airports, but it's nothing when you're young and short on money). Then Ryanair did some changes (and also raised the prices) which made the project obsolete. Old good times :) Regarding the code, I had to do some reverse engineering to parse the responses from the airline's site. Funny part was that the responses were non-deterministic for a given request, seemed like they used some kind of dictionary of possible transformations of output values of price to prevent easy scraping. The other thing that made me scratch my head for a while was that the response had some weird unicode whitespace in one place instead of "traditional" space and I couldn't figure why the parsing didn't work until I downloaded a response manually and opened it in a hex viewer (when I was dumping the response to console in the script, this unicode space was not there).
joshfraser 11y ago
I switched to Google Flights as my primary flight search tool. The features and speed they offer are best in class.
boultonmark 11y ago
Such linkbait nonsense. Lesser known but brilliant Icelandic search engine dohop.com in particular has being finding all these options for over ten years. e.g http://www.dohop.com/flights/?d1=190116&d2=&a1=SFO%2CSJC%2COAK&a2=LHR%2CLGW%2CSTN%2CLCY%2CLTN%2CSEN&return=0 http://www.dohop.com/flights/?d1=190116&d2=&a1=SFO%2CSJC%2CO...
- greglindahl 11y ago
  Even weaker, the example in the post is a bad one! Kayak has suggested going from SFO to London via LAX to me several times.
tedmiston 11y ago
Having just watched the most recent South Park episodes Sponsored Content and Truth and Advertising, I'm honestly not sure if this a real story or very well placed native advertising... Oh, Lifehacker.
discardorama 11y ago
> The site was built by a team of mathematicians who traveled to more than 100 countries ... I want that job. Maybe I should do a startup that rates the world's vegetarian restaurants. VCs, are you listening?
callesgg 11y ago
It did not get me any flights that was cheaper than the site i usually use. In fact the cheapest flight was in general (over my 3 test searches of flying to New Zealand.) 50-100$ more expensive and had one extra stop. About the same flight times. And about 40USD more expensive when flying to new york and 20 hours longer
vzaliva 11y ago
> "The site was built by a team of mathematicians who traveled to more than 100 countries" Could somebody explain why mathematicians(!) have physically travel to 100+ countries to build a web site? Are these airports so secret they could not be reached with modern means of communications? I suspect it is just a bad marketing pitch...
- foota 11y ago
  I believe they're saying they have experience traveling, not that they traveled to build the site.
tiatia 11y ago
Ticket hacking and "Mixing" airlines becomes a problem if you miss a flight. This can be highly risky. What I would be more interested in is this problem: Often I get reimbursed for a flight from A to B. Often I can fly A->C->B and make a nice (paid) vacation in C. Hence I look for the most interesting routes possible for a decent price. Especially exotic airlines can be a great deal here. Currently I look up the airport to see what airlines are served by this airport and then see if there is an airline that has it's hub in an interesting tourist destination. Better solution?
kyleblarson 11y ago
ITA Matrix allows for the same functionality and a lot more: https://matrix.itasoftware.com/ https://matrix.itasoftware.com/
- mbesto 11y ago
  I personally like Google's latest iteration on the ITA software: https://www.google.com/flights/ https://www.google.com/flights/
- Havoc 11y ago
  A quick spot test suggests trip delta is tangibly cheaper...but the connections suck pretty hard. Mostly 2x long stops.
  - JamilD 11y ago
    Tripdelta can't do anything ITA Matrix can't as well -- you just have to know what you're doing with Matrix (input alternate airports via the suggestions, or use advanced routing codes). But Matrix will give you far more flexibility and better results.
0x0 11y ago
Assuming this sets up flights where the legs are separate bookings and maybe even multiple airlines, there's a risk that you're on your own and have to buy new tickets if you miss your connecting flight due to delays/cancellations, no?
- tedmiston 11y ago
  Correct, just like with Skiplagged, though their FAQ (https://tripdelta.com/en/faq https://tripdelta.com/en/faq) indicates they may protect for this in the future. > Is it safe to book your results? > Yes. We only work with highly respected partners and choose very carefully who we trust. > Is it safe to book two separate tickets? > Yes, it is. Just make sure to have enough time between two different tickets on the same day. To make it even easier, we will soon be offering stopover protection.
pavel_lishin 11y ago
Nice, except I'm reasonably sure that I do, in fact, want to go to Austin, and not San Antonio: http://imgur.com/aQupfq0 http://imgur.com/aQupfq0 An in fact, those suggestions are more expensive then the actual flights to Austin.
- manigandham 11y ago
  That's part of why they are suggested, to get you to roughly the same place for less. However, in your case if they're still more expensive than the direct flights then seems like a broken calculation.
skue 11y ago
This is a weak pitch... Kayak, Hipmunk, any almost any other site have an option to include nearby airports when searching. I compared the route they screenshotted and apparently the only reason TripDelta come up with a $150 cheaper one-way option ($302 vs $455) is by flying Spirit from OAK to LAX with a 9 hour layover. Kayak probably assumes that layover is excessive and filters it out. Because really, if you're that desperate to save funds, just take Greyhound to LAX. And if you book round trip, returning a week later, it's $779 on Kayak and over $1086 on TripDelta. Plus Kayak will also give you the probability that prices will drop in the next 7 days.
- blazespin 11y ago
  Well, Kayak just failed for me on YVR - SFO. PriceDelta found BLI - OAK for $103 versus $200 on Kayak. That's pretty good! I've used nearby airports on Kayak, it doesn't always do a good job from what I've seen and it's +/- 3 days isn't so great.
  - tedmiston 11y ago
    Agreed, the price graph and price calendar in Google Flights are far more powerful and useful. Now if only they'd make a mobile app...
    - cbhl 11y ago
      Have you tried just typing "sfo to hkg" into the Google Search App on your Android or iPhone?
      - tedmiston 11y ago
        Yeah, but it's so limited. I really want them to add support for multi-airport "sfo, smf to hkg" and multi-city "sfo to lax to hkg" to the web search parser. And the mobile web app is decent but compared to desktop very limited. For example, the dates grid shows just a few days vs. 7x7 for depart and return. I think that's one of the most important features. I find it frustratingly inefficient on mobile.
joelgrus 11y ago
Huh, I tried a SEA-LON ticket, best price $1363 on Kayak. TripDelta found me a $655 flight, except out of Portland (which is like a 3 hour drive away), and a $750 flight that looks like SEA-EWR / JFK-LHR which is a hell of a connection. I couldn't deal with the inconvenience, but even so I'm kind of impressed.
JamilD 11y ago
Searched YYZ-SFO on Dec 22. Google Flights gave me US$206, Tripdelta gave me US$248 with SMF (Sacramento) as the destination, with approximately the same airtime. Tripdelta doesn't even show the $206 flight as an option. Better off using Google Flights with multiple destinations. Put a little bit of effort into finding which origin/destination airports are viable for you, and search directly for it on another OTA.

56 points by elmalto 11y ago

ape4 11y ago

Did the "team of mathematicians" really physically travel to more than 100 countries.

daxfohl 11y ago
And what advanced mathematics is needed?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- tedmiston 11y ago
  I'd like to know the exact name of the problem, but it feels TSP-ish. I'm borrowing this from Vayant (which I think is a B2B competitor) with seemingly similar challenges: > As mentioned above, the computational challenge here is to solve a “traveling salesman” style problem, with costs associated with each graph segment and in fact each combination of segments. Source: http://vayant.com/airline-availability-solving-travelling-salesman-problem/ http://vayant.com/airline-availability-solving-travelling-sa...
  - daxfohl 11y ago
    Heh, seems like the exact name for the linked article would be "The Traveling Mathematician Problem"

AYBABTME 11y ago

Is this some sort of paid-for journalism, posted on HN? What is this more than some ad disguised as legitimate article? It annoys me a lot to see that on the front page.

astrange 11y ago
Why would you pay a news website for content? The content is what you pay them with.

jakub_g 11y ago

As others noticed, the connections usually suck and are not guaranteed (looked up a european flight, found a 3h30m layover in London between Heathrow and Stansted - well good luck making that!). That is something I could accepted if I was still a student, but no more (since I did not make a connection one day due to bad weather :) Personal anecdote: several years ago when Ryanair used to offer ultra cheap flights within Europe (as long as you paid with appropriate credit card type and accepted weird dates and times of the flights) I wrote a Ryanair-only poor man's version of this tool, looking for connections through two particular hubs of interest. The code sucked incredibly, but managed to get me two very cheap bookings (well, had to spend some nights in the airports, but it's nothing when you're young and short on money). Then Ryanair did some changes (and also raised the prices) which made the project obsolete. Old good times :) Regarding the code, I had to do some reverse engineering to parse the responses from the airline's site. Funny part was that the responses were non-deterministic for a given request, seemed like they used some kind of dictionary of possible transformations of output values of price to prevent easy scraping. The other thing that made me scratch my head for a while was that the response had some weird unicode whitespace in one place instead of "traditional" space and I couldn't figure why the parsing didn't work until I downloaded a response manually and opened it in a hex viewer (when I was dumping the response to console in the script, this unicode space was not there).

joshfraser 11y ago

I switched to Google Flights as my primary flight search tool. The features and speed they offer are best in class.

boultonmark 11y ago

Such linkbait nonsense. Lesser known but brilliant Icelandic search engine dohop.com in particular has being finding all these options for over ten years. e.g http://www.dohop.com/flights/?d1=190116&d2=&a1=SFO%2CSJC%2COAK&a2=LHR%2CLGW%2CSTN%2CLCY%2CLTN%2CSEN&return=0 http://www.dohop.com/flights/?d1=190116&d2=&a1=SFO%2CSJC%2CO...

greglindahl 11y ago
Even weaker, the example in the post is a bad one! Kayak has suggested going from SFO to London via LAX to me several times.

tedmiston 11y ago

Having just watched the most recent South Park episodes Sponsored Content and Truth and Advertising, I'm honestly not sure if this a real story or very well placed native advertising... Oh, Lifehacker.

discardorama 11y ago

> The site was built by a team of mathematicians who traveled to more than 100 countries ... I want that job. Maybe I should do a startup that rates the world's vegetarian restaurants. VCs, are you listening?

callesgg 11y ago

It did not get me any flights that was cheaper than the site i usually use. In fact the cheapest flight was in general (over my 3 test searches of flying to New Zealand.) 50-100$ more expensive and had one extra stop. About the same flight times. And about 40USD more expensive when flying to new york and 20 hours longer

vzaliva 11y ago

> "The site was built by a team of mathematicians who traveled to more than 100 countries" Could somebody explain why mathematicians(!) have physically travel to 100+ countries to build a web site? Are these airports so secret they could not be reached with modern means of communications? I suspect it is just a bad marketing pitch...

foota 11y ago
I believe they're saying they have experience traveling, not that they traveled to build the site.

tiatia 11y ago

Ticket hacking and "Mixing" airlines becomes a problem if you miss a flight. This can be highly risky. What I would be more interested in is this problem: Often I get reimbursed for a flight from A to B. Often I can fly A->C->B and make a nice (paid) vacation in C. Hence I look for the most interesting routes possible for a decent price. Especially exotic airlines can be a great deal here. Currently I look up the airport to see what airlines are served by this airport and then see if there is an airline that has it's hub in an interesting tourist destination. Better solution?

kyleblarson 11y ago

ITA Matrix allows for the same functionality and a lot more: https://matrix.itasoftware.com/ https://matrix.itasoftware.com/

mbesto 11y ago
I personally like Google's latest iteration on the ITA software: https://www.google.com/flights/ https://www.google.com/flights/
Havoc 11y ago
A quick spot test suggests trip delta is tangibly cheaper...but the connections suck pretty hard. Mostly 2x long stops.
- JamilD 11y ago
  Tripdelta can't do anything ITA Matrix can't as well -- you just have to know what you're doing with Matrix (input alternate airports via the suggestions, or use advanced routing codes). But Matrix will give you far more flexibility and better results.

0x0 11y ago

Assuming this sets up flights where the legs are separate bookings and maybe even multiple airlines, there's a risk that you're on your own and have to buy new tickets if you miss your connecting flight due to delays/cancellations, no?

tedmiston 11y ago
Correct, just like with Skiplagged, though their FAQ (https://tripdelta.com/en/faq https://tripdelta.com/en/faq) indicates they may protect for this in the future. > Is it safe to book your results? > Yes. We only work with highly respected partners and choose very carefully who we trust. > Is it safe to book two separate tickets? > Yes, it is. Just make sure to have enough time between two different tickets on the same day. To make it even easier, we will soon be offering stopover protection.

pavel_lishin 11y ago

Nice, except I'm reasonably sure that I do, in fact, want to go to Austin, and not San Antonio: http://imgur.com/aQupfq0 http://imgur.com/aQupfq0 An in fact, those suggestions are more expensive then the actual flights to Austin.

manigandham 11y ago
That's part of why they are suggested, to get you to roughly the same place for less. However, in your case if they're still more expensive than the direct flights then seems like a broken calculation.

skue 11y ago

This is a weak pitch... Kayak, Hipmunk, any almost any other site have an option to include nearby airports when searching. I compared the route they screenshotted and apparently the only reason TripDelta come up with a $150 cheaper one-way option ($302 vs $455) is by flying Spirit from OAK to LAX with a 9 hour layover. Kayak probably assumes that layover is excessive and filters it out. Because really, if you're that desperate to save funds, just take Greyhound to LAX. And if you book round trip, returning a week later, it's $779 on Kayak and over $1086 on TripDelta. Plus Kayak will also give you the probability that prices will drop in the next 7 days.

blazespin 11y ago
Well, Kayak just failed for me on YVR - SFO. PriceDelta found BLI - OAK for $103 versus $200 on Kayak. That's pretty good! I've used nearby airports on Kayak, it doesn't always do a good job from what I've seen and it's +/- 3 days isn't so great.
- tedmiston 11y ago
  Agreed, the price graph and price calendar in Google Flights are far more powerful and useful. Now if only they'd make a mobile app...
  - cbhl 11y ago
    Have you tried just typing "sfo to hkg" into the Google Search App on your Android or iPhone?
    - tedmiston 11y ago
      Yeah, but it's so limited. I really want them to add support for multi-airport "sfo, smf to hkg" and multi-city "sfo to lax to hkg" to the web search parser. And the mobile web app is decent but compared to desktop very limited. For example, the dates grid shows just a few days vs. 7x7 for depart and return. I think that's one of the most important features. I find it frustratingly inefficient on mobile.

joelgrus 11y ago

Huh, I tried a SEA-LON ticket, best price $1363 on Kayak. TripDelta found me a $655 flight, except out of Portland (which is like a 3 hour drive away), and a $750 flight that looks like SEA-EWR / JFK-LHR which is a hell of a connection. I couldn't deal with the inconvenience, but even so I'm kind of impressed.

JamilD 11y ago

Searched YYZ-SFO on Dec 22. Google Flights gave me US$206, Tripdelta gave me US$248 with SMF (Sacramento) as the destination, with approximately the same airtime. Tripdelta doesn't even show the $206 flight as an option. Better off using Google Flights with multiple destinations. Put a little bit of effort into finding which origin/destination airports are viable for you, and search directly for it on another OTA.