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Hipmunk has been an excellent flight search tool, the best I have found as of a few years ago. Shockingly better than most of the rest of them back when it star
by kylecordes 10y ago
Hipmunk has been an excellent flight search tool, the best I have found as of a few years ago. Shockingly better than most of the rest of them back when it started, in terms of being able to understand and choose among numerous choices.
Unfortunately, that was then and this is now. Several of the airlines have dropped out of participating in flight comparison sites, and those that do apparently pay staggeringly little per referral. This is greatly eroded the usefulness of Hipmunk and similar sites, and taken away the motivation for anyone to pressure airlines to participate. Why bother when the most you can win is a tiny sliver?
I wish there is a way to simply pay a little money to get a comprehensive high quality comparison of all available flights from all airlines. I don't want AI, I don't want a travel agent to do it for me. I most definitely don't want to visit multiple airline websites and try to manually compare the offerings. I just want to see all of the different ways to get from point A to point B, in a well engineered graphical representation, all at once so I can quickly and effectively choose the best fit. I would love if there was a way to simply pay some dollars to do so.
- neptunespear 10y ago> Several of the airlines have dropped out of participating in flight comparison sites, and those that do apparently pay staggeringly little per referral. This is greatly eroded the usefulness of Hipmunk and similar sites, and taken away the motivation for anyone to pressure airlines to participate. This sounds like something for the Justice Department to get involved in.
- wooter 10y agoNo, it definitely does not.
- UlyssesSKrunk 10y agoWhat the fuck are you talking about? How does that have anything to do with the justic department at all?
- sctb 10y agoPlease comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- chrismcb 10y agoWhy? Why do You think the justice department needs to get involved? This is a place where capital am actually works. If people only use aggregators then airlines not listed won't get much business. I actually check swa because swa us the online airline that doesn't charge bag fees. So I go out of my way to give them business when I can.
- exelius 10y agoHonestly the price of an SWA flight is usually more expensive than another airline plus bag fees. Plus most airlines will waive the bag fees if you sign up for their credit card (you don't even have to use it).
- todsul 10y agoDisclaimer: I work at flightfox.com. What I think you’re asking for already exists. You didn’t mention price, which makes a big difference, but price aside, route data is available in both raw and GUI form. Check out flightconnections.com for a GUI tool. Price is what consumers care about and without a perfectly efficient (or regulated or monopolized) market, there will never be a single source of all prices for all routes. This doesn’t exist for food, clothing or many genuine commodities. Someone else replied with a link to ITAs white-paper that discusses the difficulty of the problem you’ve described. But, that only considers cash flights; what about fast trains, frequent flier miles, buying and using points, credit card bonuses, best rate guarantees, combining low cost-carriers, charter airlines, cargo flights, consolidator deals, local deals, company benefits, etc. It’s a huge market that feels like it should be commoditized but is actually quite differentiated with significant barriers to entry. My personal experience at Flightfox is overseeing the booking of travel for more than 60,000 people using travel websites rather than traditional GDSs (Global Distribution Systems - what travel agencies and online travel agents use). Our team has used most of the websites mentioned here and never relies on just one. Most coders here could build a simple tool to make their searches much more effective and efficient: * Accept date/route/class input, like “10SEP DEN-FRA first” * Open tabs to 5-10 of the best and most varied travel websites * Skim the results and book Doing this rather than sticking to a single site will yield much better results and make your search more efficient. The largest OTAs have real proprietary deals, the best of the aggregators search the best search engines, and the best search engines combine the most airlines (even LCCs) in creative ways. If I had to choose 5 flight websites for such a tool: Kayak, Google, Orbitz, Skyscanner and Momondo. Given this, you may wonder what’s the point of Flightfox. We started with a pure focus on travel hacks (much more advanced than searching 5 OTAs), but we now do our best work managing travel for businesses. For consumers, we can only use one skill: saving money. For businesses, we can become their entire travel department and put everything we know into practice. Not just saving many $1000s/month, but helping with finance strategy, loyalty programs, upgrades, 24/7 emergency support, super-cheap business/first, etc.
- rebelidealist 10y agoWhat is the best flight search these days?
- chris_7 10y agoITA Matrix.
- joelrunyon 10y agoGoogle flights or matrix.itasoftware.com (you can't book here though)
- saurabhjha 10y agoI also use google flights but I thought google flights was created after Google acquired ITA software. Isn't it ITA's backend behind google.com/flights?
- dboreham 10y agoYes.
- chris_7 10y agobookwithmatrix.com
- blahshaw 10y agoGoogle Flights is simply a pretty UI around matrix.itasoftware.com, no?
- tswartz 10y agoI really enjoy using Hipmunk too. More recently, I've begun using Google Flights in more of an "explorer" capacity. Enter my starting city and travel dates. Then I use their map to see how much it is to fly to different places in the world. Perfect when I don't have a plan https://www.google.com/flights/ https://www.google.com/flights/
- stevesearer 10y agoMy go to for not having a plan is Kayak Explore: https://www.kayak.com/explore https://www.kayak.com/explore
- raldi 10y agoIf you have a Bloomberg terminal, there's a function like this that's been around for decades. If I remember correctly (I haven't had access to one since 2007) it might have been FLTS<go> or maybe just FLY<go>. You plug in your cities and dates, and you get an 80x25 screen with the raw data in an easy-to-read (once you're used to it) tabular view. Of course, that only works if by "some dollars" you meant like $25,000/year. :)
- UlyssesSKrunk 10y agoIs there any way to get access to that info without paying? It's okay if it's illegal, I don't mind.
- raldi 10y agoSure, absolutely. Just get a job at Bloomberg or any of its clients. Alternately, visit your local university business school library.
- function_seven 10y agoAdding this to my private list of reasons whenever someone scoffs at "paying $25k a year for a pair of LCDs and a cheap keyboard". Thanks.
- raldi 10y agoYeah you can be on the phone with the company travel department telling you the United flight at 10:13 doesn't fly between Dulles and New York on Tuesdays, and quickly type FLY IAD NYC<go> and you'll see a line like 12. UA 456 10:13 IAD 11:35 LGA vvvv vv (Where the v's are checkmarks in day-of-week columns; so you know it flies every day but Thurs) Then you type 12<go> and get all the details. It all happened as fast as you could type plus about 10msec plus the speed of light roundtrip to lower Manhattan. And in the nine years since I used it, I bet they added other points of presence on other continents.
- cousin_it 10y ago
- kilroy123 10y agoThere are services growing in popularity for this. (I don't have any affiliation, I've heard good things, and want to try it.) https://www.flystein.com https://www.flystein.com
- tiatia 10y agoThey charge USD 49 do give you a quote..
- lillekasvol2 10y agoSeems interesting. Kind of like a travel agent but then again not. Let us know when you try them out.
- chongli 10y agoWhat is the incentive for airlines who don't offer bargain-basement flights to participate?
- ghayes 10y agoMany customers will still choose airlines they like to fly. For instance, I filter Spirit Airlines flights, even if they are offering the lowest fare.
- SyneRyder 10y agoAnd also flight routes - I'd rather fly with a stopover in Singapore than a stopover in Dubai.
- kylecordes 10y agoThe incentive is to sell to people like me! * In a second-tier city - no single airline has good options, but by comparing all of them I can usually find a only-mildly-lousy flight. * Not especially price sensitive, I usually pay up to 2x the cheapest possible fare, to get a better schedule, seats, etc.
- grahamburger 10y agoHave you tried flights.google.com?
- kylecordes 10y agoFlights.google appears to have the same problem as the rest: * Awful, text list of flights. I want a way to visualize the options, to wisely choose from many options. * Subset of the airlines. Google still has Delta at least, which has disappeared from Hipmunk and some others. But no Southwest.
- grahamburger 10y agoI thought their map / explore view was pretty good, actually [0] Also I really like the flexible dates view [1] Shame about Southwest for sure, but I think that's more on Southwest than anyone else (do they list their flights on any aggregator? I remember hearing somewhere that's part of their shtick is that they don't) [0] http://imgur.com/GqRVfUG http://imgur.com/GqRVfUG [1] http://imgur.com/Npnu7uU http://imgur.com/Npnu7uU
- wdr1 10y agoSouthwest doesn't share their data.
- toast0 10y agoEven in 2010 when they started, air bookings didn't have enough margin to pay a decent commission. Flights gets people in the door, but you need to sell them a hotel to make money.
- corford 10y agoThere's plenty of money being made in flights but it requires serious volume. Hipmunk were never able to take enough traffic away from kayak, skyscanner etc. as their only real differentiation (agony search) wasn't a big enough pull (other than for a sub section of business flyers who didn't have a travel implant to outsource the leg work to). They also didn't put any serious energy in to markets outside the US (much less brand awareness in Europe) and were late to monetise supplementary channels like hotels and car hire. Regardless, it's true that flight search is a tough game. Big incumbents, tight margins, crazy web of legacy madness behind the scenes (tech and business side).
- polynomial 10y ago> their only real differentiation (agony search) Um, ground-breaking search visualisation UI? Or am I missing something?
- dbuxton 10y agoFor why this is not possible even in principle, have a look at https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.itasoftware.com/en//pdf/ComplexityofArlineTravelPlanning_Carl_Sep-03.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.itasoftware.c... (a really fascinating doc)
- cookiecaper 10y agoThis won't be possible until we update our obsolete network access laws, which make it illegal to discover facts about airline routes and rates without the consent of the airline itself.
- dboreham 10y agoNote that they may not even be a "rate" to disclose in that the airline may be inventing ticket prices using algorithms in real-time. In that case to build a ticket search engine you need to either reproduce those algorithms or have the airline perform part of your search.
- gregmac 10y agoI too was a huge fan of Hipmunk, but have found that it's frustratingly difficult (anywhere) to get an "all-in" price, and last time I used Hipmunk I was really wishing they'd do it. It's a difficult problem, for sure, but I'd like to be able to specify, for example, 1 checked bag, minimum 33" legroom, and then have the prices include checked baggage and any seat upgrade costs (if necessary, based on the airline's plane configuration). The 'sort by agony' thing is great, but after getting stuck in a tiny seat sometime last year, I now pay close attention to seat size/pitch (I'm 6'0", my knees were on the back of the seat in front of me if I sat as far back in my seat as I could). I would have definitely loved to have Hipmunk rank 'agony' high on that one.
- tiatia 10y agoI never became a fan of Hipmuk but may check them out again. I use: 1. Expedia. Recently had a problem that they never issued me an eticket. Had to confirm with the airline directly that I actually have a ticket! 2. Vayama. Really like them. Good tool. Can be time consuming to change a ticket. 3.Book directly at airline. God idea, especially considering the problems laid out at #2. Not. Never book a ticket in a 3rd world country directly at the airline. I learned it the hard way! 4. Dohop. Quite unknown but I really like it. Use it a lot recently. 5. Swoodoo for the EU And yeah, googles ITA.
- exelius 10y ago> 3.Book directly at airline. God idea, especially considering the problems laid out at #2. Not. Never book a ticket in a 3rd world country directly at the airline. I learned it the hard way! Unless it's a global airline (British Airways, Air France, KLM, Emirates, etc.) always book with an airline in your native country via codeshare. At least that way, you have some recourse via normal consumer protection measures in the event things go wrong.
- flystein 10y agoSwoodoo is Kayak.de :)
- dharma1 10y agoGoogle flights is pretty good, I think. https://www.google.com/flights/ https://www.google.com/flights/ Skyscanner sometimes https://www.skyscanner.net/ https://www.skyscanner.net/
- bane 10y agoI'd also like more information about the flight: quality, seat comfort, meal included (or pay for on the flight), meal rating, flight entertainment (in seat, group, none), cleanliness, etc. I'd be willing to pay a little more, if the flight wasn't like being in a metal torture container or the cleanliness levels were so poor that I get to my destination with an immediate illness. But right now I can only see that some flights are more expensive than others and no idea why. And I have to go off of my average experience with an airline to guess if the flight will be pleasant or miserable (except for United domestic, that's always miserable).