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It's been discussed on HN before [1], but it's worth mentioning in this thread that there's a YC-backed company – Volantio – working to solve this specific prob

It's been discussed on HN before [1], but it's worth mentioning in this thread that there's a YC-backed company – Volantio – working to solve this specific problem. Most airlines' position is that they have to oversell flights, otherwise planes will fly with empty seats unnecessarily. But from passengers' point of view, there aren't always enough people who'll voluntarily accept an offer to transfer to a different flight once they are at the gate awaiting boarding [this sentence was edited in response to kortilla's comment below]. Volantio's product applies sophisticated analysis to each flight's booking levels well before departure time (days or weeks before), and will send offers to passengers to offer incentives to transfer to less-full flights, allowing plenty of time for them to change their plans. So far the product seems to be having an impact for passengers [2], gate staff [3] and airline management [4]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16836991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16836991 [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/qantas-flight-switch-overbooking-seats-passenger-gift-vouchers-a8738961.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/qantas-... [3] https://www.volantio.com/alaska-airlines-improves-denied-boarding-processes-for-guests-and-front-line-staff/ https://www.volantio.com/alaska-airlines-improves-denied-boa... [4] https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/indigo-puts-tech-start-ups-at-the-heart-of-its-plan-to-become-global-player-119010600632_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/indigo-p... Disclosure: Volantio was a pivot from Adioso (YC W09), of which I was a co-founder. I'm no longer an active employee or significant shareholder. However I remain friends with the team and am pleased to see them doing well and solving an important problem.

hndamien 8y ago
Well done, Adioso was fantastic.
- elyobo 8y ago
  Indeed - I still use it (among others) more or less any time I'm looking for flights. It was tomhoward's cofounder Fenn Bailey that also first introduced me to "microcaching" with nginx via some blog post many years back, a trick which has been of much use over the years.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    Awesome, great to hear! That micro-caching trick was so cool. It wasn't actually for Adioso, but for the Falls Festival, a huge New Years Eve outdoor music festival here in Australia. The coolest application we heard about for that technique was when Google did a doodle for Robert Moog's 78th Birthday [1], and the Moog company's humble little website got hammered. [1] https://www.google.com/doodles/robert-moogs-78th-birthday https://www.google.com/doodles/robert-moogs-78th-birthday
    - elyobo 8y ago
      Ha, found (via the wayback machine) the original article[1] and also an HN discussion about it back then too[2]. Fenn didn't mention who it was for, "just some friends" - I guess I figured out the connection and linked it to Adioso in my memory. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20111014232647/http://fennb.com/microcaching-speed-your-app-up-250x-with-no-n https://web.archive.org/web/20111014232647/http://fennb.com/... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3109283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3109283
  - vidarh 8y ago
    Microcaching is fantastically useful. Way back when, when Edgeio hosted Crunchboard (the Techcrunch job board), we added it to deal with the load it imposed. I don't remember if I'd read about it anywhere first, or was just desperately trying things to avoid it hammering our database. [For anyone not clear on what is meant: Microcaching is the idea of doing caching with really short time intervals, maybe as low as a second. The point is to set the TTL for the cached data so short that users will rarely if ever notice stale data even for dynamically updated content. The upside is that even a 1 second cache time for a heavily requested page means only 1 request per second per frontend for that resources hits your backend, no matter how much your traffic increases. Super-short TTLs often allow you to cache resources that you otherwise couldn't, and still get a hard upper bound on the load they'll impose]
- tomhoward 8y ago
  Many thanks. BTW, Adioso is not dead, it's resting. We spun it out of Volantio so I could rebuild it only without all the mistakes. Stay tuned.
kortilla 8y ago
>But from passengers' point of view, few people are willing to voluntarily accept an offer to transfer to a different flight once they are at the gate awaiting boarding, even if the offer is quite generous. This is blatantly false. I fly all the time and I see this happen about every other time at a neighboring gate. Gate agent announced flight is oversold, makes an offer. Several people volunteer. End of story. You don’t hear about these events because they (used to) happen hundreds of times a day all over the US with no hassle. Then the stupidity of United and the ignorant backlash of the public ruined it. Infrequent fliers associated overselling with the United incident and completely ignored the functioning 99.9% of cases that benefited all fliers overall. Volantio’s product is ok, but it’s not a substitute to the problem overbooking was solving, nor is it better for passengers who were flexible with last minute changes (because the offers are worse since rebooks days in advance don’t solve the last minute flex fare changes). Ugh, sorry about the rant but this whole oversale thing is a perfect example of the outrage culture damaging a mostly functional market due to sheer ignorance.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  Fair enough, I've toned down that sentence. That said, though I can sympathise with the frustration, I've learned that sentiments like "ignorant backlash of the public" and "outrage culture damaging a mostly functional market due to sheer ignorance" don't get us to good solutions. As you said, the problem is a real one, and Volantio has shown that it can be significantly reduced through smart application of technology well before departure time.
- jayalpha 8y ago
  "Then the stupidity of United and the ignorant backlash of the public ruined it. Infrequent fliers associated overselling with the United incident and completely ignored the functioning 99.9% of cases that benefited all fliers overall." The United incident had nothing to do with overbooking.
  - jayalpha 8y ago
    Why the downvote? 1. Unites flight was not overbooked. They wanted to put some of their own employees on this flight. This has nothing to do with overbooking. 2. Law stats that you can deny boarding if a flight is overbooked. Let someone on board and then throw him off the plane was definitely not within the scope of the law, even should the flight have been overbooked. Try to tell this to the authorities, "we let more people on board than seats available and had to remove some..". Good luck with that. So based on 1 and 2 the airline was wise to settle with the guy ASAP since throwing him off the plane had nothing to do with overbooking, nor was it in any way covered by law. Proof that you are an idiot. Downvote this :-)
lisper 8y ago
> Most airlines' position is that they have to oversell flights, otherwise planes will fly with empty seats unnecessarily. With most fares nowadays being non-refundable, why should the airlines care whether the seat is empty or not? It's paid for. If it's empty, that's a bonus because they save a little bit of fuel, time at the gate, and the passengers adjacent to the empty seat have a better experience. Empty seats that are paid for should be a win-win.
- thepangolino 8y ago
  If they know the s’est is going to be empty, they can sell it again.
  - lisper 8y ago
    Sure. The problem is that they sell it again without knowing that it's going to be empty.
- dominicr 8y ago
  Because if a seat is sold twice but only used one that's more profit than if every seat is only sold once. Most businesses maximise profits, not passenger experience (and those that work on passenger experience do so because they've decided that's their way to increase profits and they'll do so in a cost effective way). Airlines say that this means all the seats on a flight can be a bit cheaper as the cost of operating the flight is shared amongst more people but I'm skeptical of that. Businesses like free money and only pass that on as lower prices due to competition when they really have to.
  - lisper 8y ago
    > Because if a seat is sold twice but only used one that's more profit than if every seat is only sold once. Well, yeah, but that badly misses the point. Selling any product twice is more profitable than selling it only once, all else being equal. But in most industries, selling the same product twice is considered unacceptable. In fact, it would be considered fraud. The story that the airlines tell to make people think it should be acceptable in their industry is clearly bogus.
deathanatos 8y ago
> But from passengers' point of view, there aren't always enough people who'll voluntarily accept an offer to transfer to a different flight once they are at the gate awaiting boarding There are; they just won't accept any offer. Most of the airline offers I have been offered in this situation were paltry: reschedule and some airline "credit". Give me a partial or full refund, and I'll be much more willing to volunteer. Otherwise, you're seeing passengers value their time higher than some credit and lost time.
- notahacker 8y ago
  On the flip side, I've seen an offer which looked extremely tempting, except I don't think my employer which was paying for the flights would have seen it that way...
- mruts 8y ago
  I've seen some very lucrative offers. Like $500 credit, upgrade to first class tomorrow, AND a 4-star hotel room. That might not be the norm, but that's a pretty amazing deal.
  - wlll 8y ago
    I was held at checkin for an Economy Plus BA flight from San Diego to London and they asked for volunteers to get the next flight (same time the next day) and you would get $800 cash (prepaid credit card) and a hotel room for the night. A few people took the offer, I didn't. As a result they denied me boarding and gave me the exact same deal, except it was a $1250 pre-paid credit card. I never expected to be quite so happy about not being allowed on a plane.
    - deathanatos 8y ago
      At least in the US, involuntarily getting bumped from a flight requires mandatory compensation in some instances (if the arrival delay is >1 hour): https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/bumping-oversales https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer...
notahacker 8y ago
Intrigued by how this works days or weeks before (except in the case of an aircraft swap being known in advance) given that the extent to which passengers will turn up in numbers greater than originally estimated is generally only known at check in stage, probably <24h before departure. Still, even communication on the morning of the flight beats finding out at the airport (Gold standard for poor service goes to airBerlin, who somehow managed not to inform me that they'd actually cancelled my entire flight days before until I turned up for it in Greece with a handful of other bemused holidaymakers, most of whom unlike me hadn't booked direct. I'd have accepted a much less expensive and more flexible date for an alternative flight though.)
- tomhoward 8y ago
  Here's a presentation they did to the Skift travel conference a few months ago, which explains it well: https://vimeo.com/296887680 https://vimeo.com/296887680

hndamien 8y ago

Well done, Adioso was fantastic.

elyobo 8y ago
Indeed - I still use it (among others) more or less any time I'm looking for flights. It was tomhoward's cofounder Fenn Bailey that also first introduced me to "microcaching" with nginx via some blog post many years back, a trick which has been of much use over the years.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  Awesome, great to hear! That micro-caching trick was so cool. It wasn't actually for Adioso, but for the Falls Festival, a huge New Years Eve outdoor music festival here in Australia. The coolest application we heard about for that technique was when Google did a doodle for Robert Moog's 78th Birthday [1], and the Moog company's humble little website got hammered. [1] https://www.google.com/doodles/robert-moogs-78th-birthday https://www.google.com/doodles/robert-moogs-78th-birthday
  - elyobo 8y ago
    Ha, found (via the wayback machine) the original article[1] and also an HN discussion about it back then too[2]. Fenn didn't mention who it was for, "just some friends" - I guess I figured out the connection and linked it to Adioso in my memory. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20111014232647/http://fennb.com/microcaching-speed-your-app-up-250x-with-no-n https://web.archive.org/web/20111014232647/http://fennb.com/... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3109283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3109283
- vidarh 8y ago
  Microcaching is fantastically useful. Way back when, when Edgeio hosted Crunchboard (the Techcrunch job board), we added it to deal with the load it imposed. I don't remember if I'd read about it anywhere first, or was just desperately trying things to avoid it hammering our database. [For anyone not clear on what is meant: Microcaching is the idea of doing caching with really short time intervals, maybe as low as a second. The point is to set the TTL for the cached data so short that users will rarely if ever notice stale data even for dynamically updated content. The upside is that even a 1 second cache time for a heavily requested page means only 1 request per second per frontend for that resources hits your backend, no matter how much your traffic increases. Super-short TTLs often allow you to cache resources that you otherwise couldn't, and still get a hard upper bound on the load they'll impose]
tomhoward 8y ago
Many thanks. BTW, Adioso is not dead, it's resting. We spun it out of Volantio so I could rebuild it only without all the mistakes. Stay tuned.

kortilla 8y ago

>But from passengers' point of view, few people are willing to voluntarily accept an offer to transfer to a different flight once they are at the gate awaiting boarding, even if the offer is quite generous. This is blatantly false. I fly all the time and I see this happen about every other time at a neighboring gate. Gate agent announced flight is oversold, makes an offer. Several people volunteer. End of story. You don’t hear about these events because they (used to) happen hundreds of times a day all over the US with no hassle. Then the stupidity of United and the ignorant backlash of the public ruined it. Infrequent fliers associated overselling with the United incident and completely ignored the functioning 99.9% of cases that benefited all fliers overall. Volantio’s product is ok, but it’s not a substitute to the problem overbooking was solving, nor is it better for passengers who were flexible with last minute changes (because the offers are worse since rebooks days in advance don’t solve the last minute flex fare changes). Ugh, sorry about the rant but this whole oversale thing is a perfect example of the outrage culture damaging a mostly functional market due to sheer ignorance.

tomhoward 8y ago
Fair enough, I've toned down that sentence. That said, though I can sympathise with the frustration, I've learned that sentiments like "ignorant backlash of the public" and "outrage culture damaging a mostly functional market due to sheer ignorance" don't get us to good solutions. As you said, the problem is a real one, and Volantio has shown that it can be significantly reduced through smart application of technology well before departure time.
jayalpha 8y ago
"Then the stupidity of United and the ignorant backlash of the public ruined it. Infrequent fliers associated overselling with the United incident and completely ignored the functioning 99.9% of cases that benefited all fliers overall." The United incident had nothing to do with overbooking.
- jayalpha 8y ago
  Why the downvote? 1. Unites flight was not overbooked. They wanted to put some of their own employees on this flight. This has nothing to do with overbooking. 2. Law stats that you can deny boarding if a flight is overbooked. Let someone on board and then throw him off the plane was definitely not within the scope of the law, even should the flight have been overbooked. Try to tell this to the authorities, "we let more people on board than seats available and had to remove some..". Good luck with that. So based on 1 and 2 the airline was wise to settle with the guy ASAP since throwing him off the plane had nothing to do with overbooking, nor was it in any way covered by law. Proof that you are an idiot. Downvote this :-)

lisper 8y ago

> Most airlines' position is that they have to oversell flights, otherwise planes will fly with empty seats unnecessarily. With most fares nowadays being non-refundable, why should the airlines care whether the seat is empty or not? It's paid for. If it's empty, that's a bonus because they save a little bit of fuel, time at the gate, and the passengers adjacent to the empty seat have a better experience. Empty seats that are paid for should be a win-win.

thepangolino 8y ago
If they know the s’est is going to be empty, they can sell it again.
- lisper 8y ago
  Sure. The problem is that they sell it again without knowing that it's going to be empty.
dominicr 8y ago
Because if a seat is sold twice but only used one that's more profit than if every seat is only sold once. Most businesses maximise profits, not passenger experience (and those that work on passenger experience do so because they've decided that's their way to increase profits and they'll do so in a cost effective way). Airlines say that this means all the seats on a flight can be a bit cheaper as the cost of operating the flight is shared amongst more people but I'm skeptical of that. Businesses like free money and only pass that on as lower prices due to competition when they really have to.
- lisper 8y ago
  > Because if a seat is sold twice but only used one that's more profit than if every seat is only sold once. Well, yeah, but that badly misses the point. Selling any product twice is more profitable than selling it only once, all else being equal. But in most industries, selling the same product twice is considered unacceptable. In fact, it would be considered fraud. The story that the airlines tell to make people think it should be acceptable in their industry is clearly bogus.

deathanatos 8y ago

> But from passengers' point of view, there aren't always enough people who'll voluntarily accept an offer to transfer to a different flight once they are at the gate awaiting boarding There are; they just won't accept any offer. Most of the airline offers I have been offered in this situation were paltry: reschedule and some airline "credit". Give me a partial or full refund, and I'll be much more willing to volunteer. Otherwise, you're seeing passengers value their time higher than some credit and lost time.

notahacker 8y ago
On the flip side, I've seen an offer which looked extremely tempting, except I don't think my employer which was paying for the flights would have seen it that way...
mruts 8y ago
I've seen some very lucrative offers. Like $500 credit, upgrade to first class tomorrow, AND a 4-star hotel room. That might not be the norm, but that's a pretty amazing deal.
- wlll 8y ago
  I was held at checkin for an Economy Plus BA flight from San Diego to London and they asked for volunteers to get the next flight (same time the next day) and you would get $800 cash (prepaid credit card) and a hotel room for the night. A few people took the offer, I didn't. As a result they denied me boarding and gave me the exact same deal, except it was a $1250 pre-paid credit card. I never expected to be quite so happy about not being allowed on a plane.
  - deathanatos 8y ago
    At least in the US, involuntarily getting bumped from a flight requires mandatory compensation in some instances (if the arrival delay is >1 hour): https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/bumping-oversales https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer...

notahacker 8y ago

Intrigued by how this works days or weeks before (except in the case of an aircraft swap being known in advance) given that the extent to which passengers will turn up in numbers greater than originally estimated is generally only known at check in stage, probably <24h before departure. Still, even communication on the morning of the flight beats finding out at the airport (Gold standard for poor service goes to airBerlin, who somehow managed not to inform me that they'd actually cancelled my entire flight days before until I turned up for it in Greece with a handful of other bemused holidaymakers, most of whom unlike me hadn't booked direct. I'd have accepted a much less expensive and more flexible date for an alternative flight though.)

tomhoward 8y ago
Here's a presentation they did to the Skift travel conference a few months ago, which explains it well: https://vimeo.com/296887680 https://vimeo.com/296887680