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Hipmunk now indicates which flights have Wi-Fi
- kleiba 15y agoThis is fantastic! I'm planning a trip to Australia, with so many hours trapped, it would be fantastic to know there's wi-fi on board. +1!
- jarek 15y agoIs Hipmunk's information on flights to Australia actually decent? I took a look at it a while back for Canada-Europe flights and the results were less than inspiring.
- smiler 15y agoI don't think many (if any?) carriers are offering WiFi on trans-atlantic or trans-pacific flights
- akavi 15y agoI'm pretty sure the current on-board WiFi tech uses cell towers for service, which rules out over-ocean access right now.
- masklinn 15y agoIn cars maybe, but in flight? At 4.5km above the towers? Not a chance. There are two main techs for on-board WiFi: * Air-to-ground radiotelephony (what AirFone[0] used to use), which works like cell phones except for the sky, and with not cell towers and on a different frequency band. So not really like cell towers. This is the technology of Aircell's Gogo (which seems to be Hipmunk's partner on there) and LiveTV's. Advantage is that it's pretty cheap (~100k/plane of equipment), but it will only work over land (as it's based on ground antennas) * Satellites, this is Row44's technology (via HughesNet), the tech is far more expensive to setup in planes but more flexible and works across oceans. As far as I know, Row44 is only being implemented by SouthWest and Norwegian Air Shuttle. Alaska Airlines tried it (and the trial was successful), but decided to go Aircell GoGo for cost reasons. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirFone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirFone
- akavi 15y agoI dispute your characterization of air-to-ground telephony as "not really like cell towers". Aircel (the guys behind Gogo Inflight) themselves characterize it as such on their own website[0]. I was, however, unaware of the satellite tech. [0]http://www.gogoinflight.com/gogo/cms/work.do http://www.gogoinflight.com/gogo/cms/work.do
- hugh3 15y agoAs I understand it, HughesNet uses geostationary satellites parked above the US and Europe, so even that wouldn't be any use.
- corin_ 15y agoI use Virgin Atlantic for all transatlantic flights, and they do offer internet access, just not WiFi. The screens in the backs of seats can be used to read a very limited number of news stories, and you can also send (and possibly receive, can't remember) emails. I rarely bother to use it, the interface is so bad, so I might be forgetting some features. So, communicating with the internet isn't the problem, they just don't offer a network for customers to join with their own devices (possibly for cost purposes, possibly they have bandwidth worries or possibly they just haven't got round to it yet.)
- elithrar 15y ago> Is Hipmunk's information on flights to Australia actually decent? I took a look at it a while back for Canada-Europe flights and the results were less than inspiring. I always found Hipmunk to be fairly average to-and-from Australia. In fact, as an example: to fly from Perth to Shanghai, the cheapest/least agonising flight is $1477. Direct via Singapore Airlines' website, with the same amount of agony (just the one transfer at Changi (Singapore)) is $1126, flying with the one airline the whole time (even better!). There's also the Cathay Pacific option at $1136 odd. Hipmunk is probably darned good in the US, by all accounts, but internationally it's a bit weak.
- kn0thing 15y agoWe're growing our faredata outside of the US every day, but we started with the market we know best to make all of our carrier relationships. Keep checking back! In the meantime, if hipmunk doesn't provide you an awesome set of search results to/from Oz, do try http://adioso.com http://adioso.com
- dsmithn 15y agoI think giving consumers the ability to view flight information other than price and schedule will encourage airlines to provide better services and features. I'd love to quickly be able to compare the costs of checking luggage, cancellation insurance costs, etc.
- waterside81 15y agoWishful thinking but highly unlikely. The airline industry has shown to be very, very price sensitive and customers, although they complain about service, really are just looking for the cheapest flight. I've always thought the downfall of the airline industry is our (consumers') own fault; we search by price and only seem to deviate from price as our main criteria on occasion in the name of loyalty plans.
- goldfish 15y agoThere's a major difference between the behavior of leisure and business travelers. Leisure travelers have (historically) been price-sensitive in the extreme. Business travelers have been way more schedule- and airline-sensitive. This is why you see so many perks thrown at business travelers (free upgrades, etc.)—it's an attempt by the airlines to win the business of their most profitable clients. As to whether airlines will be inspired to install more wi-fi, consider this: all the major US airlines that don't already have wi-fi on their entire fleet have announced plans to install it on a lot more of their fleet this year. They're hoping people—especially business travelers—will make their purchasing decisions on the basis of wi-fi.
- bostonvaulter2 15y agoPersonally, I think I might care more about service when choosing a flight if I had some idea what the service would be like before hand. Right now I need to manually go look up reviews for the airline. It's also made worse because some airlines are really multiple different airline's put in one (usually via acquisition).
- PStamatiou 15y agoThis is fantastic news! If I am on another unproductive cross-country flight watching mindless iTunes rental movies on my iPad instead of working (or reading HN) I'm going to go crazy.
- MaxGabriel 15y agoThis is great. I looked for flights yesterday using hipmunk and the whole experience was just perfect. The hipmunk team deserves alot of respect
- kn0thing 15y agoHurray! Thanks, Max :)
- brm 15y agoUnrelated but I have to point it out since it happens constantly... If you're a start-up and you're directing people to your blog, please, please, please make an obvious and easy link from the blog to your startup's homepage. Don't hide it in the sidebar, don't make the 'home' link on the blog go to the blog's homepage, don't waste the damn traffic. Make it brainless for me to get from your blog to your startup's homepage.
- bxr 15y ago>Don't hide it in the sidebar get over yourself
- frankdenbow 15y agoI see this a lot as well. I dont understand it either!
- trustfundbaby 15y agoUsually they set up a wordpress install for the blog and out-of-the-box the home button links to the blog itself. Changing it usually takes a little bit of tinkering and folks just never get around to it. Annoys me too.
- yarone 15y agoIsn't the top-right of the sidebar an "obvious and easy link"? Lots of folks put it there. I bet that's where you looked first.
- brm 15y agoI looked to the Hipmunk logo, and then I looked to the 'home' link... then I found it in the sidebar. Its nitpick I'll admit but it seems odd to see so many startups use their blog to direct users to their site and then not optimize a way to get them in.
- brm 15y agoLook at Mint (who used their blog to great effect as a startup). All it takes is a simple link at the top of the blog. http://www.mint.com/blog/ http://www.mint.com/blog/
- ltamake 15y agoIs this international or just for American flights?
- dmragone 15y agoBlast! Just booked a bunch of trips last week - wish I had waited.
- clemesha 15y agoThis is great! What about also indicating if the plane has power plugins? Or is this becoming the standard these days? If my laptop/iPad dies, knowing the internet is available goes from awesome to super painful.
- danilocampos 15y agoFor the iPad, this thing is awesome: http://www.amazon.com/New-Trent-iCruiser-IMP1000-Blackberry/dp/B003ZBZ64Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1309293138&sr=1-4 http://www.amazon.com/New-Trent-iCruiser-IMP1000-Blackberry/... I got one for a flight to Hong Kong. iPad ran constantly for >16 hours, and it was also handy for topping off an iPhone when batteries ran low. Well worth the cash if you travel for extended periods.
- phillco 15y agoTry SeatGuru: http://www.seatguru.com/ http://www.seatguru.com/
- neebz 15y agoslightly off topic but I love the Hipmunk date control. You can type in your date in any format and it'll parse it. No need to make tons of click to navigate through a calendar control.
- kn0thing 15y agoThank you very much :) I was very impressed when I saw it - especially with how flexible dates are handled: http://blog.hipmunk.com/post/6494292972/new-flexible-date-searching-for-flights http://blog.hipmunk.com/post/6494292972/new-flexible-date-se...
- walexander 15y agoI hate to be that guy, but hasn't Kayak had this feature for a really long time? Hipmunk is great and all, but I fail to see how a travel site adding an icon is relevant to the HN frontpage.
- tmugavero 15y agoTotally agreed. I also lost a little respect for Hipmunk when I found out they are basically an exact copy of ITA's app: http://matrix.itasoftware.com/search.htm http://matrix.itasoftware.com/search.htm.
- kyleslattery 15y agoITA's app doesn't seem nearly as useful to me for a few reasons: 1) The form at the beginning is much more confusing. Creating a search with Hipmunk is much less complicated. 2) Flights are ordered by price, whereas Hipmunk orders them by "agony", which in my experience, seems to be pretty accurate. 3) Doesn't default to time bar mode, like Hipmunk does.
- tmugavero 15y agoTrue, but I'm not sure removing form fields and renaming filtering data constitutes innovation.
- spez 15y agoYeah, well, who are we to turn down great coverage?
- walexander 15y agoI wouldn't at all fault you guys for taking advantage of the coverage. I'm just wondering why the HN crowd decided to give free advertising to a small incremental update. This does give a compelling reason to join YC, though: plenty of cheerleading around YC startups.
- skeletonjelly 15y agoWe've had this in Australia for ages: None!