3 ms·

what will be a game changing tool, and something befitting the resources of google, would be to pair flights together that are cheaper than what is offered by t

by esutton 15y ago

what will be a game changing tool, and something befitting the resources of google, would be to pair flights together that are cheaper than what is offered by the airline. for instance: flying from NY to LA. Airlines sell this route non stop, or through one of their hubs. But imagine if a flight search can figure out that a oneway flight from ny to new orleans on Delta and than a flight from new orleans on AA, had a low layover and was significantly cheaper than the published routes. The problem is that as this expands to more cities and takes more stops, you end up hitting an NP problem.

kiwidrew 15y ago
It's unlikely that the Delta fare from NYC to MSY and the American fare from MSY to LAX permit end-on-end combination with each other, so it would have to be issued as two separate tickets. What happens if your Delta flight to New Orleans is delayed and you miss your connecting flight to Los Angeles on American? Neither carrier is going to offer you any compensation, and your travel insurance probably has a clause which excludes misconnections caused by an airline's late arrival. There are occasions when this strategy produces good results, however: last year I needed a last-minute one way flight from a small southeastern city (TYS / Knoxville) to San Francisco, and the fares were extremely high ($800+). But flights to Orlando were very cheap due to competition from low-cost leisure carriers, and the last-minute fares from Orlando (MCO) to San Francisco were quite reasonable. I booked, on a single ticket and flying on a single airline the entire way, TYS-IAD-MCO-IAD-DEN-SFO. This gave me a TYS-MCO fare plus an MCO-SFO fare, which was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the more direct TYS-DEN-SFO. At the time, saving money was a lot more important than getting to San Francisco a couple of hours earlier. A cunning plan that cannot fail! Except that I missed my first flight of the morning due to an overnight road closure that blocked my only way of leaving the house. By the time that I got to the airport, my originally booked flight had already left and I was faced with a very long wait for the next flight to IAD, which virtually guaranteed I wouldn't even make it to San Francisco that day. It was only through a combination of charisma and blind luck that I managed to convince the airline to reroute me direct through Denver, which is completely against company policy. They only charged me the $50 same-day standby fee. Needless to say, I would never sell that sort of a ticket to the general public. Far too many different ways in which things could go horribly wrong. It's also likely that the airlines would promptly revoke your ticketing privileges with them were they to discover you were routinely issuing these sorts of tickets.
- esutton 15y ago
  perfectly fair, i admit i've done some flight "hacking" myself. The reason i bring it up is because it is well know that airlines prices their flights between city pairs, not based on the legs. For instance a flight, between jfk and lax through chicago could cost more than the sum of those two same exact flights. This would be an opportunity to build your own ticket. I admit there are significant downsides with delays and reroutings, but if google presented the information to the public it would add transparency to a very opaque system and it may lead to a change throughout the industry in the way tickets are priced. After all google's mission statement is to organize the worlds information
  - jser 15y ago
    The market for building complicated routings is very small -- typically only mile/segment runners. ITA's backend is already used by that community for this, but not sure why the public would be interested. Each segment adds additional landing fees and taxes, making it more expensive, unless you're exploiting a rare hub/partner mistake fare.

by esutton 15y ago

kiwidrew 15y ago

It's unlikely that the Delta fare from NYC to MSY and the American fare from MSY to LAX permit end-on-end combination with each other, so it would have to be issued as two separate tickets. What happens if your Delta flight to New Orleans is delayed and you miss your connecting flight to Los Angeles on American? Neither carrier is going to offer you any compensation, and your travel insurance probably has a clause which excludes misconnections caused by an airline's late arrival. There are occasions when this strategy produces good results, however: last year I needed a last-minute one way flight from a small southeastern city (TYS / Knoxville) to San Francisco, and the fares were extremely high ($800+). But flights to Orlando were very cheap due to competition from low-cost leisure carriers, and the last-minute fares from Orlando (MCO) to San Francisco were quite reasonable. I booked, on a single ticket and flying on a single airline the entire way, TYS-IAD-MCO-IAD-DEN-SFO. This gave me a TYS-MCO fare plus an MCO-SFO fare, which was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the more direct TYS-DEN-SFO. At the time, saving money was a lot more important than getting to San Francisco a couple of hours earlier. A cunning plan that cannot fail! Except that I missed my first flight of the morning due to an overnight road closure that blocked my only way of leaving the house. By the time that I got to the airport, my originally booked flight had already left and I was faced with a very long wait for the next flight to IAD, which virtually guaranteed I wouldn't even make it to San Francisco that day. It was only through a combination of charisma and blind luck that I managed to convince the airline to reroute me direct through Denver, which is completely against company policy. They only charged me the $50 same-day standby fee. Needless to say, I would never sell that sort of a ticket to the general public. Far too many different ways in which things could go horribly wrong. It's also likely that the airlines would promptly revoke your ticketing privileges with them were they to discover you were routinely issuing these sorts of tickets.

esutton 15y ago
perfectly fair, i admit i've done some flight "hacking" myself. The reason i bring it up is because it is well know that airlines prices their flights between city pairs, not based on the legs. For instance a flight, between jfk and lax through chicago could cost more than the sum of those two same exact flights. This would be an opportunity to build your own ticket. I admit there are significant downsides with delays and reroutings, but if google presented the information to the public it would add transparency to a very opaque system and it may lead to a change throughout the industry in the way tickets are priced. After all google's mission statement is to organize the worlds information
- jser 15y ago
  The market for building complicated routings is very small -- typically only mile/segment runners. ITA's backend is already used by that community for this, but not sure why the public would be interested. Each segment adds additional landing fees and taxes, making it more expensive, unless you're exploiting a rare hub/partner mistake fare.