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The reason this product doesn't exist "already" is because it's not the type of searching airline's preferred customer need. Airlines prefer business class cus

The reason this product doesn't exist "already" is because it's not the type of searching airline's preferred customer need. Airlines prefer business class customers (routine flights, willing to upgrade to expensive business class tickets) and those customers typically search for small 1-2 day windows.

tomhoward 14y ago
Even if this was true, it hasn't stopped many/most airlines being financial disasters. We know airlines want this as much as consumers do, if it gives them a better ability to manage their capacity and market their products more efficiently. We also hear it's a myth that airlines prefer business-class customers; on a dollars-per-square-metre basis they do better out of coach. EDIT: Also note, most of the newest/fastest-growing/most profitable airlines in the world are low-cost and don't have business-class.
- notahacker 14y ago
  Presumably you've had some discussions with GDS companies: what reasons have they provided for not offering [affordable licences for] such flexible search parameters?
  - almacmillan 14y ago
    Nah, in modern flight search, ITA & Vayant take all the raw flight data like schedules, fare rules etc which they buy from companies like OAG and Innovata & IATA. GDS increasingly are nothing more than a source for cacheing prices when a 'direct connect' connection to the airline is not available or where the end consumer (an ota or travel agent for example) will be purchasing via GDS. Certainly no GDS has tech that does open ended real time Graphed queries like Google Flights, Adioso's Wingtip, Vayant, Skyscanner can do
    - notahacker 14y ago
      The cached prices are the hard part of the search though (anyone with a licence to schedule data from Innovata or OAG can build a tool that searches for "all return flights from California to Europe in summer"). In theory it should be possible to grab current price/availability for that set of flights from a GDS and filter it to give "all return flights ... under $1500" (minus some LCCs that don't accept GDS bookings) which is the more interesting part of the problem from the consumer's point of view. Presumably if Adioso are finding it worthwhile building their own price scraping/caching engine the GDS companies aren't willing to allow their systems to be [affordably] queried on that kind of scale. I'm just wondering whether they're claiming it's impossible for technical reasons, IP reasons (they sell price data back to the airlines) or just weren't willing to quote Adioso an affordable rate.
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  Also, 80-90% of people in business or first are using free or mileage upgrades. Almost nobody actually pays to be up there. That's exactly why so many new and/or low cost carriers don't even have business class.

tomhoward 14y ago

Even if this was true, it hasn't stopped many/most airlines being financial disasters. We know airlines want this as much as consumers do, if it gives them a better ability to manage their capacity and market their products more efficiently. We also hear it's a myth that airlines prefer business-class customers; on a dollars-per-square-metre basis they do better out of coach. EDIT: Also note, most of the newest/fastest-growing/most profitable airlines in the world are low-cost and don't have business-class.

notahacker 14y ago
Presumably you've had some discussions with GDS companies: what reasons have they provided for not offering [affordable licences for] such flexible search parameters?
- almacmillan 14y ago
  Nah, in modern flight search, ITA & Vayant take all the raw flight data like schedules, fare rules etc which they buy from companies like OAG and Innovata & IATA. GDS increasingly are nothing more than a source for cacheing prices when a 'direct connect' connection to the airline is not available or where the end consumer (an ota or travel agent for example) will be purchasing via GDS. Certainly no GDS has tech that does open ended real time Graphed queries like Google Flights, Adioso's Wingtip, Vayant, Skyscanner can do
  - notahacker 14y ago
    The cached prices are the hard part of the search though (anyone with a licence to schedule data from Innovata or OAG can build a tool that searches for "all return flights from California to Europe in summer"). In theory it should be possible to grab current price/availability for that set of flights from a GDS and filter it to give "all return flights ... under $1500" (minus some LCCs that don't accept GDS bookings) which is the more interesting part of the problem from the consumer's point of view. Presumably if Adioso are finding it worthwhile building their own price scraping/caching engine the GDS companies aren't willing to allow their systems to be [affordably] queried on that kind of scale. I'm just wondering whether they're claiming it's impossible for technical reasons, IP reasons (they sell price data back to the airlines) or just weren't willing to quote Adioso an affordable rate.
mattmaroon 14y ago
Also, 80-90% of people in business or first are using free or mileage upgrades. Almost nobody actually pays to be up there. That's exactly why so many new and/or low cost carriers don't even have business class.