Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension • Hacker News Board

Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#1

Post by goldfish » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

Hi HN! I'm Adam Goldstein, co-founder and CEO of Hipmunk (YC S10). Today we're launching Flight Penguin (https://www.flightpenguin.com) in public beta as a browser extension for Chrome and Chromium browsers.

Hipmunk was a travel metasearch site that sorted flights by "agony" and showed them in a Gantt chart view. I've missed using Hipmunk ever since SAP shut it down. So I decided to seed-fund a successor along with my Hipmunk co-founder (and Reddit CEO) Steve Huffman. More recently I brought on Max Morlocke (hn: maxmorlocke) as cofounder.

With Flight Penguin, you get a simple, time-based way to search for flights, and it pulls in results from multiple sites. By default Flight Penguin sorts by "pain," so you see the least painful options before the multiple-layover monstrosities Kayak loves to show first.

As some of you know, some airlines are now demanding anti-consumer provisions when they do deals with travel sites, such as insisting that sites hide cheaper flights, hide multi-airline itineraries, and hide certain booking options. We decided not to agree to any of those terms, because we want to make the best experience. Being a browser extension gives us the ability to show the lowest fares without going through airline servers or airline contracts, since we can search and compile all the data from your browser.

You can install it now at https://www.flightpenguin.com. We're also launching a crowdfunding round to keep our incentives aligned with our users: https://wefunder.com/flightpenguin. Happy to answer any questions and would love your thoughts!

Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension
flightpenguin.com

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#2

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#3

Post by 2Gkashmiri » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

Firefox add-on please

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#4

Post by trothamel » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

The Chrome extension asks to read the browser history. Why does it need that permission?

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#5

Post by maxmorlocke » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 5:20 PM UTC

trothamel wrote: post #4

The Chrome extension asks to read the browser history. Why does it need that permission?

It doesn't, this is a side effect of requesting the chrome.tabs permission which we use to manage which tab is currently being highlighted. Chrome includes this note because the chrome.tabs permission set is very broad and includes an onUpdated hook that could allow the extension to capture history as you are browsing. Unfortunately, Chrome doesn't offer more narrow scoped permissions (e.g. tabs.query and not just generically tabs). This has been a known 'problem' for years unfortunately:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64063754/chrome-extensio...

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#6

Post by rchowe » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

I love the ITA Matrix style time bars; I wish every flight tool had them.

Since you're using a browser extension and scraping OTA websites, one of the things on my wish list is the ability to scrape Amex Travel -- they offer discounted rates if you have a Platinum card.

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#7

Post by monksy » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

Oh I miss hipmunks flight picker. I loved the way you can visualize the times.

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#8

Post by maxmorlocke » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

monksy wrote: post #7

Oh I miss hipmunks flight picker. I loved the way you can visualize the times.

Flight Penguin's flight selection and timebars should feel very, very familiar. You can check out just how much we are inspired by the UX and values of Hipmunk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzOAtn2sNCo

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#9

Post by jayzalowitz » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

I know its nitpicky as hell, but having insane delta status like I do, I really need a skyteam filter, this is pointless otherwise, ill seriously give you the delta diamond group worth of market use if you can add that.

Re: Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

#10

Post by buro9 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

Looks nice... so I tried it.

Starting airport: There are 4 around London, can I select any?

Destination airport: There are 2 around Lisbon, can I select any?

Already I have 8 permutations of things I don't want to think about.

Got a search result but it didn't render correctly... I use noscript but this is a privileged tab and there's nothing to allow and I don't see what else it might need.

Tried sorting to see if unlocks the blurred results... it doesn't work, I try to go back, but there is no back button as this is an embedded SPA within an extension talking to a web based API somewhere. I reload to see if I can get it working, it's blown away all of the history and state.

Is there a reason this has to be a Chrome extension rather than a web page?

PS: Loved Hipmunk, so I do want this to work.

Update: It was NoScript. FlightPenguin opens other browser windows behind the browser window you're in... and those all need to work, meaning you need to enumerate them and approve all applicable JS for those sites to work. Once you've done that then FlightPenguin works, and to answer my own question it's probably to get around the aggressive scrape protection that flight sites put in place.