Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

flightpenguin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 78 posts

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

#51

Post by maxmorlocke »

secabeen wrote: post #49

What do you feel is the biggest risk to your success?

I don't know which is the biggest, there are a lot of known unknowns still floating around. Will we run out of money before we monetize? Will we have to deal with constant lawsuits? Will other innovators in the space attempt to move in our direction? Are there enough travelers willing to install an extension? Will google be google and shut us down? The ever present bus factor. All of these are legit concerns that are going into our crowdfunding risks disclosures. All are things to manage.

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

#53

Post by maxmorlocke »

hannibalhorn wrote: post #52

My gut reaction was that as a browser extension, you would have the ability to add airlines that refuse to participate in the current travel sites, e.g., Southwest? But I don't see them in the results...

Your gut reaction is not wrong. That being said, I think it's wise to pick the right time to leverage this capability. Our resources are extremely limited at the moment in comparison to one of the most aggressively litigious entities in our space.

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

#54

Post by johnday »

maxmorlocke wrote: post #31
TheHideout wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I saw it on the subdomain and page header bar on the privacy policy page.

I think I've gotten them all. Appreciate you bringing this to my attention!

There's another one when you go to uninstall the application on Chrome - it asks "were you able to subscribe?"

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

#55

Post by hannibalhorn »

maxmorlocke wrote: post #53
hannibalhorn wrote: post #52

My gut reaction was that as a browser extension, you would have the ability to add airlines that refuse to participate in the current travel sites, e.g., Southwest? But I don't see them in the results...

Your gut reaction is not wrong. That being said, I think it's wise to pick the right time to leverage this capability. Our resources are extremely limited at the moment in comparison to one of the most aggressively litigious entities in our space.

That makes total sense, and glad to hear that it could be on the table when the time is right!

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

#56

Post by scoot »

maxmorlocke wrote: post #11
buro9 wrote: post #10

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 u…

Re: airports. You can select any airport or the city - which should grab them all (e.g. City of London (LON), London Heathrow (LHR), etc.). Re: Noscript. I haven't tested with noscript, but have with most major adblockers. We do use the chrome extension API to open windows in the background to collect flight data and eventually to redirect you to for booking. I'll get it installed and see if I can replicate it. Might…

> You can select any airport or the city - which should grab them all

Not everyone lives equidistant to all airports. Heathrow and Gatwick are close to me; Luton, Stansted and City are not. I'd want to see options for both of the former. Loved HipMunk, so glad you are back (why was it killed off to begin with?), but don't understand why it's a browser extension.

Edit: seems you can only select one airport in any case, not a city. (But you knew that, right?)

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

#57

Post by maxmorlocke »

ajoseps wrote: post #41
maxmorlocke wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't handle the booking, we redirect you to the travel site that we found the best price on. Many online travel search agencies and metasearch sites can put together itineraries the airlines don't offer directly.

just out of curiosity, why don't they offer these directly?

As a simple example, United probably isn't going to offer a flight where one leg is on United and another is on American. Yet, it might be substantially cheaper or less painful to take that flight. Certain codeshares may be more profitable for them to hawk, to the point where they will only show certain legs when the more profitable flight is booked. They may also choose not to show flights that are already profitable based on bookings (e.g. takes 75 economy seats to make flight with legs A->B and B->C profitable) when a similar flight (A->D, D->C) is underbooked and could use some more folks aboard. There are probably a thousand other reasons...

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

#60

Post by maxmorlocke »

Semaphor wrote: post #59

Not a browser extension, but a Chrome extension. There are currently two Show HNs on the frontpage that have a title to make it seem generic (rust terminal, browser extension), one is mac only, one is chrome only.

Works in all Chromium browsers actually. Support for Firefox and Safari is on the way, but does require some more work.
Post reply on HN