Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

Post by cbr » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

illnewsthat wrote: post #39

throwaway287391 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the major ones) on short flights. Not to mention they're missing Southwest, but that's Southwest's fault -- they seem to have some sort of policy against allowing any third parties to list their flights. In addition to being really annoying since I have to make two searches…

> How could not having all that free advertising from flight search engines possibly be a good thing for Southwest? It's not 'free'. See this quora answer for more: ( https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Southwest-choose-not-to-offer... ) Short Answer: It costs money to be there and they can control the variables and environment better on their website. Long Answer: It dates back to Southwest's routes in competing with the…

Post by cbr » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #26

I've searched with Google Flights a few times, but they are consistently more expensive than the flights I find with other services (Hipmunk, specifically). Has anyone else noticed this before, too? Does anyone know why the prices would be that much different? For the searches I've done, Google Flights is close to $150 more than what Hipmunk shows. Does Hipmunk maybe just have some sort of promo or lower price that G…

Post by calbear81 » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

bimr wrote: post #17

lmkg wrote: post #4

Bing Travel had predictions for fare fluctuations for air tickets back in 2009. It was pretty awesome back when I flied a lot, but they apparently killed the feature in 2014. Now Google's bringing it back, two years later. I don't understand the future sometimes. ¯\(°_o)/¯

The original service was called Farecast before Microsoft bought them. It used to be very good, but the prediction info gradually became marginalized. We may never know the truth, but it feels as if Microsoft caved to pressure from the airlines.

Post by alirov » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

throwaway287391 wrote: post #27

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #2

I almost never use anything other google flights when searching for a ticket. The UI is just so much better and easier to use than the ridiculous bloated crap that most travel sites are (especially when they are trying to shove car-rental and hotel deals in your face). The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the maj…

> The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the major ones) on short flights. Not to mention they're missing Southwest, but that's Southwest's fault -- they seem to have some sort of policy against allowing any third parties to list their flights. In addition to being really annoying since I have to make two searches…

Post by dudurocha » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

dmbaggett wrote: post #57

karakal wrote: post #23

I'm curious, how does one gain access to flight schedules/fares? Is this something that anyone can get their hands on and create a service (complexity aside), or do you need some sort of license that costs thousands of dollars? Does each airline have their own way of exporting this data? Is there a single entity that aggregates from all of them? How does the actual data look like? (Is it a dump every X hours, or some…

Fares and rules come from ATPCO ( http://atpco.net ). Flights come from OAG ( http://www.oag.com ). Seat availability requires data directly from the carrier, usually via a live query to the carrier's reservation system. The GDS companies get this data from these sources and then in turn provide (crappy) APIs for customers to use to query it. In general, if you're doing bookings you can get small amounts of the data…