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Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

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Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#81
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…

Seconded on ITA Matrix, great piece of software!

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#82
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…

What are your favorite travel hacks?

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#83
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)/¯

Kayak gives you an estimate of probability of price increase..

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for Crash Bandicoot. How did you go from games to developing airlines reservation and fares software?

I knew two awesome people through the MIT AI Lab, one of whom co-founded Naughty Dog, and the other of whom co-founded ITA Software. :)

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What are your favorite travel hacks?

Never set foot on an airplane unless I absolutely have to. :)

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you for building ITA Matrix - it is amazing tool and I don't know what I would do without it.

Lots of other people did a lot more of the actual building than I did, but on their behalf, "You're welcome!"

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#87
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)/¯

Similarly, the article mentions that Google Flights is now more closely competing with Hopper, a mobile app for finding flights. Hopper already offers this price prediction service, and it is powered by Sabre's price prediction API: https://developer.sabre.com/docs/read/rest_apis/air/intellig... Disclosure: I own another competing flight search tool, https://concorde.io

That link to Sabre documentation isn't half bad. I was expecting a flaming mess of docs.

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#88
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…

You should first start reading these great slides from Carl de Macken (ITA Software co-founder, the thing that now powers Google Flights) http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com... …and then decide if you still want to pursue this.

Short answer: you don't!

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is completely different. I've been using Google flights for 2 years now, it always shows me the best price compared to cheapoair/hipmunk. Also I love the clean UI :)

Yeah, totally right, it could easily be subjective to what you're searching for and when/where. I could have just had bad luck with Google Flights vs what I saw on Hipmunk. Just wondering if anyone knows more about the structure/algorithm of it all and why it may be different so much per site. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've found some flights to be $100 more on Google Flights than if I went to the airline website itself and booked a flight straight from their website, so you aren't far out there.

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#90
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…

If you don't mind sharing, does ITA/Google Flights still use Common Lisp for the backend?
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