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Google Flight Search

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Re: Google Flight Search

#211

You know what would my make flights better (I travel a lot for work - but work out of my house and book a lot of my own travel) I want to be able to setup standard trips/itineraries and be able to single clik re-book them with simply a leave and return date. Further, I want the system to auto arrange for a cab/shuttle/uber to pick me up and take me to my destination. For example, I fly to LAX several times a month -…

May I ask what you do, and how I might get into doing it? I am craving a job with > 0 travel...

Re: Google Flight Search

#212
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First iteration.

I have never even heard of a flight search not supporting international flights.

You should have tried ITA Software's Matrix site in 2000. It was already awesome, but it was US only.

Re: Google Flight Search

#213

what will be a game changing tool, and something befitting the resources of google, would be to pair flights together that are cheaper than what is offered by the airline. for instance: flying from NY to LA. Airlines sell this route non stop, or through one of their hubs. But imagine if a flight search can figure out that a oneway flight from ny to new orleans on Delta and than a flight from new orleans on AA, had a…

It's unlikely that the Delta fare from NYC to MSY and the American fare from MSY to LAX permit end-on-end combination with each other, so it would have to be issued as two separate tickets. What happens if your Delta flight to New Orleans is delayed and you miss your connecting flight to Los Angeles on American? Neither carrier is going to offer you any compensation, and your travel insurance probably has a clause wh…

perfectly fair, i admit i've done some flight "hacking" myself. The reason i bring it up is because it is well know that airlines prices their flights between city pairs, not based on the legs. For instance a flight, between jfk and lax through chicago could cost more than the sum of those two same exact flights. This would be an opportunity to build your own ticket. I admit there are significant downsides with delays and reroutings, but if google presented the information to the public it would add transparency to a very opaque system and it may lead to a change throughout the industry in the way tickets are priced. After all google's mission statement is to organize the worlds information

Re: Google Flight Search

#214
post #210
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing has "designed by an engineer" all over it. From hidden UI that reveals itself by clicking/hovering on various elements, to the entire process being limited to one screen which various pop-out elements and transformations. There is little consistency in the design, and poor or no usage of contrast to separate information visually. When clicking the large blue button to the right of a flight, several ro…

Outbound/return is standard terminology all over the travel industry. Including in UK and US, and for trains and for planes: I'm surprised you're not familiar with it. "Depart" means something different: it refers to the beginning of each leg of the journey. Its opposite is "arrive". So you might have an outbound leg which departs from LAX and arrives in SFO, and then a return leg which departs from SFO and arrives i…

Hipmunk.com says depart/return and Iflyswa.com says departing/returning. Your claim is 0/2 so far.

Re: Google Flight Search

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except that Hipmunk's interface is a clean clone of ITA's matrix search's gantt view Why clean clone? Gantt charts are (technically) 115 years old, and it's not like there are 5 billion ways to display a gantt chart, especially one with no paths. Other flight search startup have independently stumbled upon the idea of gantt charts for flight, why could that not be yet another independent reinvention? > I'm sure it'…

They are the same as in yes, it's the same idea - a gantt chart but Hipmunk's way better looking and more interactive. When I say clone, I don't mean to imply they simply copied it with no originality - I'm just pointing out this fact to all the people who claim Hipmunk's advantage is their gantt view..which ITA already has a versin of and can be improved to match or be better than Hipmunk's.

And yet so far no one has.

Re: Google Flight Search

#216

Not bad, but hipmunk's visualization seems far far better than Google's tables. The graphical representation of the flight path seems nice, as does the highlighting of cities involved, but that doesn't actually give me information I need to make a decision; Hipmunk's time-oriented chart of departures, arrivals, and layovers tells me exactly what I need to know to book a flight.

Exactly. This would intimidate my aunt; Hipmunk would amaze her.

I hope she'd like the chipmunk, too!

Re: Google Flight Search

#218
post #75

If your startup is involved with search aimed at the consumer market, watch out...Google is coming. In a few weeks/months Google will be featuring this search result when you type "nyc to sfo" and take a big bite out of orbitz, kayak, and whoever's lunch that's in this space. EDIT: The counterargument to this, is that orbitz, kayak, and friends are some of the heaviest purchasers of PPC ads. So Google be at risk of c…

The counterargument to your counterargument is that google could start taking over what they cannibalize and make more money directly.

Exactly, it's simple economics: If Orbitz et al. get $5 per Airline ticket sold, they can only afford to pay Google up to $4.99 for the click.

Google can take the $5 from the Airlines and laugh all the way to the bank.

Re: Google Flight Search

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all I've wanted from a flight search product since forever. It will be awesome when it's more international!

http://kayak.com/buzz has had this forever.

Try http://www.kayak.com/explore/ which gives the same max budget parameter but on a map from an origin city.

Re: Google Flight Search

#220
I was under the impression that Amtrak from Newark Airport to 30th St Station in Philadelphia was available as an airline code share (and that train segment is fast enough that there's no good reason to get on a plane for NewarkPhiladelphia, even if you are connecting to another flight out of Newark), but I haven't figured out how to find such a code share with Google's flight search tools.

(The governor of IL and the Chicago mayor also asked Amtrak to study how to extend some of the Amtrak routes to O'Hare, presumably to replace some ``commuter'' flights, and they wanted the study done by the end of this summer, but I haven't seen any evidence of the study being done yet.)

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