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Get away with Google Flights

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Re: Get away with Google Flights

#101

Post by jordigh »

davidf18 wrote: post #99

How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and we still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights from point A to point B on certain dates? I find this really baffling. It is a service all customers want yet even the great Google can't seem to provide this. Meanwhile Google puts out so many "experimental products" that they later dispose. There is talk of Google gett…

> How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and we still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights from point A to point B on certain dates?

Because the airlines have their own army of geniuses working very hard to make sure that this is difficult to do:

http://www.cheapair.com/blog/travel-tips/air-fares-101-why-d...

Who are you? How much money do you have? How badly do you want these tickets? How often are you checking the price, what else have you bought? How are your buying habits compared to everyone else's? These are the questions the airlines are trying to answer in order to maximise how much money they can get off each individual.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#102

Post by dingaling »

toyg wrote: post #61
dheera wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we need an API to search all the languages and countries, pay in the appropriate currency, abstract this "feature" away along with the language barrier, and give me the lowest price. I hope Google will do that. :)

It would likely break all sorts of TOS agreements at various levels, and wouldn't last a month. There are industries where profits are huge and disruption is badly needed. Airlines are not one of them, afaik; ever since low-cost became a thing, they've been under constant economic pressure and usually operate on razor-thin margins, at least in Europe. Mid-size companies have all but disappeared, even giants like Brit…

> Airlines are not one of them, afaik

Oh the big consolidated IATA airlines are raking it in, don't worry about them

"On a per passenger basis, [IATA] airlines will make a net profit of $7.08 in 2015. That is up on the $6.02 earned in 2014 and more than double the $3.38 earnings per passenger achieved in 2013."

http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2014-12-10-01.aspx

Incidentally, Ryanair are frequently not the cheapest. They rely on people assuming that; sometimes IATA behemoths are actually cheaper.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#103

Post by rbcgerard »

kremi wrote: post #28
bemmu wrote: post #18

I love the flexibility this has and after giving it a serious go I never went back to Kayak. If you know exactly when and where to fly, Kayak is great. But with any uncertainty, Google Flights is better for exploring. Maybe you know when to fly, but not when you want to come back. Or maybe you don't even know where you want to fly, in which case you can get destination suggestions. It's also a lot snappier. Now with…

Kayak's explore is pretty nice when you have uncertainty: http://www.kayak.com/explore/BER/ Although unlike Google Flights, it doesn't let you search for specific dates.

nor does it allow you to search for specific times i.e. if i want to go somewhere for the weekend, flights at 6am on friday are not that useful...

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#104

Post by toyg »

dingaling wrote: post #102
toyg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would likely break all sorts of TOS agreements at various levels, and wouldn't last a month. There are industries where profits are huge and disruption is badly needed. Airlines are not one of them, afaik; ever since low-cost became a thing, they've been under constant economic pressure and usually operate on razor-thin margins, at least in Europe. Mid-size companies have all but disappeared, even giants like Brit…

> Airlines are not one of them, afaik Oh the big consolidated IATA airlines are raking it in, don't worry about them "On a per passenger basis, [IATA] airlines will make a net profit of $7.08 in 2015. That is up on the $6.02 earned in 2014 and more than double the $3.38 earnings per passenger achieved in 2013." http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2014-12-10-01.aspx Incidentally, Ryanair are frequently not the chea…

$7 on a ticket costing hundreds is hardly "raking it in".

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#105

Post by MichaelGG »

jordigh wrote: post #101
davidf18 wrote: post #99

How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and we still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights from point A to point B on certain dates? I find this really baffling. It is a service all customers want yet even the great Google can't seem to provide this. Meanwhile Google puts out so many "experimental products" that they later dispose. There is talk of Google gett…

> How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and we still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights from point A to point B on certain dates? Because the airlines have their own army of geniuses working very hard to make sure that this is difficult to do: http://www.cheapair.com/blog/travel-tips/air-fares-101-why-d... Who are you? How much money do you have? How badl…

Wow. So as a United "elite" member, just doing searches on their app or site but with my account, is gonna cost me? Because I've never seen this happen. I seem to get the lowest fare they have. I've not done serious tests, just seen when other people look up my flights, on say, Kayak, they get the same prices.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#106

Post by jfoster »

davidf18 wrote: post #99

How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and we still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights from point A to point B on certain dates? I find this really baffling. It is a service all customers want yet even the great Google can't seem to provide this. Meanwhile Google puts out so many "experimental products" that they later dispose. There is talk of Google gett…

Landing a man on the moon was not an adversarial problem, whereas flight bookings are. If flight bookings were like you want them to be, airlines might find themselves asking how we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago, but can't create a booking system that makes it sufficiently difficult for consumers to find our cheapest flights?

Unsurprisingly, we're somewhere between the two. Most determined people can find flights that are at least close to being the cheapest.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#107

Post by Yhippa »

I used to be a hardcore Hipmunk user and I still think I prefer it to Google Flights. I had some trouble recently with Hipmunk linking to flights that don't exist on the airline's websites. I've been using Google Flights ever since. Hopefully Hipmunk will get things back in order again.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#108

Post by fireworks10 »

jxf wrote: post #68

I've been using Google Flights since the middle of last year and love it. However, as a frequent traveler for business/conferences, I think there are some things people should be aware of: * Google's data seems to be not as fresh as Kayak or Hipmunk's is. There have been multiple times when I've tried to book a flight via GF only to be told that there were no seats left when I arrive on the airline's page. I suspect…

I use http://www.optifly.com/ for airline route discovery.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#109

Post by jxf »

zatkin wrote: post #69
jxf wrote: post #68

I've been using Google Flights since the middle of last year and love it. However, as a frequent traveler for business/conferences, I think there are some things people should be aware of: * Google's data seems to be not as fresh as Kayak or Hipmunk's is. There have been multiple times when I've tried to book a flight via GF only to be told that there were no seats left when I arrive on the airline's page. I suspect…

Which VPN gets you the best deals? Also, do you book on Tuesdays?

I only have one VPN, GoldenFrog's VyprVPN service. Sorry, I didn't intend to suggest that I was running multiple VPNs.

I haven't experimented extensively with things, but usually setting my exit server to a random country on the other side of the planet (e.g. Malaysia) has yielded consistently good results.

And yes, I do tend to book on Tuesdays.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#110

Post by notahacker »

dheera wrote: post #53
kylec wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good presentation about the complexities in creating and pricing itineraries: http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com... Most companies don't want to take on this complexity, so they outsource it. The companies that provide this service, like ITA, tend to charge more money for more expensive queries, like multi-day searches, so most online search companies will only let you do the cheap…

I wonder if it would be viable to start an airline whose business model is "simple pricing". Just forget ITA altogether, sell tickets directly, and have the pricing model extremely simple. Like, total price = C/(time to departure) for some constant C, and use machine learning, or just a simple PID feedback loop on revenue to set C in order to be profitable.

Airlines spend a absolute fortune on complex pricing for a reason... they wouldn't survive (in the absence of protectionism or a natural monopoly on niche routes) without it. The optimum "one size fits all" price doesn't exist.
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