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Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

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Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#101

Post by kevin_b_er »

toast0 wrote: post #17
jd20 wrote: post #14

Looks cool! The problem of enumerating the best routes between two given airports is indeed an interesting problem. My favorite discussion of the problem is from Carl de Marcken: http://www.ai.mit.edu/courses/6.034f/psets/ps1/airtravel.pdf I've been involved in solving a similar problem, on the award flight search side. There are about 12,000 direct commercial routes offering award redemption, and the airline website…

Many moons ago, I worked in the travel industry. Most airlines aren't running their own technology stack -- they are paying someone else $/search to drive their webpage. In a market of razor thin margins, paying per search for you to crawl their flight catalog is a big problem -- thus the arms race. The only way to win at this is to own the catalog, this is why Google bought ITA. Ryanair is the kind of airline that I…

A market of razor thin margins? I think not. US airlines are swimming in cash

2017:

* American Airlines profit: 7.6 Billion USD

* United profit: 7.1 Billion USD

* Delta Airlines profit: 4.7 Billion USD

* Southwest: 2.2 Billion USD

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#102

Post by amyjess »

kasparsklavins wrote: post #69

Why is there no interface that allows searching for flights without specifying exact dates? All I want to do is fly from A to B to A. Maybe stay a week, maybe two. I'm flexible - it doesnt have to be exactly N days starting on the M'th. Even services that "allegedly" advertise they have that, still require manually clicking every day combination. I'd fly more often if it was easy . The few times I tried, it would be…

If you're flying domestically, check out Southwest's low fare calendar.

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#103

Post by politekc »

micahgoulart wrote: post #46
crikli wrote: post #4

Off-topic but related: https://scottscheapflights.com is _amazing_. The Premium sub is worth every penny...my wife and I will be doing a ton more overseas travel in 2019 purely because of the deals this site finds.

I got into churning airline miles then manufactured spending (generating spend on credit card to earn miles) and now have over 10 million miles. I also heard one of the biggest groups of manufactured spend are developers within Google. I belong to a private slack with over 80 folks doing this as a hobby so we can do first class/business class international travel and hotel stays for free. If anyone is into it as as w…

Consider me interested as well - email in profile.

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#104

Post by rangersanger »

micahgoulart wrote: post #46
crikli wrote: post #4

Off-topic but related: https://scottscheapflights.com is _amazing_. The Premium sub is worth every penny...my wife and I will be doing a ton more overseas travel in 2019 purely because of the deals this site finds.

I got into churning airline miles then manufactured spending (generating spend on credit card to earn miles) and now have over 10 million miles. I also heard one of the biggest groups of manufactured spend are developers within Google. I belong to a private slack with over 80 folks doing this as a hobby so we can do first class/business class international travel and hotel stays for free. If anyone is into it as as w…

very interested, email in profile.

I miss the good old days when manufactured spend was as easy as ordering 10k in sacajawea coins from the treasury.

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#105

Post by lavezzi »

micahgoulart wrote: post #46
crikli wrote: post #4

Off-topic but related: https://scottscheapflights.com is _amazing_. The Premium sub is worth every penny...my wife and I will be doing a ton more overseas travel in 2019 purely because of the deals this site finds.

I got into churning airline miles then manufactured spending (generating spend on credit card to earn miles) and now have over 10 million miles. I also heard one of the biggest groups of manufactured spend are developers within Google. I belong to a private slack with over 80 folks doing this as a hobby so we can do first class/business class international travel and hotel stays for free. If anyone is into it as as w…

Me too please. Email is in my profile :)

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#106

Post by Galactor963 »

micahgoulart wrote: post #46
crikli wrote: post #4

Off-topic but related: https://scottscheapflights.com is _amazing_. The Premium sub is worth every penny...my wife and I will be doing a ton more overseas travel in 2019 purely because of the deals this site finds.

I got into churning airline miles then manufactured spending (generating spend on credit card to earn miles) and now have over 10 million miles. I also heard one of the biggest groups of manufactured spend are developers within Google. I belong to a private slack with over 80 folks doing this as a hobby so we can do first class/business class international travel and hotel stays for free. If anyone is into it as as w…

This Slack group sound awesome - my email is in my profile. :)

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#107

Post by Robelius »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #101
toast0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many moons ago, I worked in the travel industry. Most airlines aren't running their own technology stack -- they are paying someone else $/search to drive their webpage. In a market of razor thin margins, paying per search for you to crawl their flight catalog is a big problem -- thus the arms race. The only way to win at this is to own the catalog, this is why Google bought ITA. Ryanair is the kind of airline that I…

A market of razor thin margins? I think not. US airlines are swimming in cash 2017: * American Airlines profit: 7.6 Billion USD * United profit: 7.1 Billion USD * Delta Airlines profit: 4.7 Billion USD * Southwest: 2.2 Billion USD

Looking at AA 2017 earnings

Total operating revenues: 42.2B

Net income: 1.90B

For a profit of 4.5%. Where are you getting your numbers from?

https://americanairlines.gcs-web.com/static-files/17cae9f4-5...

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#108

Post by RussianCow »

crazygringo wrote: post #72
kasparsklavins wrote: post #69

Why is there no interface that allows searching for flights without specifying exact dates? All I want to do is fly from A to B to A. Maybe stay a week, maybe two. I'm flexible - it doesnt have to be exactly N days starting on the M'th. Even services that "allegedly" advertise they have that, still require manually clicking every day combination. I'd fly more often if it was easy . The few times I tried, it would be…

Have you seen a site that does that really well, UX-wise? I'd assume it's two reasons: first that it's hard to get the UX right. There are going to wind up being so many combinations of possibilities that I'm not sure how you'd even sort them in a meaningful way. (E.g. it's unlikely price from lowest to highest will be the most meaningful, the lowest price alone might wind up having 100 different date combinations, s…

adioso.com (no longer maintained as far as I can tell, but still online) does a really great job of this, UX-wise. It lets you create searches like "departing anywhere between February 10 and March 20 for about 2 weeks", and allows you to filter destinations by continent/region, which gives you a ton of flexibility. They then allow you to choose a destination (showing what I assume is the lowest price found per destination), and then let you sort the actual flights by cheapest, fastest, and "best" (a combination of price, duration, and number of stops).

I think the computational cost is a far bigger problem for these kinds of services than the UX.

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#109

Post by mvid »

micahgoulart wrote: post #46
crikli wrote: post #4

Off-topic but related: https://scottscheapflights.com is _amazing_. The Premium sub is worth every penny...my wife and I will be doing a ton more overseas travel in 2019 purely because of the deals this site finds.

I got into churning airline miles then manufactured spending (generating spend on credit card to earn miles) and now have over 10 million miles. I also heard one of the biggest groups of manufactured spend are developers within Google. I belong to a private slack with over 80 folks doing this as a hobby so we can do first class/business class international travel and hotel stays for free. If anyone is into it as as w…

Would love to join, Mantas at Vidutis dot com

Re: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights

#110

Post by bogomipz »

toast0 wrote: post #17
jd20 wrote: post #14

Looks cool! The problem of enumerating the best routes between two given airports is indeed an interesting problem. My favorite discussion of the problem is from Carl de Marcken: http://www.ai.mit.edu/courses/6.034f/psets/ps1/airtravel.pdf I've been involved in solving a similar problem, on the award flight search side. There are about 12,000 direct commercial routes offering award redemption, and the airline website…

Many moons ago, I worked in the travel industry. Most airlines aren't running their own technology stack -- they are paying someone else $/search to drive their webpage. In a market of razor thin margins, paying per search for you to crawl their flight catalog is a big problem -- thus the arms race. The only way to win at this is to own the catalog, this is why Google bought ITA. Ryanair is the kind of airline that I…

>"In a market of razor thin margins, paying per search for you to crawl their flight catalog is a big problem ..."

Can you say how access to an airline's flight catalog works and what that business model looks like? Is it pay per search for these third party search engines?

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