

Ask HN: How would you monetize the domain ismyflightdelayed.com? - areohbe

I waste a ton of my time messing around on aviation tracking websites. It's pretty crazy to monitor flight patters over the course of a day, especially for companies like FedEx.<p>I registered ismyflightdelayed.com for fun to mess around with some of the Flight Aware API's. I haven't given much thought on potential monetization (outside of ads) so I thought I would solicit feedback from HN.
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asimjalis
Here are some ideas.

1\. With a free account they get an email. If they upgrade to paid they get a
text message (you can use Twilio).

2\. You can partner with area hotels and limo companies. If the flight is
delayed the email suggests hotels they can stay at or cabs they can take.

3\. There are two parties involved: the person who is flying and the people
who are expecting him/her. Target them separately. The person who is flying
might be interested in letting his relatives or friends know that he/she will
be late so that they don’t have to rush to the airport to pick him up. So to
auto-notify other people you could charge a small fee.

4\. Offer a subscription based service for people who fly frequently. This way
their family always knows if they are running late.

5\. Gamify it. When a flight is delayed people guess how long the delay is.
Sell the guesses as options that are traded on a free-market (for points not
real money). Use crowdsourcing to predict when the flight will actually
arrive.

6\. Calculate statistics. How often is a specific airline late? How often is a
specific airline late to a specific airport on a specific flight? There might
be other factors. Keep running scores on airlines. Rank them. People buying
tickets could use the list to decide which flight to take.

7\. Turn the list from #6 into a press release. Newspapers might run with it.
Or it could make for a good blog post. Publicize it on HN. Create marketing
buzz for your website cheaply this way.

~~~
caw
Regarding the email - most carriers offer email to SMS gateways. When I travel
I always put in (phone number)@txt.att.net or whatever it is to receive
"emails" about flight changes.

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codegeek
As an airline customer, I can always go to their website and check flight
status. Sometimes, they even send u msg about flight delays over SMS/Email.
This is not always consistent though. May be you can do the following:

\- Create a messaging API to inform passengers with realtime msg. Obviously,
you should be able to send mass emails/SMSs with proper custom msg about
flight info.

\- Partner with airline companies who could pay for this

\- If someone buys an airline ticket, the airline usually gets a contact
phone/email.

\- If the flight is getting delayed, automatically send this information to
the customer for that airline through SMS,Email etc as real time as possible.
Airline will use your infrastructure to mass email the users.

Airline could pay you for the service/API you provide. I doubt this could be
something that a consumer will pay for.

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asimjalis
Several people are saying that this is already a free service from airlines
and so this won’t work. Not quite.

1\. Airlines tend to estimate delays optimistically. They don’t want to look
bad. I’d rather rely on a third-party.

2\. Airlines offer very bland services. This service could offer a better
experience. For example, will airlines tweet my delay? Or send me a Facebook
update? Or text me? Or call me? There might be useful options here that
airlines are not providing.

3\. Airlines might not notify my friends and family. Generally, notifying me
is less important than notifying them. If I get notified my flight is delayed
but I am in the air and have no internet then the notification is pointless.
This service could notify other people that I add to my flight’s notification
list.

The fact that the airlines provide this service is not a sign that this won’t
work—rather it’s a sign that this is something valuable. You can use the
airlines’ service as a starting point and then build this into something a lot
better.

~~~
asimjalis
Also not all airlines might provide it. What if I am flying on no-name carrier
that doesn’t provide this service?

Plus the service is a useful record of all my flights. This record might be
useful for tax purposes. I know for immigration paperwork sometimes they ask
you how many days you have been out of the country. This service could easily
provide this data to you.

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manglav
ask them to register their flight and contact info (twitter, fb email, phone).
You monitor their flight for them, if anything is wrong, you tell them with
Twilio/twitter/fb, and also send them an ad.

Considering it's already a free service from carriers, I don't think you'll be
able to do any sign ups.

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bbissoon
If you're checking a flight to see if it's delayed and you're not already at
the airport - you're already late.

~~~
codegeek
Not necessarily. This other day we had a snow storm predicted for evening and
a friend wanted to check the status (delayed/cancelled) BEFORE even thinking
of going to the airport.

