
Google Flight Search - revorad
http://www.google.com/flights/
======
kiwidrew
It’s rather powerful: as long as the origin airport is one of those shown on
the map, and the destination airport is reachable via a domestic flight on one
of the major airlines (AA, AS, B6, CO, DL, F9, UA, US), the search results
come back instantaneously. Multiple origins and destinations (up to five of
each) are supported as well:

[http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LAX,SFO,SEA,LAS,DEN;...](http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LAX,SFO,SEA,LAS,DEN;t=ORD,BOS,MIA,ATL,CLT;d=2011-10-10;r=2011-10-14;mp=1300;md=690)

And the results _still_ come back immediately! Including the three-month chart
of prices. This leads me to believe that Google/ITA has precomputed all of
these results, and is simply serving these results out of a cache of some
sort. That would explain why they are only offering a limited set of origin
airports at this time: it probably takes an incredible amount of computing
power and storage space to pre-calculate all of the possible results.

Colour me impressed.

~~~
stingraycharles
Interesting. That makes me wonder: would that really be the optimal approach?
Google is able to return search results for previously unsearched queries
nearly instantaneously too, so I'm wondering whether it's really a cache
that's serving those queries. Would some sort of graph-based index be possible
in this situation?

~~~
gyardley
Here's the classic presentation people usually refer to when talking about
flight pricing complexity.

[http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-
com...](http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-
complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf)

I'd love to know how Google's doing it - it's a really hard problem.

~~~
objclxt
What's interesting is that you linked to an ITA Software presentation, and
Google _own_ ITA Software. So it's almost certain that some of the people who
put that document together worked on this pre-computed solution.

------
cletus
Internally, this has been around for a little while (disclaimer: I work for
Google but not on anything related to this).

What continues to impress me about Google is:

1\. Just how quickly this was built (really, it was quick); and

2\. Google wants you to use our services because they're compelling not
because we don't give you any other choice (ie "Don't be evil").

Sure there are limits to what it currently does but I think you'll see it
rapidly iterate.

~~~
bradleyland
Let's be honest. Google wants us to use their services because the better they
understand us, the better they can advertise to us. That's the profit model at
Google. I don't begrudge them for it either. You've got to turn a profit if
you want to keep the lights on.

I don't mean any offense, but the "Don't be evil" mantra is growing a bit
tired. Evil is a strong word, and "not being evil" is a pretty low bar, IMO.

~~~
breck
I strongly disagree. Google wants us to use its services because at its core
is a bunch of engineers that simply want to make the world better.

~~~
throwaway32
the first motivation of any for profit corporation, especially one as large
and successful as Google, is profit. That is their entire reason for
existence, don't fool yourself into believing otherwise.

~~~
haberman
People like to say this, maybe believing it fulfills some deep-seated need for
cynicism, or makes the speaker feel wise and worldly. But what is your actual
argument in support of this? Just saying it does not make it true.

If profit is the only motivation for decisions at Google, why did it pull out
of China? I'm sure you're cynical and wise about that too, but here's what I
can tell you. I saw Sergey up on stage saying the same things he said in this
interview ([http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/interview-sergey-
br...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/interview-sergey-brin-on-
googles-china-gambit/)) and he got fiery and emotional about it. This is a guy
who grew up in the Soviet Union until he was 6 and for him it is a very
personal and ideological issue.

This corporations-as-profit-seeking-automata meme is old and tired. At the end
of the day it's people who make decisions, and just as in every aspect of life
people can have complex motivations for the decisions that they make.

~~~
throwaway32
I never said profit was their only motivation, but it is the reason they are a
corporation, and not a charity.

I refer you to the comment above by jey

    
    
      What Google "wants" as an entity is different from what the individual 
      component humans want.
    

Although Sergey is an obviously important influence at Google, he is not
Google.

~~~
haberman
You said profit was the "first" motivation. You haven't even justified that.
Saying that a corporation has to at least break even to avoid being a charity
is a far cry from your previous grandstanding. Just because a corporation has
to make money doesn't mean that money is the "first" motivation for every
decision. It doesn't explain why Google (not Sergey, Google) pulled out of
China.

~~~
timr
Um...they chose to go into China in the first place, and they didn't do it for
charity work. A lot of people thought that was pretty evil.

In any case, the parent doesn't have to justify anything, because he's stating
a relatively well-known argument: in the US, there's an obligation for
corporate executives to maximize shareholder value. This point is debated
([http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-
law/corp...](http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-
law/corporate-law/LAW_COR_CRL/834796-1078684)), but not to the extent that
you're claiming.

------
hugh3
That really is good. Hipmunk is still better if you know what days you want to
fly, but this is great if you haven't yet decided precisely when, or precisely
where, you want to go.

A pity it only works within the US so far, but I'm sure they'll add
international destinations eventually.

Also a shame that Southwest still won't cooperate with any of these guys. I
guess it's a rational decision on their part: be cheapest _most_ of the time
and hope that people won't bother to compare your fares to others.

~~~
marquis
Yes, the first site that has JetBlue and SouthWest comparisons with the major
airlines will have my traffic. I usually prefer to travel on price when it's
not business so I love how Google has made this clear - that's my core problem
with Hipmunk and I'm not sure why they don't just tell you the cheapest days
to fly, like Kayak at least tries to. I also like how <http://skyscanner.com>
does it.

~~~
goldfish
We (Hipmunk) have Jetblue, and so does Kayak and Google. We also let you
figure out the cheapest days to fly: just click "I'm flexible."

~~~
hugh3
Good to hear.

You also have one killer competitive advantage: an adorable logo.

------
JoshTriplett
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.

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

~~~
kn0thing
I hope she'd like the chipmunk, too!

------
DevX101
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 cannibalizing
if they push this too hard.

~~~
John212
> If your startup is involved with search aimed at the consumer market, watch
> out...Google is coming.

Possibly... However sites like hipmunk will be used as a comparison in so many
press articles and blog posts when google starts pushing this.

Many start ups have won against google. Google Notepad & Evernote, Google Wave
& Twitter, Google Ride Finder & Uber etc...

.. but I still wouldn't want to be in this space right now.

~~~
frankiewarren
Not entirely sure how you're equating Google Wave and Twitter.

~~~
frankiewarren
I think Jaiku is the more apt comparison, for what it's worth.

------
PedroCandeias
Well, it was a matter of time, wasn't it? For now it's a bit too fiddly when
compared to the likes of Hipmunk, save for the booking process which is quite
streamlined. And the search itself, which is blazing fast. On second thought,
this is really not a bad effort. I can see it gaining huge traction in no
time.

------
samstokes
The (well-hidden) "Limits" widget is a very cool bit of visual / visceral UI
design. Click the "scatter graph" button next to the Duration field and you
get a scatter plot of duration against price for all the flights - which is
useful data in itself - then you can drag a boundary around to set the maximum
duration or price.

------
samstave
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 - Nome Alaska once a month,
Soon it will be Dallas once a month - and various places in the bay area.

If I can setup my "Visit LAX trip" with all my details and know that a car was
waiting for me when I got to LAX to take me to my office/hotel and I didnt
have to do anything other than click "Re-book LAX" that would save me so much
time and hassle.

I would setup my preferred airlines, times and seats (Virgin America etc...)

~~~
bengl3rt
May I ask what you do, and how I might get into doing it? I am craving a job
with > 0 travel...

~~~
samstave
I am a healthcare consultant. I consult on new hospital builds and ensuring
the organizations are prepared to get licensed and then move in.

------
awj
To me, that map seems like a very confusing bit of UI. The cities themselves
are _really_ tiny interaction points, I'm a relatively experienced FPS gamer
and hitting those points accurately involves more fumbling than it should. You
cannot drag departure/arrival pins. Streetview kind of taught me that this
should be a mechanism for manipulating this sort of location reference.

The big one, though, is that layovers are not reflected on the map. Granted,
it may push me slightly towards more expensive flights, but I would appreciate
the ability to see the grid of ugliness and waiting I'm buying into to get
that super cheap ticket.

I don't think that map as it is now is worth the screen real estate.

~~~
rhygar
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 rows of
return flights drop down below that. The only visual distinction between these
specific sub-rows and the other departing flights below is a thin blue/gray
border on the sides.

Going from A to B is called an "Outbound flight", while going from B to A is
called a "Return flight". Copy is very important in UI design. It should be
outbound/inbound or depart/return, not some mix of different terminology.

Durations are always "-- Xh -->". What is the point of the arrow if it is
always pointing to the right? Why is the duration a lighter shade than the
rest of the text?

The left column is a Gawker/Gizmodo style static column that locks in place
when scrolling down. The Google search results page doesn't do that.

These are basics, and a company the size of Google with as many employees as
it has should be able to get these things right.

~~~
waqf
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 in LAX.

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

~~~
whatusername
I went to go and prove you wrong (I personally use outbound/return).

But webjet (Departing/Returning) and skyscanner (Depart/Return) seem to back
you up.

------
smackfu
"Sorry, locations outside the U.S. are currently not supported." Are you
kidding me?

~~~
zyb09
as usual

------
amirmc
Just for some context, here's the previous HN discussion when Google announced
their acquisition of ITA in July 2010.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1479107>

------
toot
It's quite scary that a company like Google can come along and shit in a
startup's cereal practically overnight.

I know we were all rooting for The 'Munk, but it seems that Google's use of
Price x Duration matrix effectively steals the thunder from Hipmunk's agony
filter.

I mean, it's not as if Google needs the affiliate revenue, and I bet the
Hipmunk guys would have preferred it had Google decided to "organise the
world's information" through an acquisition. I think I'd need a good cry if
this happened to me :(

~~~
goldfish
No tears over here! We've known this was coming for almost a year—Google
announced their ITA acquisition before we even launched. We've also been
preparing some sweet responses :)

~~~
revorad
Attaboy! Still rooting for you guys. You should add gigaballs of steel to the
mascot.

------
geuis
General question here. Almost all flight search sites default the search dates
to about 3 weeks out. Now, I find this annoying but I'm wondering if its done
because there is statistical evidence that most customers search in that range
of time, or rather if it's just what someone thought would be a good idea by
"following their intuition".

~~~
geuis
Well this is some interesting research. Out of my off-hand and roughly
scientific research, my statement of "almost all" was quite off.

I found that all of the major carrier websites I could remember off the top of
my head did not employ the date-ahead practice.

Delta - no US Airways - no Southwest - no Virgin America - no Continental - no

I followed that by a Google search for "flight search" and checked the sites
that came up in roughly the 1st and 2nd pages. Where I put "yes" and the date
range, this date range was pre-populated.

Based on Google for "flight search" Priceline - no Travelocity - no Kayak -
yes 9/27/11-10/4/11 Expedia - no Cheapflights - no Flightsearch.com - yes
9/27/11-10/4/11 Tripadvisor - yes 9/27/11-10/4/11 Farebuzz.com - yes
9/27/11-10/4/11 <http://www.skyscanner.com/> \- yes 9/27/11-10/4/11

Finally, I checked YC's own Hipmunk, and they do not do it either.

Hipmunk - no

So my original statement was at least partly false. It doesn't seem like
"almost all" after all. And the ones that I could find doing the date-ahead
practice all had identical dates. I suspect all of them use the same backend
search product.

I don't care enough at this point anymore to follow up on this anymore, so
I'll leave it at that.

~~~
bonamy
I cannot vouch for the other sites, but at Skyscanner we looked at the
aggregated search history (12 million users a month) to make a best guess at
the default dates to set.Interestingly the defaults we use are different for
the mobile platforms. (We use our own backend technology)

~~~
LokiSnake
Can you provide a little more detail on this? What percentage of users
actually use the defaults (for both start and end date), and how many change
it anyways?

Have you thought about doing some A/B testing on providing a default and not?

------
andrewtbham
Bad news for hipmunk? Especially since google acquired ITA.

~~~
andrewtbham
The really bad news for hipmunk will be when google integrates it into their
search results.

~~~
hugh3
What do you mean by "integrates it into their search results"?

Hipmunk's killer feature is the ability to easily visualize the flight in
terms of the time you leave, the time you arrive and the time spent at various
intermediate locations. It becomes more useful when there are no nonstop
flights. Google is taking a different approach with their UI, which is fine.

In terms of whether I'd use google or hipmunk to search for flights in the
future, I'd say that it depends on what my priorities are for that particular
flight.

~~~
andrewtbham
by "integrate into their search results" i mean.. if you search google for
"sfo lax" and it brins up this new Google Flight page with their organic
results.

~~~
hugh3
Ah, I see. Sorry, the ambiguous "it" made me think "it" was hipmunk. Somehow.

------
NuecadFoi
Game over.

Disclaimer: This is a throwaway account. I'm a person who has had a travel
startup. I've decided to halt, once Google has finally acquired ITA Software.

Travel is one of the world's largest industries (~5th), and online sales are
its significant part (~10-30%, depending on the market), growing strongly.
Online travel agencies (OTA) are among the few companies on web that get real
money (~$150 per sale) from customers (it is relatively easy to make serious
revenue).

Online travel sales consist mostly of flight bookings, and hotel reservations.

On these markets, there are roughly three categories of players. Airlines and
hotels _provide_ the inventory, that is flights and hotel rooms. Computer
reservations systems (GDS) _manage_ the inventory. Online travel agencies
_sell_ the inventory.

Specifically, there are thousands of airlines and hotels (e.g. Hyatt,
Lufthansa). However, there are only three major GDS operators in the US and
Europe (i.e. Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport), as well as only few big OTAs
(i.e. Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, Hotels.com, and Opodo).

Few decades ago, before Internet, airlines and hotels were unable to sell
inventory on their own. It definitely takes more time to set up an office than
a connection between two airports. Thus, it made sense to use travel agencies
for this purpose.

Over time, airlines and hotels became also unable to manage their inventory.
Synchronization of reservations between thousands of third parties is a non-
trivial task, not a core competency of involved companies. Thus, it made sense
to use a middle man.

That's what GDS systems do. They manage inventory, what includes reservations
(PNR), its availability, prices, and exchanging data with others. As far as I
know, right now, airlines and hotels pay them for the service, and for each
reservation made (~few bucks).

Internet has complicated things a bit. Travel agencies are no longer so vital,
as both airlines and hotels are able (at least, they think so) to sell the
inventory on their own. Unfortunately, they were too slow again, and OTAs has
emerged meanwhile (Expedia), giving the second youth to GDS companies.

The ecosystem is like an old marriage couple, although a threesome. Each party
hat hates each other, but there's no other way around. To oversimplify a bit,
OTAs have _customers_ (traffic), GDS systems _manage_ the inventory (with
airlines, hotels, and OTAs) and both airlines and hotels _provide_ the
inventory, after all.

From time to time there's an affair. Low-cost airlines try to distrupt the
market by selling tickets so cheaply partially because they sell them
directly. Major OTAs, like Expedia, partially grow to a GDS category. Some
airlines or hotel chains withdraw from GDS systems, and return eventually with
negiotiated better fees. However, it's mostly business as usual.

Today, if you want to start an online travel agency you have to speak with a
GDS company. Depending on your market, it might be Amadeus, Sabre or
Travelport. After a long selling process, you get access to the system, and
you can start selling the reservations.

What's important, though, nearly all systems used today were created a decade,
or two, ago. As core competency of GDS companies is in selling, then, as far
as I know, they outsource the software evelopment to third parties, and it's
not that easy to innovate on a critical part of the world's infrastructure.

What you end up with, then, is an access to an undocumented API that lets you
to search, and manage your reservations. Insiders are used to the quirks, like
waiting few seconds until you get the response, random issues, or hinting the
system so you get a better response than others. Importantly, you're actively
discoured to cache the data, as the prices change rather frequently.

The critical part here is search. It's a mathematically non-trivial problem to
very quickly find rates within thousands of connections, definitely beyond
technical know-how of GDS operators, airlines and hotels. ITA Software has
managed to get access to the inventory and while, as far as I know, they do
not sell resevations, they've created a much better (faster) search.

Meanwhile, few years ago, metasearches (e.g. Kayak, Hipmunk) emerged. Smart
folks have realized that the competition is on price, customers look for a
single place to compare prices, and operate under assumption that what really
counts is traffic. From both customers and metasearch perspective, it does not
make that big difference where do they buy the reservation from, an OTA or
directly from an airline.

So, here we are today.

As a beggining travel agency, you likely have to pay annually for access, and
for each request made, especially if you exceed the quota negotiated with the
GDS company. Few years ago you were able to make profit by incurring a
transaction fee to each ticket sold, but now transaction fees are nearly non-
existent, and it's more frequent to rely on provisions from GDS companies,
and, sometimes, airlines.

What's your competetive advantage? Basically, you cannot provide much better
product than your competitors, as everyone relies on the similar legacy GDS
system that returns the flight details rather slowly. Most of the time, only
choices are either to show the results a bit differently, or bet on more
trustful brand.

The focus is on efficiency. Profit per ticket is so slim, so cost of customers
acquisitions is what really matters. OTAs, metasearches and, increasingly,
airlines, together with hotels, master SEM, SEO, and other forms of
advertisement (newsletters, banners). They live and die by the numbers. If
you've figured out how to scalably make $1 more profit on each reservation
made, you're covered for some time. The novel methods are, obviously,
eventually realized by others, too.

In this race to the bottom there's one clear winner. Google's AdWords is a
major source of traffic for all parties, and I bet that they already make the
biggest profit off each reservation made. Once Google has acquired ITA
Software, they now have both traffic and the inventory.

~~~
danssig
This is one of the reasons I hate Google. I love to see normal people like me
go make a startup and become successful. Escaping their corporate bonds. With
companies like Google around who can use ad income to supplement dabbling in
all sorts of things they can really weaken that option. And what's Google
going to do with this? Add a couple percent on their revenue sheets? Great.

~~~
NolF
And make my and million's of other live's much better. It takes a mammoth to
disrupt such a consolidated (and crappy) industry.

~~~
danssig
It does not take a mammoth anymore. A small group with a big idea can change
the world these days. We don't need Google.

~~~
professorsabena
Actually yes and no.

True you dont need Google. We would all love their traffic but having played
with the tool for the past 24 hours. I have noticed the changes in inventory
state and they are doing exactly what we could have expected them to do.

Sadly that is also the downside - they did exactly what we expected them to
do. A mediocre job that is fast and of course "good enough".

A small team can (and has) replicated what Google has done. In fact there are
many of them. But Google does not provide Trust and in my reasonably jaundiced
view - this is another rearranging of the deck chairs.

The issues are now out in the open. The core infrastructure of search is
REALLY hard if you work on the same premise as Google. If you change the
basics then there is a different answer.

Will the basics change? I believe the answer has to be yes because otherwise
the original premise of the first poster must logically be correct.

I believe not. I am working specifically to change that - if you are
interested - then ping me.

------
adaml_623
My First Impression:

No international flights yet: Fail but not surprising

That's okay I want to fly from NY to Vegas next year. No flights for April
2012: Fail that was not expected.

I don't really understand why Google launches stuff like this when it has a
lovely user interface but is a bit halfbaked in terms of the data that they've
put in.

I guess I'll go back in a years time when they remind me about it.

~~~
modeless
Many airlines don't allow you to book tickets more than 6 months in advance at
their own websites. I don't think it's surprising that Google didn't
prioritize 6+ month advance ticket purchases.

------
angus77
_We have detected that you are using an unsupported web browser. We support
Firefox 3.5 or later, Chrome, Safari 4 or later, or Internet Explorer 8 or
later._

?!? I'm using the Android browser!

------
markmccraw
If I were expedia, orbitz, priceline, travelocity, kayak, hipmunk. etc. I'd be
very very afraid. Sure, google won't actually do the sales, but they are
linking direct to airline websites for now. Also this doesn't exist for
hotels. Yet. The odds that in 1 year that any of those sites have a better UI
or superior search capabilities than Google is low. So, what will they bring
to the table?

Also, what's up with all these people saying that it's so limited because it
doesn't do international and such. It seems very obvious that this thing will
get better and better and like others have said, eventually end up on top of
the search page. This is assuming it gains traction quickly and doesn't get
nuked.

------
stevenp
Honestly, the lack of a good API by any provider is one of the biggest
barriers to entry in this space. I wonder if the Hipmunk guys might release
one? I'd be _thrilled_ to send affiliate traffic to the first company that
makes good on this.

------
splish
Unless I'm missing something fairly obvious, they might have missed something
pretty big - is there any way to book a one way flight?

~~~
boyd
Agreed -- couldn't find it in the first 30 seconds, which is sort of a red
flag...

------
esutton
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 low layover and was significantly cheaper
than the published routes.

The problem is that as this expands to more cities and takes more stops, you
end up hitting an NP problem.

~~~
kiwidrew
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 which excludes misconnections caused by
an airline's late arrival.

There are occasions when this strategy produces good results, however: last
year I needed a last-minute one way flight from a small southeastern city (TYS
/ Knoxville) to San Francisco, and the fares were extremely high ($800+). But
flights to Orlando were very cheap due to competition from low-cost leisure
carriers, and the last-minute fares from Orlando (MCO) to San Francisco were
quite reasonable. I booked, on a single ticket and flying on a single airline
the entire way, TYS-IAD-MCO-IAD-DEN-SFO. This gave me a TYS-MCO fare plus an
MCO-SFO fare, which was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the more direct TYS-
DEN-SFO. At the time, saving money was a lot more important than getting to
San Francisco a couple of hours earlier. A cunning plan that cannot fail!

Except that I missed my first flight of the morning due to an overnight road
closure that blocked my only way of leaving the house. By the time that I got
to the airport, my originally booked flight had already left and I was faced
with a very long wait for the next flight to IAD, which virtually guaranteed I
wouldn't even make it to San Francisco that day. It was only through a
combination of charisma and blind luck that I managed to convince the airline
to reroute me direct through Denver, which is completely against company
policy. They only charged me the $50 same-day standby fee.

Needless to say, I would never sell that sort of a ticket to the general
public. Far too many different ways in which things could go horribly wrong.
It's also likely that the airlines would promptly revoke your ticketing
privileges with them were they to discover you were routinely issuing these
sorts of tickets.

~~~
esutton
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

~~~
jser
The market for building complicated routings is very small -- typically only
mile/segment runners. ITA's backend is already used by that community for
this, but not sure why the public would be interested. Each segment adds
additional landing fees and taxes, making it more expensive, unless you're
exploiting a rare hub/partner mistake fare.

------
martingordon
Looks nice and it has great potential, especially since it isn't cluttered
with links to Expedia/Priceline like the others are.

That said, I can't really use it until it supports multiple destinations/open
jaw in a single search.

------
tamersalama
This is just beautiful. Data matrix is innovative, UI is out of the way, slick
and to the point interface, and it even takes you to the correct 3rd party
booking pages.

I can't wait till this is implemented in Canada.

Kayak beware!

~~~
jonjamz
> Kayak beware!

This definitely looks better than Kayak. ^_^

------
tonfa
I love the scatter plot graph (with duration/price), it is so geeky :)

------
pumainmotion
As is evident from some of the comments here, the map and the search bar on
top are totally extraneous to the basic task that the user wishes to perform.

The absolute barebones should be shown: Starting location, Destination, Dates.
And then maybe a less noisy version of the price-points plot from which one
can just drag and drop certain options into a bucket for comparison.

The fact that so much scrolling _needs_ to be done to even get a basic
understanding of the results means this _needs_ to be reworked.

------
stevoski
I try to get a flight from Frankfurt - the 9th busiest airport in the world. -
and I get "Unavailable".

Post this again when I can actually use it.

~~~
nlh
When you search for a destination airport outside of the US, you get a very
clear message:

"Sorry, locations outside the U.S. are currently not supported."

They're taking the release-early-iterate-often approach to this new service,
which means that they're not going to make everyone happy immediately.

Rather than dismiss this new service just because it doesn't fit your specific
use case right now, think about this from a different (i.e. hacker)
perspective -- this is a cool new service that will obviously become even
cooler as it gets more advanced.

~~~
stevoski
I agree totally...just pointing out that the site is useless to us living
outside of the USA. Hard to get excited about something that is, from a
European resident's perspective, useless.

------
faulkner
Decent initial release, but I wish the search was more flexible.

My common use case is "I will spend $X to go anywhere for under Y days any
time in the future" and I haven't found a service that makes this easy.

Kayak's "explore" page is the closest I've found, but they rarely have the
cheapest flights listed and have no way to set duration. Has anyone found a
better solution?

~~~
rebelnz
These guys almost fulfil that requirement - I use their service pretty
regularly. <http://adioso.com/>

------
tedkalaw
Is there anyway to do one-way flights? I really like it so far but cannot for
the life of me figure out if one-way is possible.

~~~
billboebel
I can't find it either. I would have actually used it today since I found it
right as I was about to search for a flight on Kayak... but w/o one-way I
can't use it.

------
pmorici
I don't understand why anyone would use a federated flight search when looking
for a domestic flight in the US. None of the major airlines come close to
Southwest in terms of price or hassle free travel and none of the flight
search engines include price information for Southwest.

~~~
T-hawk
Perhaps for the still-common case of flying to an airport where Southwest
doesn't go? Southwest gets to be cheap in significant part by only flying
routes with enough demand to fill a 737.

And on rare occasions another airline does beat Southwest's price. Sometimes I
see flights in and out of JFK turn up cheaper on Delta.

------
rickdale
When are people going to stop solving this problem and start building super
sonic airplanes like the concord? The airline industry moves backwards in
technology and trying to build a flight search engine to wrap around it is
really a band-aid to the real situation. If I could get to Vegas in half the
time, or even a quarter of the time (currently takes 4 hours, could take 1 in
supersonic jet) I would pay at least double price for a ticket, and I wouldnt
even need a seat.

My point is if you fly coach especially with Delta they treat you like a slave
and stuff you with almost zero space to move (I am american, but not obese
(5'9, 200lb). Forget flight search engines I can find a flight, make a me a
faster more tolerable flight, you are friggin GOOGLE!

~~~
usaar333
Drag (and hence power required) is roughly proportional to the square of the
velocity. You want to go twice as fast? You better be willing to pay (at
least) 4x the ticket price. And since most people want cheaper tickets over
flight time, you'll have to pay even more to compensate for the lack of
economies of scale.

Computer efficiency still is rapidly moving up. Airplane efficiency is near
its limits.

------
dhruvbird
This had to happen sooner than later after the ITA aquisition. I wonder why it
took them so long.

------
antimora
Is it me, or that app is super fast?

~~~
smackfu
It probably is caching data from other people's searches, similar to what
Kayak does. This is cool right up until you try to actually book a flight and
it sells out or goes up in price dramatically.

~~~
laconian
Wait, is this actually the case with the Google product?

------
jnw2
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
Newark<->Philadelphia, 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.)

------
0x12
It's only a problem for hipmunk as long as google doesn't 'retire' the
project.

Give it 6 months or so.

------
skylar
We built this at Yahoo! in summer 2007 after the FareChase acquisition. Took
about a week or so to prototype, and a couple months to offer various
filter/search criteria and prepare for launch. With access the good flight
data APIs it's a pretty simple app. Of course for us it was never allowed to
launch.

Glad to see Google was finally able to push something like this. Main feature
missing that Y! Faremaps had is the ability to specify a span of time in which
you wanted to travel and the cheapest trips in that timeframe were shown.
Also, you could search "weekends only" in that timeframe.

------
revorad
In true Google style, they are focusing on speed, with a minimal UI.

~~~
r00fus
Unexpected was the minimal data part... They have a short look-ahead and don't
work with any international destinations.

The folks who are most interested in this app are the ones who are most likely
interested in the above two points.

------
badclient
When I want to do a flight search, I don't usually think of a map.

------
eslaught
I wonder if they allowed ITA to keep writing in Common Lisp...

~~~
raldi
"Knowledge of LISP" is still showing up on job postings:

[http://www.google.com/jobs/itasoftware/eng/ita-software-
soft...](http://www.google.com/jobs/itasoftware/eng/ita-software-software-
engineer-data-and-reporting-cambridge-ita/index.html)

------
JohannTh
I work for Dohop (www.dohop.com), a direct competitor of Google's new flight
thing. We have been worried about Google's entrance into the field for a
while, but after today we are breathing easier.

No international? No one-way? I know Google will change this, but why put out
such a wildly underwhelming product?

And finally, since they are basing the whole thing on ITA anyway, we don't
expect them to do anything Kayak isn't already doing.

------
drallison
Wow ... but then I am not really sure it meets my needs. For one thing, it
does not recognize may local airport and keeps wanting me to fly out of
another airport a good 4 hour drive away! And while it is good at displaying
cost differentials for different destinations it does not seem to do as well
for the same destination at different times with different carriers. Still, it
is interesting.

------
kin
My eyes dilated when using the auto price feature. Also the speed and ease of
adjusting the dates by a day is impressive.

------
xedarius
Please build this in Europe, searching for flights is so painful. I hope
you're looking at this web site Expedia!

------
frankiewarren
This makes a ton of sense to me. Users already trust Google with search and
connecting people with airlines has baked-in revenue. This also has tremendous
advertising potential. Imagine if local restaurants could target ads at people
who will be traveling to the area in the next three months.

------
jeffem
They must be accessing prior flight search history in some way or they made a
really lucky guess with their default selections.

I've recently searched for flights on Expedia and Southwest (I don't think
I've visited anywhere else). Google already had those same dates and cities
selected by default.

------
iradik
I think they will integrate this with google maps and give around the world
directions. Pretty cool.

------
kellysutton
"5 unknown price"

Looks like it needs another QA pass.

~~~
mlinsey
Were those Southwest flights? I think SWA doesn't let any of the aggregators
display prices for their flights - I was pleasantly surprised that I saw
Southwest flights at all.

~~~
kellysutton
I was pointing out the obvious typo. It should read "5 unknown prices."

------
littlegiantcap
Interesting, I like the simple layout, but it would be nice to have a price
comparison of a few days in each direction like some sites have (I'm thinking
Virgin Atlantic) so you can save some money by leaving a day early or a day
late. Overall though bravo.

~~~
hugh3
Once you've done your search, click on the little calendar icon, and it gives
you a lot of information about prices on other days.

~~~
littlegiantcap
Ah, missed it. Thanks.

------
joeyj01
It is amazing! I hope outside U.S service will come soon and calculate flights
globally.

------
emehrkay
Interface was confusing at first: you click the "x from $xxx" then you choose
a return flight by clicking the sub="x from $xxx" with the time you'd like to
return. Then you can book.

This is cool though

------
rufo
Completely useless for me. Doesn't find a single flight out of ROC.

------
eren-tantekin
Sorry, locations outside the U.S. are currently not supported :/

------
mcdowall
I had always imagined they would try to dabble in flight search but always
assumed the sheer volume of their travel ppc clients would restrict it. Big
revenue gamble.

------
27182818284
Faster than Hipmunk, but can't do international flights yet.

------
fmavituna
Great implementation. Recently I've been playing with skyscanner and HipMunk.
This will definitely replace them for me when international support arrives.

------
kingkilr
Very nice, my only complaint is they don't have Southwest pricing. No one else
does either, so Southwest continues to bring me to their site :)

~~~
zaggggg
In addition, <http://getawayfinder.southwest.com/> has been around for some
time already.

------
supahfly_remix
I don't see any Southwest or JetBlue airlines flights listed. Both usually
have very competitive pricing on some routes.

------
RossM
Just the other day I was wondering "why isn't there a flight option in Maps?",
well here you go then, there soon will be.

------
retrofit_brain
Wow what a relief to see they are dogfooding. This is built on GWT and the
performance is kick ass.

------
iskander
Any idea when they expand beyond the US?

------
marcamillion
This is one of those late nights at Hipmunk.

Good luck guys!

------
mahmud
U.S. only.

------
ofca
hipmunk, hold on to your 'nackers :)

------
reagan83
Jesus, this amazing.

------
mindstab
ha a flight search engine that only does flights inside the US? cute, but of
limited use. I won't hold my breath just yet.

