

Kayak Explore - see where you can go for how much - shawndumas
http://www.kayak.com/explore/?airport=YYC#/YYC?a=any&d=any&fb=290,2000&l=any&ll=1.58183,-0.175781&ns=n&s=0&t=0,100&z=3

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paulirish
My seemingly underserved usecase for these sorts of tools is:

I want to go somewhere this weekend or next weekend. I don't know where, but
I'm ready to get out of Dodge. Show me some cities for these weekends with how
much it'll cost to get there.

~~~
sp_
My use case is "When is it the cheapest to get me out of here?". I can take
vacation days at pretty much every date so I do not really care when I go on
vacation. The destination does no really matter to me either.

Unfortunately, I found Kayak Explorer does not work for this as it does not
allow me to see flights at a day for day granularity. <http://www.adioso.com>
does a much better job. I can just search for stuff like "SEA to anywhere" and
it will show me what I want.

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peng
It's a great concept, but Explore doesn't have enough data--rather, cheap
tickets--to be actually useful. If you don't mind doing multiple searches,
<http://matrix.itasoftware.com> is much better at finding deals.

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mildweed
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1421381>

~~~
izendejas
Goes to show, Kayak should have this easily accessible from their front page.

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spaghetti
Really cool display. Reminds me of <http://www.padmapper.com>. Would be really
nice IMO if the various "price tags" or indicators were colored according to
price... so expensive flights were colored red, cheap flights were colored
blue etc.

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vtrac
Skyscanner.com has been doing this for a few years for european flights. It
looks like they've expanded into the US and have also de-centralized this
feature of their website:
[http://www.skyscanner.com/news/articles/2010/06/006690-searc...](http://www.skyscanner.com/news/articles/2010/06/006690-search-
tips-and-tools---everywhere.html)

When I lived in Germany, I used to plug in a month, see the cheapest flights,
and just go somewhere for the weekend.

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samratjp
Adioso.com is so much better suited for this kind of stuff.

~~~
hasenj
adioso asks you to fill a form* and press a button.

kayak just shows you the map.

* even though that form is really simple and pretty, it's still a mental speedbump

The best interface is no interface.

~~~
samratjp
They have an impressive NLP search powered by a crazy backend, that map will
be pretty trivial for Adioso to build I'm sure :-)

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DanI-S
Awesome idea. But anyone know why flying around the US is so much more
expensive than flying around Europe? Flights out of LAX start at $80, and
you'll barely get past Colorado until around $200. From London, they start
from $30 and you can get anywhere in Europe for _under_ $200.

I really should've made the most of it while I lived 'across the pond'.

~~~
WALoeIII
Because the US is big and fuel is expensive.

LA -> Denver is 837 miles.
([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+los+angel...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+los+angeles+to+denver))

London -> Rome is 892 miles.
([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+london+to...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+london+to+rome))

LA -> NYC is 2,462 miles.
([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+los+angel...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+los+angeles+to+new+york+city))

You can fly the longest flight I can think of in Europe in the same distance.
([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+Lisbon+to...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+Lisbon+to+Moscow))

~~~
gojomo
Also: competition from rail travel (which also benefits from the shorter
distances and greater population density).

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oldstrangers
I have two thoughts. One, this is really cool. And two, I wonder what Hipmunk
thinks of this?

~~~
izendejas
They shouldn't think, they should start copying and in the process make it
better.

Bear with me: imagine you could see where your friends have traveled on this
map. You enter a budget range much like you do and it shows you the options.
Then, you could see any pictures your friends took on such trips. And with a
FB message/email, you can ask them how much they spent, where they stayed,
what places they loved, how the food was, etc.

Okay, who has built this?

~~~
oldstrangers
Sounds like <http://www.dopplr.com/>.

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kul
This is sweet! Have been looking for something like this for a while

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SourPatch
Seems like a cool idea, but doesn't have enough fare data. If I leave from
Chicago Midway and check non-stop flights only, I can go nowhere in the
continental U.S.

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joelrunyon
I'm 93% sure that this discovery will have a detrimental effect on my bank
account.

