
Tripdelta Finds Cheaper Flights Through “Secret” Airport Routes - elmalto
http://lifehacker.com/tripdelta-finds-cheaper-flights-through-secret-airpor-1746204552
======
jakub_g
As others noticed, the connections usually suck and are not guaranteed (looked
up a european flight, found a 3h30m layover in London between Heathrow and
Stansted - well good luck making that!). That is something I could accepted if
I was still a student, but no more (since I did not make a connection one day
due to bad weather :)

Personal anecdote: several years ago when Ryanair used to offer ultra cheap
flights within Europe (as long as you paid with appropriate credit card type
and accepted weird dates and times of the flights) I wrote a Ryanair-only poor
man's version of this tool, looking for connections through two particular
hubs of interest. The code sucked incredibly, but managed to get me two very
cheap bookings (well, had to spend some nights in the airports, but it's
nothing when you're young and short on money). Then Ryanair did some changes
(and also raised the prices) which made the project obsolete. Old good times
:)

Regarding the code, I had to do some reverse engineering to parse the
responses from the airline's site. Funny part was that the responses were non-
deterministic for a given request, seemed like they used some kind of
dictionary of possible transformations of output values of price to prevent
easy scraping. The other thing that made me scratch my head for a while was
that the response had some weird unicode whitespace in one place instead of
"traditional" space and I couldn't figure why the parsing didn't work until I
downloaded a response manually and opened it in a hex viewer (when I was
dumping the response to console in the script, this unicode space was not
there).

------
skue
This is a weak pitch... Kayak, Hipmunk, any almost any other site have an
option to include nearby airports when searching.

I compared the route they screenshotted and apparently the only reason
TripDelta come up with a $150 cheaper one-way option ($302 vs $455) is by
flying Spirit from OAK to LAX with a 9 hour layover. Kayak probably assumes
that layover is excessive and filters it out. Because really, if you're that
desperate to save funds, just take Greyhound to LAX.

And if you book round trip, returning a week later, it's $779 on Kayak and
over $1086 on TripDelta. Plus Kayak will also give you the probability that
prices will drop in the next 7 days.

~~~
blazespin
Well, Kayak just failed for me on YVR - SFO. PriceDelta found BLI - OAK for
$103 versus $200 on Kayak. That's pretty good! I've used nearby airports on
Kayak, it doesn't always do a good job from what I've seen and it's +/\- 3
days isn't so great.

~~~
tedmiston
Agreed, the price graph and price calendar in Google Flights are far more
powerful and useful. Now if only they'd make a mobile app...

~~~
cbhl
Have you tried just typing "sfo to hkg" into the Google Search App on your
Android or iPhone?

~~~
tedmiston
Yeah, but it's so limited.

I really want them to add support for multi-airport "sfo, smf to hkg" and
multi-city "sfo to lax to hkg" to the web search parser.

And the mobile web app is decent but compared to desktop very limited. For
example, the dates grid shows just a few days vs. 7x7 for depart and return. I
think that's one of the most important features. I find it frustratingly
inefficient on mobile.

------
0x0
Assuming this sets up flights where the legs are separate bookings and maybe
even multiple airlines, there's a risk that you're on your own and have to buy
new tickets if you miss your connecting flight due to delays/cancellations,
no?

~~~
tedmiston
Correct, just like with Skiplagged, though their FAQ
([https://tripdelta.com/en/faq](https://tripdelta.com/en/faq)) indicates they
may protect for this in the future.

> Is it safe to book your results?

> Yes. We only work with highly respected partners and choose very carefully
> who we trust.

> Is it safe to book two separate tickets?

> Yes, it is. Just make sure to have enough time between two different tickets
> on the same day. To make it even easier, we will soon be offering stopover
> protection.

------
kyleblarson
ITA Matrix allows for the same functionality and a lot more:
[https://matrix.itasoftware.com/](https://matrix.itasoftware.com/)

~~~
Havoc
A quick spot test suggests trip delta is tangibly cheaper...but the
connections suck pretty hard. Mostly 2x long stops.

~~~
JamilD
Tripdelta can't do anything ITA Matrix can't as well -- you just have to know
what you're doing with Matrix (input alternate airports via the suggestions,
or use advanced routing codes). But Matrix will give you far more flexibility
and better results.

------
joelgrus
Huh, I tried a SEA-LON ticket, best price $1363 on Kayak.

TripDelta found me a $655 flight, except out of Portland (which is like a 3
hour drive away), and a $750 flight that looks like

SEA-EWR / JFK-LHR

which is a hell of a connection. I couldn't deal with the inconvenience, but
even so I'm kind of impressed.

------
ape4
Did the "team of mathematicians" really physically travel to more than 100
countries.

~~~
daxfohl
And what advanced mathematics is needed?

~~~
tedmiston
I'd like to know the exact name of the problem, but it feels TSP-ish.

I'm borrowing this from Vayant (which I think is a B2B competitor) with
seemingly similar challenges:

> As mentioned above, the computational challenge here is to solve a
> “traveling salesman” style problem, with costs associated with each graph
> segment and in fact each combination of segments.

Source: [http://vayant.com/airline-availability-solving-travelling-
sa...](http://vayant.com/airline-availability-solving-travelling-salesman-
problem/)

~~~
daxfohl
Heh, seems like the exact name for the linked article would be "The Traveling
Mathematician Problem"

------
boultonmark
Such linkbait nonsense. Lesser known but brilliant Icelandic search engine
dohop.com in particular has being finding all these options for over ten
years. e.g
[http://www.dohop.com/flights/?d1=190116&d2=&a1=SFO%2CSJC%2CO...](http://www.dohop.com/flights/?d1=190116&d2=&a1=SFO%2CSJC%2COAK&a2=LHR%2CLGW%2CSTN%2CLCY%2CLTN%2CSEN&return=0)

~~~
greglindahl
Even weaker, the example in the post is a bad one! Kayak has suggested going
from SFO to London via LAX to me several times.

------
vzaliva
> "The site was built by a team of mathematicians who traveled to more than
> 100 countries"

Could somebody explain why mathematicians(!) have physically travel to 100+
countries to build a web site? Are these airports so secret they could not be
reached with modern means of communications?

I suspect it is just a bad marketing pitch...

~~~
foota
I believe they're saying they have experience traveling, not that they
traveled to build the site.

------
tiatia
Ticket hacking and "Mixing" airlines becomes a problem if you miss a flight.
This can be highly risky.

What I would be more interested in is this problem: Often I get reimbursed for
a flight from A to B.

Often I can fly A->C->B and make a nice (paid) vacation in C. Hence I look for
the most interesting routes possible for a decent price.

Especially exotic airlines can be a great deal here. Currently I look up the
airport to see what airlines are served by this airport and then see if there
is an airline that has it's hub in an interesting tourist destination.

Better solution?

------
JamilD
Searched YYZ-SFO on Dec 22. Google Flights gave me US$206, Tripdelta gave me
US$248 with SMF (Sacramento) as the destination, with approximately the same
airtime. Tripdelta doesn't even show the $206 flight as an option.

Better off using Google Flights with multiple destinations. Put a little bit
of effort into finding which origin/destination airports are viable for you,
and search directly for it on another OTA.

------
joshfraser
I switched to Google Flights as my primary flight search tool. The features
and speed they offer are best in class.

------
callesgg
It did not get me any flights that was cheaper than the site i usually use.

In fact the cheapest flight was in general (over my 3 test searches of flying
to New Zealand.) 50-100$ more expensive and had one extra stop. About the same
flight times.

And about 40USD more expensive when flying to new york and 20 hours longer

------
pavel_lishin
Nice, except I'm reasonably sure that I do, in fact, want to go to Austin, and
not San Antonio: [http://imgur.com/aQupfq0](http://imgur.com/aQupfq0)

An in fact, those suggestions are more expensive then the actual flights to
Austin.

~~~
manigandham
That's part of why they are suggested, to get you to roughly the same place
for less.

However, in your case if they're still more expensive than the direct flights
then seems like a broken calculation.

------
tedmiston
Having just watched the most recent South Park episodes _Sponsored Content_
and _Truth and Advertising_ , I'm honestly not sure if this a real story or
very well placed native advertising... Oh, Lifehacker.

------
discardorama
> The site was built by a team of mathematicians who traveled to more than 100
> countries ...

I want that job. Maybe I should do a startup that rates the world's vegetarian
restaurants. VCs, are you listening?

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AYBABTME
Is this some sort of paid-for journalism, posted on HN? What is this more than
some ad disguised as legitimate article? It annoys me a lot to see that on the
front page.

~~~
astrange
Why would you pay a news website for content? The content is what you pay them
with.

