
An analysis of the airfare prediction app Hopper - carlmungz
https://www.underglass.io/read/Hopper
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snowwrestler
I've used Hopper for a while, including booking tickets through the app when
the price was advantageous.

A memorable failure was when I was trying to book travel to Charleston, SC for
the eclipse last year. Ticket prices were very high, and Hopper kept telling
me to hold out, they would soon drop. They never did, of course--and I didn't
really expect them to.

It was a good illustration of the shortcomings of machine learning. If a
situation is not in the training data, the system is clueless. Hopper had no
idea there was a rare external factor distorting the market, and apparently
there was no way to tell it.

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nikanj
Cheap fare hacks are a game of walls and ladders. If a hack is really good, it
spreads wide and fast, and airlines block it.

