
Hipmunk now indicates which flights have Wi-Fi - bemmu
http://blog.hipmunk.com/post/7010196985/new-find-flights-that-have-wi-fi
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brm
Unrelated but I have to point it out since it happens constantly...

If you're a start-up and you're directing people to your blog, please, please,
please make an obvious and easy link from the blog to your startup's homepage.
Don't hide it in the sidebar, don't make the 'home' link on the blog go to the
blog's homepage, don't waste the damn traffic.

Make it brainless for me to get from your blog to your startup's homepage.

~~~
patio11
Quick advice from your friendly neighborhood SEO: putting your blog on a
domain that is different from your website is an acceptable business decision
if Google rankings for your website do not matter.

~~~
tikhon
so would you say hipmunk.com/blog/bleh is better than blog.hipmunk.com/bleh ?
I've seen this debate before with googlers debating it.

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walexander
I hate to be that guy, but hasn't Kayak had this feature for a really long
time?

Hipmunk is great and all, but I fail to see how a travel site adding an icon
is relevant to the HN frontpage.

~~~
tmugavero
Totally agreed. I also lost a little respect for Hipmunk when I found out they
are basically an exact copy of ITA's app:
<http://matrix.itasoftware.com/search.htm>.

~~~
kyleslattery
ITA's app doesn't seem nearly as useful to me for a few reasons:

1) The form at the beginning is much more confusing. Creating a search with
Hipmunk is much less complicated. 2) Flights are ordered by price, whereas
Hipmunk orders them by "agony", which in my experience, seems to be pretty
accurate. 3) Doesn't default to time bar mode, like Hipmunk does.

~~~
tmugavero
True, but I'm not sure removing form fields and renaming filtering data
constitutes innovation.

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clemesha
This is great! What about also indicating if the plane has power plugins? Or
is this becoming the standard these days?

If my laptop/iPad dies, knowing the internet is available goes from awesome to
super painful.

~~~
danilocampos
For the iPad, this thing is awesome:

[http://www.amazon.com/New-Trent-iCruiser-
IMP1000-Blackberry/...](http://www.amazon.com/New-Trent-iCruiser-
IMP1000-Blackberry/dp/B003ZBZ64Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1309293138&sr=1-4)

I got one for a flight to Hong Kong. iPad ran constantly for >16 hours, and it
was also handy for topping off an iPhone when batteries ran low. Well worth
the cash if you travel for extended periods.

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dsmithn
I think giving consumers the ability to view flight information other than
price and schedule will encourage airlines to provide better services and
features.

I'd love to quickly be able to compare the costs of checking luggage,
cancellation insurance costs, etc.

~~~
waterside81
Wishful thinking but _highly_ unlikely. The airline industry has shown to be
very, very price sensitive and customers, although they complain about
service, really are just looking for the cheapest flight.

I've always thought the downfall of the airline industry is our (consumers')
own fault; we search by price and only seem to deviate from price as our main
criteria on occasion in the name of loyalty plans.

~~~
goldfish
There's a major difference between the behavior of leisure and business
travelers. Leisure travelers have (historically) been price-sensitive in the
extreme. Business travelers have been way more schedule- and airline-
sensitive. This is why you see so many perks thrown at business travelers
(free upgrades, etc.)—it's an attempt by the airlines to win the business of
their most profitable clients.

As to whether airlines will be inspired to install more wi-fi, consider this:
all the major US airlines that don't already have wi-fi on their entire fleet
have announced plans to install it on a lot more of their fleet this year.
They're hoping people—especially business travelers—will make their purchasing
decisions on the basis of wi-fi.

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PStamatiou
This is fantastic news! If I am on another unproductive cross-country flight
watching mindless iTunes rental movies on my iPad instead of working (or
reading HN) I'm going to go crazy.

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kleiba
This is fantastic! I'm planning a trip to Australia, with so many hours
trapped, it would be fantastic to know there's wi-fi on board. +1!

~~~
jarek
Is Hipmunk's information on flights to Australia actually decent? I took a
look at it a while back for Canada-Europe flights and the results were less
than inspiring.

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smiler
I don't think many (if any?) carriers are offering WiFi on trans-atlantic or
trans-pacific flights

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akavi
I'm pretty sure the current on-board WiFi tech uses cell towers for service,
which rules out over-ocean access right now.

~~~
masklinn
In cars maybe, but in flight? At 4.5km above the towers? Not a chance.

There are two main techs for on-board WiFi:

* Air-to-ground radiotelephony (what AirFone[0] used to use), which works like cell phones except for the sky, and with not cell towers and on a different frequency band. So not really like cell towers. This is the technology of Aircell's Gogo (which seems to be Hipmunk's partner on there) and LiveTV's. Advantage is that it's pretty cheap (~100k/plane of equipment), but it will only work over land (as it's based on ground antennas)

* Satellites, this is Row44's technology (via HughesNet), the tech is far more expensive to setup in planes but more flexible and works across oceans. As far as I know, Row44 is only being implemented by SouthWest and Norwegian Air Shuttle. Alaska Airlines tried it (and the trial was successful), but decided to go Aircell GoGo for cost reasons.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirFone>

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akavi
I dispute your characterization of air-to-ground telephony as "not really like
cell towers". Aircel (the guys behind Gogo Inflight) themselves characterize
it as such on their own website[0]. I was, however, unaware of the satellite
tech.

[0]<http://www.gogoinflight.com/gogo/cms/work.do>

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MaxGabriel
This is great. I looked for flights yesterday using hipmunk and the whole
experience was just perfect. The hipmunk team deserves alot of respect

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kn0thing
Hurray! Thanks, Max :)

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ltamake
Is this international or just for American flights?

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neebz
slightly off topic but I love the Hipmunk date control. You can type in your
date in any format and it'll parse it. No need to make tons of click to
navigate through a calendar control.

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kn0thing
Thank you very much :) I was very impressed when I saw it - especially with
how flexible dates are handled: [http://blog.hipmunk.com/post/6494292972/new-
flexible-date-se...](http://blog.hipmunk.com/post/6494292972/new-flexible-
date-searching-for-flights)

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dmragone
Blast! Just booked a bunch of trips last week - wish I had waited.

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skeletonjelly
We've had this in Australia for ages: None!

