
Where Flight Search Engines Fail - flystein
https://medium.com/@theorm/where-flight-search-engines-fail-48076f04c226
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stevesearer
Each flight search engine optimize for something slightly different so it is
important to know what that is to help you get what you're looking for.

My personal favorite flight search is Kayak's Explore map [1] which simply
shows all of the possible destinations and the best prices to each. The
itineraries it comes up with are of varying lengths and for various times of
years, but there are some pretty incredible deals you'd never find by
searching random dates.

I recently found a $38 ticket round trip SFO to Chicago and there are
routinely sub $400 tickets LAX to various airports around Scandinavia. The
best deal I've ever seen was $354 RT LAX to Tel Aviv.

[1] [http://www.kayak.com/explore/](http://www.kayak.com/explore/)

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theorm
Kayak explore tool is great. There have been numerous startups trying to build
the same, but to make it useful one needs to have a lot of data. Kayak has
arguably more data than any other metasearch engine.

Map is definitely useful and for an opportunistic traveller is a great tool.
Flystein is not trying to compete with it. Where it is good though is a
constrained trip, with fixed dates and requirements, or a complex trip. Map
like this would not show a multi city trip.

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flystein
The problem with Explorer is that it is showing lowest prices which somebody
found some hours or even days ago, and most of these cached prices are gone
when you are trying to validate them but sometimes you could get lucky ;)

It is like a multiplied problem of metasearch stale/cached prices, also some
OTAs seems to show stale prices on purpose to play the bait and switch game...

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stevesearer
Yeah, I've noticed the caching problem a few times, though all of the prices I
listed were actual prices I sent friends who purchased or I validated by
following the process to the actual fare page. Though sometimes the really
cheap fares are with budget airlines who upsell for carry-on and checked
baggage lifting the price.

There were a few too good to be true Air Canada prices (sub $400 to India) I
saw a few weeks ago, but those didn't exist once checked.

I've been able to convince friends to purchase tickets who would otherwise not
have traveled by posting the fare to Facebook. Chicago seems to be a popular
one my friends want to go, and they end up being convinced when they see a sub
$100 RT ticket from California.

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robk
Sounds exactly the same as FlightFox

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wbeckler
Almost exactly but not as good. FlightFox doesn't make you link to the ceiling
price, so you can pick a price you don't want to go over and then you don't
pay if they can't help you. While Flystein makes you prove your price with a
link, which isn't all that easy considering that many rates can't be
deeplinked.

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flystein
At Flystein we ask a link OR a screenshot in case of Beat My Price so there is
no problem here. Also you could just specify some realistic budget in the text
description with Build My Trip option and you are very welcome to try our
services :) Cheers!

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underyx
Combining competing airlines' flights is rarely done, but is actually not as
impossible to do programmatically as the article suggests. This is exactly
what we do at [https://skypicker.com](https://skypicker.com) and it really
works wonders — we are regularly seeing combinations that are 90% cheaper than
alternatives on other sites.

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flystein
Skypicker looks like a promising tool. At Flystein we use multiple internal
and 3d party tools as there is no silver bullet which covers everything, plus
there is nothing so far which could completely replace a human brain and
common sense :)

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sasha-m
Very interesting and very promising. The stress and anxiety that accompanies
flight ticket search, if price is a big factor, is usually so high, that I
often wish I could pay a small fee to somebody reliable online who I could
trust to get me the cheapest ticket that fits the combination of my
parameters, and spend that time and stress on more important things.

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budgieking
upboat

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guillaumekarine
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