Exactly, I wanted to try and see what it said about a flight I had planned, and I only got "Sorry, flights from Belgium are not currently supported. Sorry, flights from Germany are not currently supported.".
Strangely, it did support Greece (or so it said), but it doesn't seem to handle transfers very well, giving me no way to fly from Athens to the Newark.
I use Skyscanner here in Europe for regional and international flights, however really the prices are only useful as an indication. For example, one flight I found the cheapest option was Ryanair, but when I actually booked it the price was €10 cheaper than listed on Skyscanner.
I'm a big fan of https://www.google.com/flights/explorer, since it gives me an immediate picture of how far in advance I should book to get the lowest prices.
So sad to see matrix.itasoftware.com's amazing search engine get most of it's features ripped out and replaced with a pretty UI that does so little.
For folks who like hipmonk? Do you really travel? Their search engine also fails to find most good fares. Pretty but useless.
Most people who are serious use expertflyer.com and matrix.itasoftware.com to find fares. Yes you have to learn a bit about how air fares are constructed, but this is hacker news not consumer news isn't it?
I can't agree more. hipmunk is totally useless for truly finding good fares. matrix is the only site i start with, then i go to sites that aren't on ITA (jetblue/southwest/some south american airlines like gol) but i try to avoid those airlines anyway (and like you i'm usually travelling internationally so they're not relevant)
A few days ago my gf tried to book a flight. Like most people, she starts with googleing flight tickets. And sees Google flights for the first time and starts using it.
Gets to the point where Google kicks you off to the airline's own page, and that's where the trouble starts. She is forced to pick seats but can't, because the only ones available require being a specially background checked and known passenger. Eventually she gives up.
Then she googles Expedia. A few minutes later she has her tickets. Yesterday she printed out the boarding passes complete with her seat assignment. On the same flight Google Flighs couldn't book.
What airline? I've never heard of requiring documentation to select a seat (check-in is another thing altogether, especially if the flight is international), but I have heard of airlines reserving seats for passengers with elite status.
(It's typical to not get a seat assignment at booking time, BTW, especially if you're booking a few days before the flight.)
You may not get the best deal/least troublesome flight from here. Well, at least for international flights.
I was trying to book a flight from Chicago->Seoul, and the options showed at least $2000 for the cheapest flight, which involved a 33hr total journey through China and Japan. I then asked my Korean friends, who recommended a travel agent and they got me a $1700 ticket with only 17hrs direct flight
Same here. My travel agent can always find me cheaper international tickets than what I could find on the internet. Does anyone know exactly how this works?
The best part is they can put me on a wait list for cheap tickets!
I just did try, and got an incredible quote for DTW-IST roundtrip for only $638. Funny thing is that when you go to the web sites it tells at the end gives twice the price. Seems like a joke. It does not really link to an actual sales opportunity.
I have it on reasonable authority that at least one X.25 era hacker has exploited ye-olde travel provider interfaces to:
A) automatically detect and utilize cheap global routes
B) brute force discount codes for global hotel chains
This year I left booking my tickets back to the UK for the holidays until the last minute. The cheapest fare I could find myself, after what I considered to be extensive searching, was $1800.
I ran a contest on Flightfox (http://flightfox.com) and offered a $49 finders fee. Someone found me a fare for $1000 with only one stop (vs two on the fare I found).
Totally besides the point, but why $49? I thought the point of ending prices with 9 was to make them look lower. You wanted the opposite, so perhaps $50 would have worked better?
Actually it's much better than hipmunk. I used to be a fanatic user of hipmunk. But once I tried google flights i immediately was amazed by its speed, browsing different dates is super fast and easy.
There's presenting the existing data well (Google) and there is adding value to existing to make it more useful (Hipmunk).
I find that Google's innovation for almost every one of their products is in saying "we have oodles of data, how can we display it effectively"? They have done well at collecting and quickly accessing large amounts of data, linking loosely coupled sets, and in some cases, adding meaning (image searches understand the concept of "bright" or "dim", for example).
But I rarely see them taking the data they have and merging it in a way to create new meaning or value. Hipmunk, beyond co-opting a gantt chart, did this with their "agony" score. Google not only didn't try here, they didn't try for local search either, and just acquired Zagat for their score (and brand name and loyal following, etc.). And many startups offer meaning above and beyond that combined in the data: through their experience, their ability to merge context from being subject matter experts, or just their flexibility to experiment without a spotlight on them. Google tends to stop short of any of these.
So, yes, it's no Hipmunk: it's a typically well done Google product taking hairy data, merging it up, and displaying it well. Doing more than that, however, is left to the rest of the world.
(Though, one wonders why ITA didn't do some of these things before when they first created this better way of looking at flights a few years ago...)
I love hipmunk but they are resting on their laurels a little too long if you ask me, you still can't edit an individual search tab (I asked and was told to fiddle with the url values to edit the search). And you still can't move tabs around, plus Google flight actually makes it look really slow.
That being said, it is rare that I can find a better rate than what I see on Hipmunk, and their agony ui is still frickin' amazing.
I tried using Hipmunk a few times, but the prices were always at least a hundred dollars more than if I had just gone to Orbitz.com and dealt with their crap interface--I've always found that Orbitz has prices at least as good as anywhere else, so I tend to judge against them.
Google, on the other hand, gave me exactly what I needed at prices competitive to Orbitz. It was a bit disappointing that when I was done, I had to buy the tickets through the carrier's site, but it still found me a flight at a good time for a good price.
Love that you put in date ranges in Hipmunk, since I am usually not sure which days have the best deals and am not strongly tied to returning/leaving on a certain day
Searched for New Zealand and got nothing. Searched for a specific city like Auckland or Christchurch and got matches. I am used to better results from Google.
It's for US originating flights only. e.g. New York -> Paris will work, however Paris -> New York will not. But i guess they are adding additional counties.
i use bing flights for my flight needs, and probably that's the only MS service i ever use/used. I like bing flights just because of two checkboxes, and nothing else; the checkboxes to search nearby airports on departure and arrival destination.
I also found cheapest or next to cheapest flights on bing for some reason.
This is a partial product still being built (as it's domestic at the moment and will obviously go international I'm sure).
But the speed and data quality is where they will win out. The faster the interface allows people to do what they want to do: many searches until an ideal candidate is found. Other sites appear slow and most of the information they bring back is useless (to the user) so speed is the name of the game.
Turns out Google is pretty good at that game. Just my thoughts.
If you do mileage runs, you probably know about matrix.itasoftware.com, but in case you don't - visit http://matrix.itasoftware.com/?showPricePerMile=true and then do your search to see and sort by price per mile.
[+] [-] tjmc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sspiff|13 years ago|reply
Strangely, it did support Greece (or so it said), but it doesn't seem to handle transfers very well, giving me no way to fly from Athens to the Newark.
I'm going to rate this tool a solid 1/10.
[+] [-] lucaspiller|13 years ago|reply
I use Skyscanner here in Europe for regional and international flights, however really the prices are only useful as an indication. For example, one flight I found the cheapest option was Ryanair, but when I actually booked it the price was €10 cheaper than listed on Skyscanner.
[+] [-] forkrulassail|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Justin_Time|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rabble|13 years ago|reply
For folks who like hipmonk? Do you really travel? Their search engine also fails to find most good fares. Pretty but useless.
Most people who are serious use expertflyer.com and matrix.itasoftware.com to find fares. Yes you have to learn a bit about how air fares are constructed, but this is hacker news not consumer news isn't it?
[+] [-] rubyrescue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ketralnis|13 years ago|reply
Do you have an example of this? We get our data from the same place that Matrix does
[+] [-] mda|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdkl234890|13 years ago|reply
Gets to the point where Google kicks you off to the airline's own page, and that's where the trouble starts. She is forced to pick seats but can't, because the only ones available require being a specially background checked and known passenger. Eventually she gives up.
Then she googles Expedia. A few minutes later she has her tickets. Yesterday she printed out the boarding passes complete with her seat assignment. On the same flight Google Flighs couldn't book.
[+] [-] cloudwalking|13 years ago|reply
Sounds to me that the airline webpage has additional (read: useless?) security features that Expedia doesn't have.
[+] [-] jrockway|13 years ago|reply
(It's typical to not get a seat assignment at booking time, BTW, especially if you're booking a few days before the flight.)
[+] [-] easytiger|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pm90|13 years ago|reply
I was trying to book a flight from Chicago->Seoul, and the options showed at least $2000 for the cheapest flight, which involved a 33hr total journey through China and Japan. I then asked my Korean friends, who recommended a travel agent and they got me a $1700 ticket with only 17hrs direct flight
[+] [-] tvirot|13 years ago|reply
The best part is they can put me on a wait list for cheap tickets!
[+] [-] te_chris|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adambyrtek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Svip|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contingencies|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Harj|13 years ago|reply
I ran a contest on Flightfox (http://flightfox.com) and offered a $49 finders fee. Someone found me a fare for $1000 with only one stop (vs two on the fare I found).
[+] [-] euccastro|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meric|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chime|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] downey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usaphp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwexler|13 years ago|reply
I find that Google's innovation for almost every one of their products is in saying "we have oodles of data, how can we display it effectively"? They have done well at collecting and quickly accessing large amounts of data, linking loosely coupled sets, and in some cases, adding meaning (image searches understand the concept of "bright" or "dim", for example).
But I rarely see them taking the data they have and merging it in a way to create new meaning or value. Hipmunk, beyond co-opting a gantt chart, did this with their "agony" score. Google not only didn't try here, they didn't try for local search either, and just acquired Zagat for their score (and brand name and loyal following, etc.). And many startups offer meaning above and beyond that combined in the data: through their experience, their ability to merge context from being subject matter experts, or just their flexibility to experiment without a spotlight on them. Google tends to stop short of any of these.
So, yes, it's no Hipmunk: it's a typically well done Google product taking hairy data, merging it up, and displaying it well. Doing more than that, however, is left to the rest of the world.
(Though, one wonders why ITA didn't do some of these things before when they first created this better way of looking at flights a few years ago...)
[+] [-] trustfundbaby|13 years ago|reply
That being said, it is rare that I can find a better rate than what I see on Hipmunk, and their agony ui is still frickin' amazing.
[+] [-] jff|13 years ago|reply
Google, on the other hand, gave me exactly what I needed at prices competitive to Orbitz. It was a bit disappointing that when I was done, I had to buy the tickets through the carrier's site, but it still found me a flight at a good time for a good price.
[+] [-] cynwoody|13 years ago|reply
Thanks. I didn't know about Hipmunk. I have been using mostly Kayak and, more recently, Google.
[+] [-] frankdenbow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daurnimator|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dorian-graph|13 years ago|reply
(I'm from Brisbane)
[+] [-] JacobAldridge|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sfaruque|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aquilax|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geuis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usaphp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roopeshv|13 years ago|reply
I also found cheapest or next to cheapest flights on bing for some reason.
[+] [-] adambyrtek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _xhok|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brackin|13 years ago|reply
Hipmunk has a great interface & iPad app if you want to compare on flight "agony" and their hotels interface is very good.
[+] [-] niketdesai|13 years ago|reply
But the speed and data quality is where they will win out. The faster the interface allows people to do what they want to do: many searches until an ideal candidate is found. Other sites appear slow and most of the information they bring back is useless (to the user) so speed is the name of the game.
Turns out Google is pretty good at that game. Just my thoughts.
[+] [-] jasonlingx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turbulents|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alec|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blhack|13 years ago|reply