Hacker News Reader

Comment by illdave | Hacker News Reader

I think what you've got is pretty cool, but you've got some extremely stiff competition from the likes of Hipmunk, and (as of yesterday) Google: google.com/flights.

I also worry that your unique selling point (the fact that it helps to display hard-to-find airports) is difficult to word in an appealing way - who wants to go to hard-to-find airports? I'm not saying it's impossible though, but I think you'd benefit from finding a good way to word that. Good luck!

View on HN

Thanks for the input. I never thought of it as being a service that offers 'hard to find airports', but rather airports you've never heard of... which for most people, is practically all of them.

But you're right, even when I was building it, I found it hard to explain it succinctly, which made me think it's trying to solve a problem that might not exist... yet it's a problem I run into all the time.

When I was looking at it, I felt like it should be something like, "Find the airports that matter". It's easy to say and it's what I actually want you to find for me. I don't care if you're finding airports I've never heard of or if you're finding the ones that are hard to find. I just don't.

I think there's something in that - how come you're running into the problem so frequently? Is the main use case that you're looking for something like people that look for flights to X and don't realise that they could save money by going to Y which is a short drive away? (E.g. a flight to Gatwick, when they could save 50% by going to Heathrow).

That's mainly it.

Also, most 'airports' are near cities, but most 'places' in the world aren not cities, but are slap bang in the middle of two, three or even four cities. So which airports serve Stoke on Trent? or Schweinfurt? or Alcanar?

Choosing airports for those locations is really something only a human can decide. I may well travel 150 miles from an airport to my destination if it's really important, but that's for me to decide.

Same problem: Google search from CID (Iowa) to Columbus OH turned up - no flights! Really?

Your search - same problem. Am I doing something wrong?

Probably not. That data is from 2009, so it's full of holes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com