chm, thanks much! Appreciate the kudos!
13 karma · joined May 17, 2007
I currently work for Google on the Flights team -- (http://www.google.com/flights).
I hope you're enjoying the service, and we'll see what we can do about getting out the word a bit better ;).
P.S. -- You'll be amused to know that -- seriously, just today -- I was telling a colleague about this cool thread on HN, and he said, "Wait... hackers? Wha... huh?" I guess he also has work and a family life :p
re searches... it's our hope that -- for most folks and most cases -- our filters + our tips will suffice. But if there are specific power features you're looking for, let us know via the Feedback option and I'll do what I can to bribe, er, win over my teammates :p
And no, don't bother trying to time your bookings. It's kinda like the stock market; trying to beat the market, er, optimize your flights purchase time is likely to lead to sorrow and regret. From the research our Google Flights team did recently, we found that if you wait a week, on average you're gonna pay more for the same flight.
And no, we didn't see any universal discount on Tuesdays, either ;)
Short answer re price discrepancies: it's complicated. It's absolutely in our interest and the airlines' interest to get pricing 100% right, and we do work really hard to eval and improve on this.
One situation that can happen is that an airline has, say, 3 seats remaining at one fare and 1 seat remaining at a cheaper fare; when you selected the flights or immediately before, that 1 seat was still available, but by the time you click through, it's not, so you get the pricing for the fare with 3 seats left.
One of the things that's amazed me in my flights education after joining the team is just how super-dynamic pricing is.
No, to my knowledge it's not based on your referrer or cookies or anything like that ;). I'm just talking -- person-independent -- pricing from hour to hour.
On a related note, I used to think that airline pricing was pretty capricious and random; now I realize that the airlines hire some of the smartest folks to develop pricing strategies, and nothing is left to chance ;).
(I'm also both an oldtimer and newtimer to HN; long time lurker, and I opened an account ages ago, but sorry I've not been active here before!)
Price, certainly, is still a huge factor in folks' decision, but convenience plays a very significant role. And, from anecdotal evidence (not part of the same research), brand loyalty is definitely a factor as well (a very price sensitive travel blogger I know still prefers to fly on American, for instance).
Of course, I was familiar with ycombinator, but not this news page. Thanks for including my article here, and timg, thanks for the kind comments :)