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Wow.I book a lot of flights, often waste a huge amount of time find the best flight, and would use this for a lot of the easier bookings. I was amazed at how well it works (in the simulator).

Google Flights is really the last Google product I routinely use -- happy to have an alternative!

2 comments

> often waste a huge amount of time find the best flight

Would you trust that this would book you the "best" flight? Every user has a different definition of "best" – cheapest, shortest, fewest stopovers, shortest stopovers, airline preference, lounge preference, seat preference, time of day preference...

Personally I find Google Flights gives me the right amount of detail and I book flights I'm happy with.

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised by all the uniform praise in the comments - NOT saying it's not a cool tool, it's definitely very impressive and the author's done a nice job, but I could never really see myself using this. Mainly just because flights are super expensive, I can't see myself trusting a bot to make the best choice instead of spending 10 minutes of my own time to potentially save a lot of money. I guess it's a different world when you're a super frequent flier (or when your company is paying, of course).

It reminds me of the Carvana ads that called out home delivery for cars. Like, it's definitely neat, and I'd love to skip scummy dealerships, but convenience is wayy down my list of priorities when I'm dropping that much money on something.

Worth noting: if you don't specify a time of day in your search, you will see the cheapest flight on that day.

Bots can analyze several thousand flight options (which even the sim does) in a few seconds. So odds are it catches a deal someone might otherwise miss.

Also, because BonBook searches direct w/ airlines, it sees inventory not shared with Google (and regularly has better fares).

Interesting, the last one is pretty surprising. I kind of just assumed all airline booking systems (Expedia, Google Flights, Kayak, whatever) all used the same underlying service - maybe SABRE or something, but that's a total shot in the dark. Would love to hear what the difference is, assuming you're comfortable with sharing!

Can share a bit of background: (TLDR; airlines want to keep more profit so are witholding some fares.)

A system called GDS (Global Distribution System) was built in the 60s as a data transmission standard. Was used by airlines to publish fares (among other things). But it was complicated so aggregators (Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport) were born to ingest all this published data and make it easily searchable.

When travel went online in the late 90s, Online Travel Agents (OTAs) were using this data, and since then most new OTAs have too. (An example; Expedia's first patent minimized GDS searches per customer request, saving them $$).

But, because OTAs take a cut and airline margins are thin, IATA (group of airlines) came up with a new system called NDS (New Distrubution Standard) in mid 2010s. Since its an XML standard that anyone can consume direct, airlines have been trying to push everyone onto NDC by simply not publishing certain tickets via GDS, requiring OTAs to book X% of tickets via NDC and even removing inventory entirely.

Some examples: American trying to go full NDC recently but getting pushback and Turkish Airlines pulling out of Sabre.

Is there a reasonable way for me to consume this data directly? I'd love to be able to pull a big pile of flight prices and mess around with the data, but I'd prefer not to pay big money or have to register as a travel agent or anything.

Depends on the detail. There are a few simple ones (eg flightlab).

Super cool stuff. Thanks for the info.

Why can't Google search direct with airlines?

Fair, beta isn't for everyone. It's geared towards frequent fliers and people who want to save time. But lets break down the points:

-> cheapest?? Frequent fliers are primarily concerned with time efficiency.

-> shortest/fewest-stopovers/shortest-stops?? These are all synonyms for efficiency.

-> airline preference?? Beta curates based on airline loyalty.

-> lounge preference?? Not handled when booking flights..

-> seat preference?? Furthest forward aisle/window, avoid no-recline, some want extra legroom (beta has an algo that handles this).

-> time of day?? Easy, just add it to your request (works in sim too).

My partner books a lot of travel for people who travel a lot, and while some of this is broadly true, I think the devil is in the details. They get a lot of preferences from people who arguably should only care about their time, but in reality also have comfort preferences.

When you say that shortest/fewest stopovers/shortest stops are all synonyms for efficiency, this is true, but also misses human factors. Some people prefer a single flight at nearly all costs, some people prefer to have shorter flights with stopovers even if the total time spent is slightly longer. Ask someone if they'd rather have a 45 minute stopover or a 1.5 hour stopover and I bet most would choose the latter, despite taking more time.

> time of day?? Easy, just add it to your request (works in sim too).

This also misses the fact that everything is about tradeoffs. I'd like a flight after 9am, the tool tells me that will be A$500, oh yeah, you know what I don't mind flying at 8:30am for A$200.

I think for a tool like this to work beyond a specific audience of optimisation nerds who only care about their time, it needs to treat everything as negotiable, and then present sensible alternatives outside of spec. Sacrifice time for lower stress, sacrificing seat preference for sooner flight, sacrificing airline preference based on price, sacrificing destination based on availability.

Being close to someone doing this job, and having travelled a fair bit of long haul over the last few years, I know that "efficiency" is very nuanced with personal preferences, that most people don't give even a fraction of the required information to be able to actually do this well and back and forth is necessary.

I wish you all the best of luck, if you can make it work, great!

Appreciate the context. That's the plan, cheers.

I would use it for flights where the best flight is pretty obvious, or in cases where satisficing is fine. I'd tbh mostly use it when OTHER PEOPLE ask me to find a flight for them.

I'd also use it to quickly book flights on my preferred airlines because I have free changes/cancellations on those, so the value of getting something booked immediate and then refined later (and possibly rebook) is fine.

Happy to give you one. Biased but the live beta is better.