Flyspy Blog
These blogs chronicle the growth and development of Flyspy over a seven year period.
Part I - Why is this so difficult
December, 2002 - Minneapolis to Williamsport, PA
I am living in Minneapolis (MSP) and my brothers Bill and John live in Williamsport, PA (IPT). It's been a while since I've seen them so I decide to fly to Williamsport for a visit.
Williamsport, home of the Little League World Series, is in the middle of Pennsylvania. It's roughly a 3 hour drive from these major airports: Baltimore (BWI), Newark (EWR), New York (LGA and JFK), Pittsburgh (PIT), Philadelphia (PHL), Rochester (ROC), Syracuse (SYR), and Washington DC (IAD and DCA).
You can also fly into these regional airports as well: Harrisburg (MDT), Lancaster (LNS), and Scranton (AVP), and Williamsport (IPT). That's 10 major and 4 minor airports.
My travel plans are open so my airfare search is Minneapolis to a dozen airports, with departure dates spanning a week and return dates 3-5 days after the departure date. For each airport I am looking at 35 different date combinations (7 departure dates and 5 return dates for each departure date). Multiply that by a dozen airports (now I have 420 combinations) and 6 web sites and I end up with 2,520 possible airport/date/web site combinations.
Of course, I, nor anyone else, actually does 2,500 searches to determine what the market looks like. But still, I spend upwards of 8 hours over a few days trying to unravel the mystery of airline schedules and pricing. A common task I come to find out after talking to hundreds of fliers.
I rarely buy the least expensive ticket, which is usually an off-hours flight with 1 or more stops. Instead, I want to understand what my options are in a more macro sense so I can determine the tradeoff of time, schedule, and price. A very nerdy divide-and-conquer approach to problem solving.
I eventually bought a ticket on AirTran that takes me from Minneapolis to Baltimore via Atlanta. My hours spent researching flights are forgotten and I attribute my ignorance to a system I don't understand. I figure there must be a better way to do what I did. I just don't know what it is.
January, 2003 - Minneapolis to Austin, TX
Three of us have to be in Austin, TX for a business meeting. Craig and I fly out of Minneapolis and Anne leaves from Chicago. This trip was only slightly easier to plan than the one to Williamsport.
My combinations are: 2 possible departure dates, 2 possible return dates, 3 routes (MSP to Austin, Dallas, or Houston), and 3 web sites; 36 searches to understand a fairly narrow market. Anne's problem space is doubled because she can fly out of O'Hare (ORD) or Midway (MDW).
Again, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to understand our options. And again, I figure that I haven't spent enough time to understand how the system works in order to optimize my path through it.
Every airfare search is like starting at zero. At this rate I can never solve the problem or acquire any knowledge that helps me next time.
Why is this so difficult?
I start to ask myself: why can I find almost anything on Amazon or Google in a few seconds, but every interaction with an airline site easily takes 45 minutes or more.
I don't know it at the time, but this question starts a 7 year journey that ends with Flyspy.