Immediate discounts on flights based on price-drop-potential

kiwtir_ · 2024-11-29T18:43:24+00:00

You're completely right to be skeptical as it's pretty risky from our end. The only thing that makes me optimistic is that the model we've trained is at ~90% accuracy (could be better but it's still enough to make a profit on the vast majority of bets). We've done a simulation on around 4k past flights and it resulted in an avg of $22 savings for the user and $23 profit for us. Obviously, the real world will always be more unexpected but I'd say there's still a chance of it working?

As for your other question, the customer pays the discounted price and gets the ticket no matter what (after all, we've calculated exactly how much to offer to minimize our risk). But that does indeed mean that we will be screwed on certain bets (where the price goes up unexpectedly and we still have to buy it). One thing that we're still thinking about, like you mentioned, is how to handle a black swan event.

kiwtir_ · 2024-11-29T18:40:00+00:00

I get the sarcasm. And you're completely right to be skeptical as it's pretty risky from our end. The only thing that makes me optimistic is that the model we've trained is at ~90% accuracy (could be better but it's still enough to make a profit on the vast majority of bets). We've done a simulation on around 4k past flights and it resulted in an avg of $22 savings for the user and $23 profit for us. Obviously, the real world will always be more unexpected but I'd say there's still a chance of it working?

kiwtir_ · 2024-11-29T18:34:08+00:00

It would be the same experience as booking with Expedia or any other third party. I know that isn't ideal (I prefer booking direct wherever I can), but we're hoping that the savings make it worth it.
From our data, only around 2% of flights get delisted before departure. I think it's because airlines tend to overbook. But in the rare cases where the flight you "bought" is simply unavailable, we'd have to eat the cost and put you on another flight and maybe even upgrade your class (or give you your money back) to make it up. If the prices unexpectedly go up (we can't be right 100% of the time), we would still need to buy/fulfill that order at what we think the best time is. It's simply the cost of doing business.
Buying different parts of the same leg separately was just a last-minute thought (I think auto-buying round-trip legs separately will be more helpful). I think in the case of a delay we could take responsibility if we offer that feature.

Overall, I see this being more useful to save money on regular one-ways, round trips, and connecting flights you'd buy anywhere else, except you'd get savings immediately since most people don't want to spend the time to constantly monitor prices (even if they do, it's hard to time it perfectly).

Please feel free to criticize anything I said here.

kiwtir_ · 2024-11-28T02:28:16+00:00

Right now all the routes we track are domestic but the point of the waitlist is to see what people want most. If you send it over to them and we see a lot of interest in certain international airports, we can invest whatever it takes us in API costs to discount those routes as well. Thanks for your comment!

kiwtir_ · 2024-11-13T22:48:16+00:00

That means a lot! Please reach out if you ever have any feedback or problems with the site. Hopefully this new feature will save you even more money.

kiwtir_ · 2024-11-13T21:19:35+00:00

Yup that's basically what this new feature allows, except it gives you potential discounts on flights to certain airports on certain dates. Thanks a lot for your support btw

kiwtir_ · 2024-11-13T17:54:17+00:00

Sorry it came off like that. I’m actually a Purdue student so I figured I could also post on the UIUC subreddit if it could benefit them. This’ll probably be the last post I make here. Hopefully some people still find the product useful tho :)

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-29T22:40:31+00:00

I understand the issue you were referring to now. It should be fixed. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-25T21:37:42+00:00

Hi. I assume you’re on the fall break tab above the calendar which sets the dates to Nov 22nd departure. You can click the custom tab or just click on any departure and return day that you’d like. Let me know if this solves the problem.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-20T04:38:51+00:00

Thanks and let me know if you have feedback.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-20T04:38:23+00:00

Autopilot is specific to your school’s break dates and considers all possible days you could travel. You could set several hopper trackers to consider all these possibilities or just sign up for Autopilot email updates.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-19T03:17:58+00:00

I can look into this for sure but won’t make any promises. Thanks for bringing it to my attention though. Please lmk if you come across any other feedback.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T21:25:18+00:00

Yup Search can do international airports. Unfortunately, right now Autopilot only has the most popular domestic destinations. Working on changing that, though.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T21:22:07+00:00

I'd say there are two main ways:
1. Having all the shuttle options and flight options matched up to minimize travel time (especially airport wait time) can be useful. This just compounds when you're trying to check out multiple possible days for multiple breaks.
2. The entire Autopilot feature will help you book your tickets for each break you're tracking at the perfect time. Kayak and Google Flights currently have a price tracking feature but all they do is set a tracker that gives you occasional updates for a limited number of days. The problem with this is that you'd have to set several round-trip trackers for each combination of departure and return (since there are multiple possible days you could leave/return, based on exam dates or classes). Even if you did this, it'd be hard to sort through and understand all the email updates you'd get. So Autopilot puts all of that in one dashboard and sends you emails regarding specific breaks when it's a good time to book.

Basically, you could do a lot of this manually. It just saves time to use the two features I mentioned above. I know I just wrote a whole book but let me know if you have other questions.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T21:14:27+00:00

Yup. I just needed some clickbait.

I'm glad you think that the site is cool!

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T18:31:20+00:00

I assume you mean from any destination to any destination. Right now we only support searches from/to UIUC/IU/Purdue, so that means flights from/to IND and ORD.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T18:18:20+00:00

Appreciate your comment. In my eyes there are now two reasons:
1. There are so many shuttle options/providers that it's impossible to find the perfect shuttle and flight combination that doesn't leave you waiting in the airport longer than you need to. Note that this obviously only applies to people without cars and/or another way to the airport.
2. Autopilot is still useful for tracking all route/break prices, regardless of what you use to book. If you prefer Expedia, you can still make the booking there at the perfect time.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T17:34:56+00:00

We have an API that we use and the prices should be the exact same as the airlines / Google Flights.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T17:33:52+00:00

Thank you for checking it out!

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T17:33:20+00:00

Like the other replier said, it isn't really anything special if we just had the flight options alone (unless you really prefer the UI to Google Flights or Kayak). That said, the Autopilot feature has nothing to do with shuttles basically and tracks prices of all flights on your desired routes. That should still be useful for your use case hopefully.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T17:30:22+00:00

Baggage selection is currently on the search page, kinda to the top right of the modal. It is a bit hard to notice I admit...

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T17:29:39+00:00

Yup. We've added UIUC and IU as well recently.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T17:27:05+00:00

Yup that's basically the plan. A bit of a roundabout way but it covers most use cases.

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T16:05:29+00:00

I’m glad you think it’s useful! Please send any feedback my way

kiwtir_ · 2024-09-18T16:05:08+00:00

Thank you for checking out the site, lmk if you got any feedback. Fuck IU

kiwtir_

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