frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning [pdf] (2003)

http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf
76•rochoa•1y ago

Comments

buildsjets•1y ago
This is well over 20 years old and is based on pre 9/11 flight data. I would suspect that a lot has changed since then. So proceed with no caution at all.
gwern•1y ago
Since these sorts of things usually only get more and more complex over time, I would guess that it's all still true, but much more so.
throw0101b•1y ago
(2003)
throw0101b•1y ago
The PDF was produced by ITA, which famously used Common Lisp:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software

From 2001, a message from the same author as the linked paper:

> (Here's an email Carl de Marcken of ITA Software sent to a friend, describing their experiences using Lisp in one of the software industry's most demanding applications.)

* https://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html

Qem•1y ago
Are there any public, open, comprehensive datasets on flights?
dieselerator•1y ago
> Are there any public, open, comprehensive datasets on flights?

Airlines and commercial aviation operators schedule their own flights. That is a dynamic schedulle. So, perhaps there is no "comprehensive data set".

However, FlightAware makes publicly available scheduled and completed flight data over many routes in the USA. You can search by route and get a list of flights.

Flight information includes filed departure time, route of flight, and speed. For completed flights actual time, altitude, and route is shown. For example, a search on the route Dallas/Fort Worth to Austin lists 45 flights.

I hope that helps.

foundart•1y ago
A very interesting dive into, as the title says, the computational complexity of air travel planning. Graph algorithms with lots of complexity added due to the wide variety of fare conditions that airlines have dreamt up over the years.

The article may be from 2003 but I would call it an evergreen. While I imagine some of the details have changed since then, I suspect that the complexity has only grown since then.

foundart•1y ago
It makes me wonder: Would an airline that drastically simplified its fares be more likely to appear in flight search results?

Simplifying the fares would make it less computationally expensive and, in theory, could take fewer steps to answer a flight planning query.

Imagine a flight search planner that, say, fanned out N airline-specific workers when handling a planning query and then displayed to the user whatever results it got back within some time limit. If FooAir had simple fares, the FooAir searcher would likely run faster than searchers for other airlines. Thus it would be more likely to return results for more queries, assuming the deadline is fairly tight because of usability metrics. (People don't tend to stick around waiting for slow results.)

sjburt•1y ago
At least a few years ago (~2014), the fare search was actually nearly instant, but all major airfare search sites added a delay because customers had the impression they were getting a better deal when they had to wait. It seems like the delay has been dialed back lately.
teleforce•1y ago
This is a very popular article that get submitted every now and then (nearly every year) [1].

I think this kind of problem would be a very nice for logic, optimization and constraint programming that probably can be solved with modern tools like Google OR-Tool or Monash University MiniZinc [1],[2],[3].

[1] Past:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Computational%20Complexity%20o...

[2] Logic, Optimization, and Constraint Programming: A Fruitful Collaboration - John Hooker - CMU (2023) [video]:

https://www.youtube.com/live/TknN8fCQvRk

[3] Google OR-Tools:

https://developers.google.com/optimization

[4] MiniZinc:

https://www.minizinc.org/

OpenJDK Interim Policy on Generative AI

https://openjdk.org/legal/ai
18•blenderob•43m ago•2 comments

RFC 8890 – The Internet is for End Users (2020)

https://mnot.net/blog/2020/for_the_users
6•notarobot123•12m ago•0 comments

Gpiozero Flow

https://bennuttall.com/blog/2026/07/gpiozero-flow/
81•benn_88•2h ago•22 comments

Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2

https://www.grumpygamer.com/twp2_announce/
85•alberto-m•5h ago•28 comments

AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-s-top-startups-are-barely-publishing-their-research
541•YeGoblynQueenne•15h ago•279 comments

Why Don't People Use Formal Methods?

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/why-dont-people-use-formal-methods/
10•Thom2503•58m ago•1 comments

Carolina Cloud pays SOFR on unused prepaid credits

https://docs.carolinacloud.io/organizations/prepaid-interest/
40•bojangleslover•3h ago•27 comments

Agent-Manager: A Tmux TUI for Running Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode

https://github.com/YoanWai/agent-manager
45•yoanwaidev•3h ago•29 comments

Mbodi AI (YC P25) Is Hiring Robotics/Research Engineers

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/mbodi-ai/jobs
1•chitianhao•1h ago

How Old Is Ann?

https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2026/07/29/how-old-is-ann/
6•ibobev•1h ago•0 comments

The coolest use for the Vision Pro

https://christianselig.com/2026/07/vision-pro-house/
747•robbiet480•16h ago•286 comments

GCC steering committee announces AI policy

https://lwn.net/Articles/1086041/
117•arto•1h ago•115 comments

What it means for an API to be RESTful

https://en.andros.dev/blog/9761fd2e/what-it-means-for-an-api-to-be-restful/
7•ibobev•1h ago•1 comments

The Glass Famine

https://edconway.substack.com/p/the-glass-famine
45•baud147258•2d ago•14 comments

Why Is Everyone Trying to Build a Solid-State Battery?

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-is-everyone-trying-to-build-a
3•crescit_eundo•41m ago•1 comments

LLM Honeypot

https://llm2human.pages.dev/
326•8thom•14h ago•92 comments

The first watch featuring computer functions

https://by.seiko-design.com/140th/en/topic/58.html
48•stefanv•4d ago•21 comments

Go LLM SDK for streaming, tool-calling AI backends (plus frontend React lib)

https://github.com/grafana/ai-sdk
11•matryer•1h ago•0 comments

Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/07/google-play-age-signals-api-safer-experiences.html
157•dmantis•3h ago•183 comments

CosmosEscape: Taking over Every Database in Azure Cosmos DB

https://www.wiz.io/blog/cosmosescape-taking-over-every-database-in-azure-cosmos-db
4•uvuv•1h ago•1 comments

The Productivity Mirage

https://frantic.im/mirage/
296•msephton•14h ago•131 comments

I made a game where you build a CPU from logic gates

https://select.supply/game/chipbuilder
5•laurentiurad•1h ago•3 comments

Keychron announces first open-source firmware for gaming mice

https://www.digitalfoundry.net/news/2026/07/keychron-announces-first-open-source-firmware-for-gam...
410•JLO64•20h ago•168 comments

ChatGPT, Roblox to Fall Under Strictest EU Rules for Platforms

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-29/chatgpt-roblox-to-fall-under-strictest-eu-rule...
33•ch_sm•1h ago•15 comments

Concurrency, interactivity, mutability, choose two

https://www.n16f.net/blog/concurrency-interactivity-mutability-choose-two/
49•billiob•3d ago•27 comments

Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Timeline of the July 2026 Incident

https://huggingface.co/blog/agent-intrusion-technical-timeline
421•artninja1988•1d ago•229 comments

The Apple Calculator Language

https://wadetregaskis.com/the-apple-calculator-language/
22•ingve•4h ago•4 comments

The Cold Email

https://zachholman.com/posts/cold-email
252•holman•16h ago•97 comments

Azulejo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azulejo
86•Amorymeltzer•1d ago•30 comments

ESP32-C6 Power Consumption: Arduino vs. Zephyr vs. ESP-IDF Comparison

https://www.qoitech.com/blog/esp32-c6-power-consumption-comparison/
49•hasheddan•4d ago•12 comments