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/

QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/quadrf-can-spot-drones-and-see-wifi-through-my-wall/
425•speckx•8h ago•166 comments

Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-secret-theft/
329•stock_toaster•3h ago•149 comments

Einstein's relativity rules chemical bonds in heavy elements, new research shows

https://www.brown.edu/news/2026-07-09/chemical-bonds-relativity
42•hhs•1h ago•18 comments

GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra produces proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture [pdf]

https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/04d1d1e4-bc75-476a-97cf-49055cd98d31/cdc_proof.pdf
312•scrlk•5h ago•257 comments

The tech of 'Terminator 2' – an oral history (2017)

https://vfxblog.com/2017/08/23/the-tech-of-terminator-2-an-oral-history/
155•markus_zhang•7h ago•65 comments

New York City to to ban deceptive subscription practices

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/10/new-york-city-deceptive-subscriptions-ban
371•randycupertino•5h ago•198 comments

Combustion engine web-based simulator

https://combustionlab.net
104•mytuny•5d ago•47 comments

Inference Optimization for MiMo v2.5: Pushing Hybrid SWA Efficiency to the Limit

https://mimo.xiaomi.com/blog/mimo-v2-5-inference
29•theanonymousone•3d ago•6 comments

Good Tools Are Invisible

https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2026/07/10/good-tools-are-invisible/
342•theanonymousone•13h ago•156 comments

Computation as a universal and fundamental concept

https://ergo.org/courses/computation-as-a-universal-and-fundamental-concept
78•simonpure•8h ago•64 comments

SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/spacex-wants-to-launch-100000-more-starlink-sate...
44•CrankyBear•6h ago•134 comments

Moss (YC F25) Is Hiring

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/moss/jobs/52LnqLQ-software-engineer-sdk
1•srimalireddi•3h ago

Alternate clock designs and time systems

https://serialc.github.io/altClocks/
86•ethanpil•4d ago•52 comments

Late Bronze Age Collapse

https://acoup.blog/2026/01/30/collections-the-late-bronze-age-collapse-a-very-brief-introduction/
313•dmonay•12h ago•220 comments

AI 2040: Plan A

https://ai-2040.com/
117•kschaul•1d ago•88 comments

War Atlas: An interactive cartography of every named war in human history

https://waratlas.org
105•NaOH•6h ago•48 comments

Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/spider-silk-loses-top-spot-natures-strongest-material-s...
150•simonebrunozzi•7h ago•121 comments

Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine

https://github.com/dicroce/wyrm_math
45•dicroce•1d ago•6 comments

Ask HN: Are systems ready for the first negative leap second?

48•Asmod4n•4d ago•56 comments

After 7 years in production, Scarf has reluctantly moved away from Haskell

https://avi.press/posts/2026-07-10-after-7-years-in-production-scarf-has-reluctantly-moved-away-f...
66•aviaviavi•10h ago•78 comments

A love letter to flashcards

https://lesleylai.info/en/flashcards/
120•surprisetalk•8h ago•76 comments

Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15956159/Incredible-lost-city-discovered-Egypts-des...
145•Bender•4d ago•70 comments

In Emacs, everything looks like a service

http://yummymelon.com/devnull/in-emacs-everything-looks-like-a-service.html
227•kickingvegas•15h ago•98 comments

Preemption is GC for memory reordering (2019)

https://pvk.ca/Blog/2019/01/09/preemption-is-gc-for-memory-reordering/
4•mpweiher•2d ago•0 comments

Show HN: Reviving my 2001 college band with AI

https://www.fadingmaize.com
48•jacobgraf•1d ago•55 comments

How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

https://casp.ac/reports/ai-enabled-terrorism
163•imustachyou•5h ago•139 comments

Successful Companies Go Blind

https://ianreppel.org/how-successful-companies-go-blind/
185•speckx•10h ago•63 comments

GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in ALL Linux distributions for 15 years

https://nebusec.ai/research/ionstack-part-2/
22•djfergus•3h ago•5 comments

The Clouds of Hiroshima

https://doomsdaymachines.net/p/the-clouds-of-hiroshima
34•handfuloflight•3d ago•24 comments

Show HN: Frugon – Find which LLM calls a cheaper model could handle (local, MIT)

https://github.com/Rodiun/frugon
52•jarodrh•3d ago•10 comments