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/

I gave Opus 5.5 one prompt and six hours to visualize Invisible Cities

https://quesma.com/blog/invisible-cities-one-shot/
100•stared•1h ago•44 comments

“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117395269325940185
424•ent101•8h ago•411 comments

The Slow Formation of Durable Software

https://newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-slow-formation-of-durable-software/
81•benbreen•1d ago•20 comments

Telnet BBS Guide

https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/
25•kmstout•1h ago•9 comments

Claude Haiku 5.5

https://www.anthropic.com/claude-haiku-5-5
951•sfkgtbor•19h ago•446 comments

OpenAI Withdraws 3 Math Papers

https://github.com/openai/math/blob/main/history.md
169•theemathas•5h ago•123 comments

The 15-year search for a band that charted once and vanished

https://shahidhussain.com/writing/search-for-salvage/
229•shahidhussain•3d ago•80 comments

Living off-grid: Hundred Rabbits

https://100r.ca/site/home.html
288•Muhammad523•2d ago•102 comments

Time Travel in Braid (2015)

https://qntm.org/braid
20•Ariarule•3d ago•1 comments

Margaret Hamilton has died

https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007
1821•muglug•16h ago•199 comments

GPT‑6 and Intelligent UI for everyone

https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-for-everyone/
689•joshuawright11•19h ago•401 comments

How did Rosalind Franklin miss the helix in her iconic DNA image? She didn't

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-did-rosalind-franklin-miss-helix-her-iconic-dna-image...
230•pavel_lishin•2d ago•84 comments

Anne Carson wins Nobel Prize in literature 2026

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/oct/08/wins-the-nobel-prize-in-literature-2026
52•sonabinu•1h ago•3 comments

'Jonathan' is the oldest land animal on Earth

https://www.404media.co/oldest-living-land-animal-jonathan-the-tortoise/
200•gumby•17h ago•108 comments

Float and integer arithmetic follow two different paradigms

https://blog.pkh.me/p/49-float-and-integer-arithmetic-follow-two-different-paradigms.html
6•ibobev•2d ago•0 comments

Cleo (Mathematician)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_(mathematician)
200•djoldman•1d ago•39 comments

The Mathocalypse

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10169
296•6bitquant•18h ago•311 comments

Show HN: Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app

https://bigwords.page/
575•SpeakingOfBrad•22h ago•144 comments

Dat-ecosystem: high level applications built on top of P2P protocols

https://dat-ecosystem.org/
29•janandonly•7h ago•13 comments

Bloody Cavemen

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n18/edmund-gordon/bloody-cavemen
22•Thevet•1d ago•3 comments

Sharing AI progress in mathematics

https://openai.com/index/sharing-ai-progress-in-mathematics/
1293•OfficialTurkey•1d ago•1465 comments

In Vienna and Beijing, the first (thorium) nuclear clocks begin to tick

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/07/science/first-nuclear-clocks-thorium-229.html
125•gumby•19h ago•39 comments

New repository settings for configuring pull request access

https://github.blog/changelog/2026-02-13-new-repository-settings-for-configuring-pull-request-acc...
30•Bluestein•2d ago•17 comments

Docker Agent

https://github.com/docker/docker-agent
269•saikatsg•20h ago•124 comments

Classic PC demoscene productions running natively in the browser

https://treylorswift.github.io/demoscene-recomp/web/
117•adunk•7h ago•103 comments

Push ifs up and fors down: The idiom, its algebra, and its limits

https://debasishg.github.io/blog/push-ifs-up-fors-down/
163•speckx•19h ago•74 comments

Animated ASCII Art for Web Pages

https://ascii.rest/
401•turrini•22h ago•71 comments

Why were Victorian elites so effective?

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-seven-vices-of-highly-effective-victorians/
194•karakoram•22h ago•321 comments

Analog Computer Simulator in the Browser

https://pavel-krivanek.github.io/The-Analog-Thing-Simulator/public/
34•adamnemecek•2d ago•12 comments

Port of the TypeScript compiler, checker and lsp to Rust, by LLM

https://github.com/pingdotgg/ts-rust
91•jcbhmr•13h ago•168 comments