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/

The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript
107•subset•2h ago•55 comments

Firewood Splitting Simulator

https://screen.toys/firewood/
198•memalign•4d ago•69 comments

UK set to announce social media ban for under-16s

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-set-announce-social-media-34119132
69•beejiu•33m ago•63 comments

FarOutCompany

https://faroutcompany.com/
31•bookofjoe•1h ago•3 comments

Caddy compatibility for zeroserve: 3x throughput and 70% lower latency

https://su3.io/posts/zeroserve-caddy-compat
40•losfair•1h ago•9 comments

Lisp's Influence on Ruby

https://blog.tacoda.dev/lisps-influence-on-ruby-6a54f1a7740e
105•tacoda•3d ago•7 comments

No, everyone is not using AI for everything

https://gabrielweinberg.com/p/people-are-consuming-ai-like-they
10•yegg•39m ago•0 comments

Rio de Janeiro's city government model Rio3.5 beats Qwen3.7 in recent benchmarks

https://twitter.com/zenmagnets/status/2065796012820848699
38•lucasfcosta•45m ago•10 comments

Formal Methods and the Future of Programming

https://blog.janestreet.com/formal-methods-at-jane-street-index/?from_theconsensus=1
31•eatonphil•2h ago•5 comments

A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown – CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/12/climate/cold-blob-atlantic-amoc-ocean-circulation
35•tambourine_man•43m ago•17 comments

The only scalable delete in Postgres is DROP TABLE

https://planetscale.com/blog/the-only-scalable-delete
16•hollylawly•2d ago•0 comments

How to Earn a Billion Dollars

https://paulgraham.com/earn.html
157•kingstoned•3h ago•412 comments

Free SQL→ER diagram tool, runs in the browser, nothing uploaded

https://sqltoerdiagram.com/
290•robhati•11h ago•57 comments

How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/06/14/how-did-atari-apply-side-art-to-arcade-cabinets/
27•msephton•2h ago•4 comments

Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

https://juniperspring.org/posts/honda-evil-valet/
350•librick•14h ago•80 comments

Extinction-Level Capitalism

https://matthewbutterick.com/extinction-level-capitalism.html
21•laurex•54m ago•7 comments

KPMG pulls report on AI usage due to apparent hallucinations

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/13/kpmg-pulls-report-on-ai-usage-due-to-apparent-hallucinations/
31•Brajeshwar•1h ago•2 comments

Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu4373
5•zdw•22h ago•0 comments

Dangerous hormone-disrupting chemicals found in US breast milk samples

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/14/breast-milk-research-chemicals
16•andsoitis•37m ago•1 comments

Historic co-determination helps monasteries navigate digital change

https://phys.org/news/2026-05-historic-monasteries-digital-countries.html
59•indynz•2d ago•40 comments

Don't trust large context windows

https://garrit.xyz/posts/2026-05-06-dont-trust-large-context-windows
188•computersuck•9h ago•137 comments

FreeOberon – Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language

https://github.com/kekcleader/FreeOberon
127•peter_d_sherman•3d ago•55 comments

Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/conversations-with-a-six-year-old-on-functional-programm...
13•downbad_•1h ago•2 comments

Pac-Man, but you're the ghost

https://garrit.xyz/posts/2026-06-13-pac-man-but-you-re-the-ghost
157•mindracer•11h ago•71 comments

EU Commission looking at practical consequences of Anthropic decision

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/eu-commission-looking-practical-consequences-anthropic-d...
13•tartoran•51m ago•0 comments

Tribblix: The retro Illumos distribution

http://tribblix.org/
64•naturalmovement•10h ago•21 comments

Windows 1.0 and the WinAPI, 40 Years Later

https://medium.com/@stassaf.uae/windows-1-0-and-the-winapi-40-years-later-abaf64832918
41•jhack•2d ago•31 comments

Arch Linux AUR Hit by Another Wave of Now More Sophisticated Malware Attack

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-AUR-More-Malware
27•ImJamal•1h ago•5 comments

Cloud-based LLM gold rush is ending

https://automato.substack.com/p/apple-wwdc-and-the-fable-5-embargo
11•andrewstetsenko•27m ago•0 comments

Python 3.14 garbage collection rigamarole

https://theconsensus.dev/p/2026/06/06/python-3-14-garbage-collection-rigamarole.html
78•eatonphil•2d ago•51 comments