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/

CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

https://innovativegenomics.org/news/crispr-technique-selectively-shreds-cancer-cells/
640•gmays•8h ago•166 comments

Renault: Electric motors with no rare earths

https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/magazine/energy-and-powertrains/all-about-electric-motors-with-no...
48•bestouff•1h ago•10 comments

Swift at Apple: Migrating the TrueType hinting interpreter

https://www.swift.org/blog/migrating-truetype-hinting-to-swift/
98•DASD•3h ago•39 comments

How to setup a local coding agent on macOS

https://ikyle.me/blog/2026/how-to-setup-a-local-coding-agent-on-macos
215•kkm•5h ago•67 comments

Malware developers added nuclear and biological weapons text to to their spyware

https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/2064661778978533571
264•marc__1•1d ago•174 comments

Twenty One Zero-Days in FFmpeg

https://depthfirst.com/research/21-zero-days-in-ffmpeg
24•redbell•1h ago•8 comments

Show HN: Putt.day a daily mini golf game

https://putt.day/
13•ellg•29m ago•3 comments

Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

https://piwodlaiwo.github.io/pirates/
174•iweczek•6h ago•71 comments

H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/congress-just-rushed-through-disastrous-copyright-office-ov...
71•Cider9986•1d ago•8 comments

Palantir loses legal challenge against Swiss investigative magazine

https://www.ft.com/content/7ffcace7-9dc0-4e7e-9912-895ac073f979
128•sschueller•2h ago•22 comments

"Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?"

https://correresmidestino.com/dont-you-just-upload-it-to-chatgpt/
260•speckx•5h ago•218 comments

Launch HN: BitBoard (YC P25) – Analytics Workspace for Agents

https://bitboard.work/
32•arcb•6h ago•18 comments

Slightly reducing the sloppiness of AI generated front end

https://envs.net/~volpe/blog/posts/reduce-slop.html
155•FergusArgyll•8h ago•107 comments

Introduction to UEFI HTTP(s) Boot with QEMU/OVMF

https://blog.yadutaf.fr/2026/06/12/introduction-to-uefi-https-boot-qemu-ovmf/
67•jtlebigot•8h ago•25 comments

/architect: Reduce Fable tokens by 80%, Fable orchestrates/reviews, Codex builds

https://github.com/DanMcInerney/architect-loop
13•DanMcInerney•2h ago•3 comments

Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-did-earth-get-its-oceans-maybe-it-made-them-itself-20260612/
95•ibobev•7h ago•57 comments

Adaptive PDFs

https://sgaud.com/texts/pdf
112•SarthakGaud•6h ago•59 comments

Cosmodial Sky Atlas

https://killedbyapixel.github.io/Cosmodial/
25•memalign•5h ago•4 comments

If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

https://tombedor.dev/human-attention-and-human-effort/
1477•jjfoooo4•1d ago•455 comments

Enhance RAW image processing with Core Image [video]

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/305/
3•trymas•1d ago•1 comments

Maxproof

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.13473
124•ilreb•11h ago•10 comments

There Is Life Before Main in Rust

https://grack.com/blog/2026/06/11/life-before-main/
64•mmastrac•1d ago•17 comments

Hazel (YC W24) Is Hiring a Full Stack Engineer

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/hazel-2/jobs/3epPWgu-full-stack-engineer-ts-sci
1•augustschen•10h ago

I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/i-am-not-a-reverse-centaur
238•ibobev•5h ago•174 comments

Show HN: Turn your name into a tree in an infinite procedural shanshui landscape

https://landscape.bairui.dev/
8•subairui•2d ago•2 comments

Most Beautiful Will Ever Made (1936)

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19360307.2.43
28•cf100clunk•5h ago•12 comments

A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

https://yalereview.org/article/sheila-liming-the-end-of-books
148•mooreds•9h ago•137 comments

Show HN: StackScope – I crawled over 40k indie launches to see what they ship

https://stackscope.dev/
40•datafreak_•7h ago•12 comments

WASI 0.3

https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/WASI-0.3
224•mavdol04•9h ago•86 comments

Mmorpg World of ClaudeCraft, vibe coded with Fable 5

https://worldofclaudecraft.com/
76•beatthatflight•2h ago•78 comments