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/

Scientists reverse brain aging, with a nasal spray

https://stories.tamu.edu/news/2026/04/14/scientists-reverse-brain-aging-with-a-nasal-spray/
181•cybermango•3h ago•69 comments

Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

https://github.com/ammaarreshi/Generals-Mac-iOS-iPad/tree/main
386•asronline•7h ago•147 comments

GPT-5.5 Codex reasoning-token clustering may be leading to degraded performance

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/30364
171•maille•5h ago•54 comments

Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

https://software.annas-archive.gl/AnnaArchivist/annas-archive/-/work_items/234
363•Cider9986•10h ago•195 comments

Jellyfish can heal wounds in minutes. Scientists want their secrets

https://www.mbl.edu/news/jellyfish-can-heal-wounds-minutes-scientists-want-their-secrets
52•hhs•4h ago•12 comments

Leaking YouTube creators' private videos

https://javoriuski.com/post/youtube
513•javxfps•10h ago•285 comments

Better Models: Worse Tools

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/7/4/better-models-worse-tools/
111•leemoore•7h ago•35 comments

Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)

https://peteris.rocks/blog/htop/
413•theanonymousone•15h ago•53 comments

Return of the Nigerian Prince Redux: Beware Book Club and Book Review Scams

https://writerbeware.blog/2025/09/19/return-of-the-nigerian-prince-redux-beware-book-club-and-boo...
19•Anon84•2h ago•4 comments

Potential session/cache leakage between workspace instances or consumer accounts

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/74066
278•chatmasta•13h ago•128 comments

Zig: All Package Management Functionality Moved from Compiler to Build System

https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-06-30
151•tosh•10h ago•29 comments

Meta's Un-Stable Signature

https://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1098-Metas-Un-Stable-Signature.html
29•ementally•3d ago•1 comments

Atomic Force Microscope high-speed video, stainless etching, bacteria, and more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyIQkqBXhS0
13•mhb•2d ago•0 comments

Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/albert-camus-reflections-on-the-guillotine
30•halperter•3h ago•7 comments

Efficacy and Safety of Psilocybin in Treatment-Resistant Major Depression

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2846478
5•cpncrunch•1h ago•0 comments

University of Oxford Is Older Than the Aztec Empire and Other Facts of History

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/university-oxford-older-than-aztec-empire-other-facts-w...
9•thunderbong•24m ago•0 comments

Drone Autonomy Crash Course

https://www.cggonzalez.com/blog/index.html
12•cgg1•3h ago•1 comments

Can you build a recognizable World Map in under 500 bytes?

https://www.experimentlog.com/blog/building-a-world-map-with-only-500-bytes
29•iweczek•3d ago•39 comments

Drone Physics

https://iahmed.me/post/drone-physics/
91•wrxd•4d ago•25 comments

Protocol Prying: Vulnerability Research in AirDrop and Quick Share

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26967
18•logickkk1•6h ago•1 comments

Egg consumption inversely correlated with Alzheimer's

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42002260/
45•natbennett•2h ago•22 comments

Windows CE Dreamcast Community Edition (wince-dc)

https://github.com/maximqaxd/wince-dc
95•msephton•12h ago•19 comments

The Vespa at 80

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/vespa-italy-postwar-design-9.7252641
148•cf100clunk•3d ago•138 comments

Mapping with In-Memory Layers to Reduce LLM Overload

https://ridgetext.com/blog/mapbox-llm-composition
10•Buckwheat469•3h ago•0 comments

CloudsLinker: Move and sync files across 50 cloud services

https://app.cloudslinker.com/login
9•janandonly•2d ago•1 comments

Verizon is about to break our Gizmo watches

https://www.jefftk.com/p/verizon-is-about-to-break-our-watches
145•jefftk•9h ago•88 comments

Fable created novel 4D splat format

https://adamraudonis.github.io/splats4D/
120•adamraudonis•11h ago•45 comments

It's not me, it's the compiler

https://parsa.wtf/cast/
69•SVI•3d ago•11 comments

BareMetal RAM Dumper – Bare-metal x86 tool for Cold Boot Attack experiments

https://github.com/pIat0n/BareMetal-RAM-Dumper
58•liffik•9h ago•40 comments

Neural Render Proxies for Interactive and Differentiable Lighting

https://studios.disneyresearch.com/2026/07/01/neural-render-proxies-for-interactive-and-different...
54•tobr•3d ago•9 comments