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/

We scaled PgBouncer to 4x throughput

https://clickhouse.com/blog/pgbouncer-clickhouse-managed-postgres
63•saisrirampur•1h ago•5 comments

The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]

https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~saito/courses/229A/stewart-svd.pdf
22•wolfi1•1h ago•0 comments

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

https://www.brown.edu/news/2026-07-09/chemical-bonds-relativity
341•hhs•18h ago•148 comments

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/
679•speckx•1d ago•217 comments

Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine (1965) [pdf]

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Good1964.pdf
58•zetalyrae•3h ago•28 comments

Google Search lets creators know more about their reach

https://www.theverge.com/tech/961955/google-search-console-reach-platform-properties
68•herbertl•3d ago•32 comments

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

https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-secret-theft/
1397•stock_toaster•19h ago•756 comments

Book: RISC-V System-on-Chip Design

https://www.amazon.com/RISC-V-Microprocessor-System-Chip-Design/dp/0323994989
49•xlmnxp•2d ago•14 comments

Otary – Image and Geometry Python Library Now Has Tutorials

https://alexandrepoupeau.com/otary/learn/
69•poupeaua•3d ago•1 comments

An update on residential proxies and the scraper situation

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1080822/990a8a5e2d379085/
275•chmaynard•21h ago•292 comments

FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky

https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-just-approved-a-giant-space-mirror-to-test-sunlight-on-demand...
79•reaperducer•4h ago•81 comments

An iroh powered smart fan

https://www.iroh.computer/blog/an-iroh-powered-smart-fan
150•surprisetalk•4d ago•48 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...
258•CrankyBear•22h ago•925 comments

Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

https://www.mixfont.com/ghost-font
115•justswim•7h ago•92 comments

Tropical forests facing increasing risks of exposure to critical temp thresholds

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2528622123
11•littlexsparkee•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Learn by rebuilding Redis, Git, a database from scratch

https://shipthatcode.com
8•acley•3h ago•3 comments

Digital Deli, 1984 book by early PC hackers and enthusiasts

https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/
15•achairapart•3d ago•0 comments

Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-07-07/why-it-s-so-difficult-to-produce-100-american-...
88•helsinkiandrew•7h ago•95 comments

The mask that compiles to nothing: how HotSpots JIT learned to reason about bits

https://questdb.com/blog/jvm-jit-known-bits/
56•rowbin•5d ago•6 comments

Good Tools Are Invisible

https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2026/07/10/good-tools-are-invisible/
511•theanonymousone•1d ago•230 comments

Your code is fast – if you're lucky

https://tiki.li/blog/lucky_code.html
109•chrka•5h ago•75 comments

The Victorian War on Rabies

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/mad-dogs-and-englishmen-winning-war-rabies
5•benbreen•4d ago•2 comments

AI 2040: Plan A

https://ai-2040.com/
352•kschaul•2d ago•419 comments

The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)

https://designyoutrust.com/2018/01/vintage-beauty-soviet-control-rooms/
177•mvdtnz•11h ago•60 comments

Late Bronze Age Collapse

https://acoup.blog/2026/01/30/collections-the-late-bronze-age-collapse-a-very-brief-introduction/
405•dmonay•1d ago•283 comments

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

https://vfxblog.com/2017/08/23/the-tech-of-terminator-2-an-oral-history/
243•markus_zhang•23h ago•84 comments

Silent speech with ultrasound

https://alephneuro.com/blog/silent-speech
92•chrwn•3d ago•21 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...
201•aviaviavi•1d ago•238 comments

Alternate clock designs and time systems

https://serialc.github.io/altClocks/
186•ethanpil•4d ago•104 comments

Combustion engine web-based simulator

https://combustionlab.net
217•mytuny•5d ago•76 comments