{"id":1174,"date":"2019-03-15T10:06:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T15:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/luxumbraque.com\/-\/?p=1174"},"modified":"2019-03-15T12:00:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T17:00:27","slug":"why-cant-airline-search-engines-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/luxumbraque.com\/-\/2019\/03\/15\/why-cant-airline-search-engines-search\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Can’t Airline Search Engines Search?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s the classic complaint: “You had one<\/i> job…” (and you didn’t do it!) Airline search engines have only one job: to search for flights. Yet they don’t do it. Why not?<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Nick at Frequent Miler<\/a> observed that United’s search engine misses a huge portion of flights when you ask it to search from major metropolitan areas: “United search tool doesn’t include ‘all airports’ (even when it says it does)<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Last year, I noticed that Delta will flag a fare as “lowest” even if there’s a lower fare right there on the page: “Why Can\u2019t Delta Do Basic Math?<\/a>”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Why Can’t Delta do Basic Math?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And there are many more examples. The general pattern is this: If you ask an airline’s website to search all flights, it will, instead, search some flights.<\/p>\n

I can only think of three reasons for incomplete search results like these:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Searching is so difficult that the airlines can’t pull it off;\n
  2. Searching is not difficult, but the airlines are incompetent; or\n
  3. The airlines are purposely deceptive.\n<\/ol>\n

    Having made it as far as graduate school in computer science, I reject the first possibility. We know how to search. And third party search engines seem to get it right.<\/p>\n

    Could it be incompetence? Maybe. My Delta example is pretty egregious. There’s a high fare marked “lowest fare,” and then, right there next to it on the page, is a lower fare. (It’s like when I sometimes get assigned the same seat as someone else. How does that<\/i> happen?)<\/p>\n

    <\/ins><\/div>