Comment by PaulHoule

Comment by PaulHoule 2 days ago

42 replies

An airline reservation system has to be perfect (no slack in today's skies), a hotel reservation can be 98% perfect so long as there is some slack and you don't mind putting somebody up in a better room than they paid for from time to time.

A social media system doesn't need to be perfect at all. It was clear to me from the beginning that Bluesky's feeds aren't very fast, not like they are crazy slow, but if it saves money or effort it's no problem if notifications are delayed 30s.

darknavi 2 days ago

It's funny because from my experience airline systems are very imperfect (timing wise).

I (unwisely) tried to purchase an Icelandair ticket via the Chase travel portal. I would get a reservation number, go buy seats on Icelandair's website, and a few days later the entire reservation would vanish into the ether. Rinse and repeat 3x.

I can't remember the exact verbiage, but basically tickets can be "reserved" and "booked". One means the ticket is allocated, and one means the ticket is actually paid for. I eventually sat on the phone with an executive support person as they booked the ticket and got it all the way through. It turns out Chase reserves a ticket on an airline but as an SLA of ~3 days to actually pay for the ticket. Icelandair's requires a ticket to be paid with in 24 hours, so it was timing out.

  • scarface_74 2 days ago

    (Replying to both you and the parent poster)

    Airlines are far from perfect. They overbook flights and sometimes have to ask people leave and pay them for the inconvenience. My wife and I once got $1000 a piece and a hotel and food voucher to volunteer to take a flight the next day on a layover in Atlanta.

    As far as your particular situation, the number one rule of using a third party portal to book flights or hotels is - don’t.

    I understand that Iceland Air is not a transfer partner of Chase. But even in that case, I would just wait to use my points until I could use a transfer partner.

    On the earning side if paying cash, the difference between 2x/3x points when booking directly and 5x when going through the portal just isn’t worth the risk.

    • ericpauley 2 days ago

      Overbooking is not a mistake, though. People miss flights for many reasons, and the airlines predict this with impressive accuracy, to the point that they can afford to pay tremendous sums for being wrong and yet still come out ahead.

rconti 2 days ago

Especially for a free service!

Think about other ad-supported sites. If you're an engineer working on an ad-supported product, the perfect consistency you strive for in your code is not the product. The product is the sum of all of the content the user sees. And the costs of the tradeoffs you make are paid for by ads.

Am I willing to see 10x more ads for perfect consistency? Definitely not.

singleshot_ 2 days ago

Does the fact that an airline booking system must be perfect explain why so many flights are overbooked or cancelled?

  • rconti 2 days ago

    No, overbooking is a business decision justified by the fact that, statistically, not all passengers will actually show up for their flight, and lower load factors cost money.

    • josefresco 2 days ago

      What is the "no show" rate?

      • nightpool 2 days ago

        A 2019 study of 5 European airports in 2019 had no-show rates of 14.4%: https://www.ozion-airport.com/product/comparative-analysis-n...

        However, my understanding is that airlines have much more sophisticated per-flight and per-passenger models that calculate the predicted no-show factor based on the historical rates for that particular route (e.g. you're more likely to get more no-shows in business class flying from NYC to SF compared to holiday travelers with a reservation on the Florida Keys)

      • artee_49 2 days ago

        I think you'll have to pay a team millions to figure that out, it is unlikely to be a static rate but rather decided based on multiple traits like time of year, time of flight, distance of flight, cost of ticket, etc.

  • [removed] 2 days ago
    [deleted]
nonrandomstring 2 days ago

> airline reservation system has to be perfect (no slack in today's skies)

The slack just gets moved. Airlines oversell by about 8 percent. All systems need some slack in them. Isn't that kinda Bob's Law or something?

gamedever 2 days ago

Miscommunication leads to bad outcomes. One missed message out of order could easily lead to a fight, a lawsuit, a flash mob, threats of violence - that then need to be taken seriously, swatting, DOXxing, etc...

Msg 1: I hate ___insert_controversal_person_category_here___

Msg 2: Is the kind of statement that really sets me off

Msg 1 has a very different meaning if you don't see Msg 2.

  • pjc50 2 days ago

    This can already happen without help from the platform.

    • gamedever 2 days ago

      Sure, but that doesn't mean the platform should make it worse.

      Trying to have a conversation on flaky platform is hell.