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Ask HN: Can someone please start groupon for airlines?

19 points by vgurgov ↗ HN
Hi HN,

Here is one free startup idea for you. Groupon/Airbnb/Ubercab/whatever for airlines tickets. Not another cheap ticket search engine plz. If somebody will do it I will be lifetime customer (i even ready to become investor if you need some money and have right team)

Airlines tickets sales is one of the biggest e-commerce businesses. I know its very tou to disrupt spaces but i am 100% sure that someone who will be able to do this will be huge winner.

I am frequent flyer and fly between Europe and US/within US few times/month. My schedule is almost always flexible and I am always looking for cheap tickets. There are almost always free seats in plane. I am sure airlines will be interested is some SMART way of selling them for discounted prices.

Most of startups are just search engines for ticket prices. What I am suggesting might be more like demand data analysis => discounted offerings generation thing. Another way might be doing something like crowdsourcing charter jet flights. Anyways I am sure this space still waiting to be disrupted.

16 comments

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mgkimsal
priceline was a good start at this years ago, but failed to disrupt as much as I'd thought it would. You're typically buying only one ticket at a time.

What they could do is expand to groups. For example, if I could create a signup site for a particular trip (RDU->LAX) and get X people to purchase from my site, we'd all get the deal at $Y instead of $Z.

I think this would throw off the current models airlines live by. If you and I each buy the same ticket on the same route, even just a few hours apart, we may pay different prices, because of the complex pricing models airlines use. Group/demand pricing would seem to make sense, but it may shake up the status quo too much, and since they own the data and the product for sale, there's little that could be done. I suspect groupon may be in a financial position to approach airlines about this to test some ideas, but it's a pretty big change to existing systems for any airline to 'experiment' at that level.

vgurgov
good points. i know this is going to be very tough sale to airlines but still believe that if someone will be able to offer some win-win deal and partner with some (or maybe just one) airlines it might be huge.

airlines want to make more money and sell more seats, while not decreasing current sales. while some segment of buyers are interested in cheap deals - and have very flexible schedule. I am sure someone can find some smart scheme to balance these needs in win-win solution. This may be "last second" un-guaranteed purchases of free seats on flights, group purchases or something else.

Anyway these are just my 2c, i dont have any experience in this field, but if someone here does - i'd love to use this kind of site.

chrislomax
I don't think this would work mgkimsal makes a good point. When you ring up to get a price for a ticket from a reseller, they actively log into the airlines system to get the current price. The price could change from minute to minute based on supply and demand.

The problem you have with group buying tickets to airlines is that they need to sell those tickets, you cannot reserve space without paying for it. An airline would not set you aside x amount of tickets in the hope that you sell it.

I have done a website for a company that offers group tickets to resellers, they deal with BA. BA do not deal with their own group tickets, they use a company who sort all the headache out. That company take the order on behalf of resellers and they can reserve the space.

To make this work, you would need to ensure you booked months in advance and you could actually fulfil the ticket needs if you do get enough people on board.

I like the idea, the logistics would be a nightmare though

vgurgov
i am not saying its easy. in fact i think its actually very-very hard thing to do. but if someone can do this - this is something i am willing to pay for. and i am sure its doable in some way, but not sure if new startup can do this or it will be a feature of some big player (kayak, groupon, etc..)
chrislomax
I think it would have to be someone with some real credentials, not just in airlines but in general.

I personally think you would not get a welcome reception from airlines either as they try make as much as possible from each ticket so anything that allowed a group of people that were going to get on that flight anyway to save money would not go in your favour.

You could possibly do it on less popular flights where they do not always get full?

Like I say, I am not putting the idea down, I love things like this. I feel this would literally be a 24/7 job though.

pathik
Effective price discrimination is a very tough goal to achieve. The airlines try their best to price discriminate as best as they can, to maximize their profits, but it's not always possible to sell all tickets in a flight at whatever price consumers are willing to pay. Everyone would wait till the very end then to book tickets.
smackfu
How does it make the airline more money to sell you a ticket at a lower price? Your question is framed in terms of a consumer that is already buying tickets at the current price; you need to find the consumer that isn't buying tickets at the current price.
wmboy
Or you could be getting consumers who are already buying tickets to buy more tickets. For instance, I average one international flight a year. If I could get flights for cheaper that number would most probably increase...
RealGeek
Airlines try to cater that with frequent flyer programs.
petervandijck
They don't. Frequent flyer programs aren't made to make you fly more, they're made to make you book with the same airline. There's a difference.
bobds
I think the best way to go about something like this, is charter flights.

http://www.charterflights.co.uk/faq.php?faqID=1#Q1

If you can get enough people to fill up the whole airplane, you can charter the whole flight. Then you can sell any excess seats to companies like charterflights.co.uk.

olegious
I think this needs to be looked at a bit differently- instead of focusing on the ticket buyers (travelers), focus on the airlines. Help them fill those last minute seats, the ones that are still not sold 24 hours (or even less?) before a flight. I'm sure they'd want an easy way to put butts in those empty seats- an app that 1. notifies them when a seat is unsold 24 hours before a flight and 2. allows them to easily put it on sale to the last minute consumer. You may even be able to charge the airline for this service, instead of making money off a commission.
[dead] jameshighsmith
You could apply this to tickets in general, not just airlines. GroupOn makes money selling bulk services at a discount. A group ticketing service would have a group discount when x people buy the tickets. If and only if the number of tickets are purchased then the discount would be applied.

For flights you would agree with the airline to buy 10,000 tickets on their carrier at a discount. Their risk is reduced and you have an incentive to switch people from other carriers to this carrier. This seems like a win win for the carrier.

aginn
I am not sure this would work because the airlines industry would rather have the seat be empty honesty. I have flown a lot and also have used passes. The airlines would rather have an empty seat than sell it for 50 bucks on a 200 dollar flight.

Plus, the airlines industry cannot afford this type of disruption. They are already holding on for dear life (the American based carriers at least)

What would be more interesting is being able to exchange tickets on a secondary listing but this would have to be a corporate venture.

abbasmehdi
"The airlines would rather have an empty seat than sell it for 50 bucks on a 200 dollar flight."

Makes no sense, the marginal cost of an addittional passenger isn't even a bag of peanuts anymore, why wouldn't they want your money, even if its $10? Plus luggage fee. I'm sure you have a valid reason, so please share.

imx
I actually applied with a similar idea to summer batch and didn't get through. I think YC doesn't consider this viable. Besides, Google is probably going to be the one to dominate the space with their $700M ITA acquisition from last summer (the deal was cleared by court a month ago). Watch this video: http://www.google.com/press/ita/