| I would say the lack of limitations is the problem. Quoting from my notes for my 2006 conference talk: The Easter Island west of Chile has
- One flight departing today, one flight arriving today. Friday there
was no flight at all.
- fares touching Easter Island covering this flight: 1432 published,
160,000 constructed Apparently I didn't count fare-by-rule fares. Yes they have 2 mechanisms to make up fares during the query. The rules are complicated. In fact Turing-complete. So you can have unlimited number of fares, too. "400x400 itineraries" means you construct 400 ways to get to the destination and 400 ways to get back, for a round-trip which is what most people search for. So if you go Boston-Hamburg all the intermediate airports cause variants. The same flight at a different time is different and causes a new itinerary. So this is really not as deep a search as you would think. When I abused my testing rack at ITA to search for flights home (Hamburg), I used 3500x3500 itineraries (using a specially compiled QPX with limits raised). Rarely but occasionally it would find obscure flights that would make it cheaper, flights not covered by regular limits. |