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Comment by dmbaggett | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: at ITA Software we put "trap flights" into the data so we could tell when people were using our data without our knowledge. These were flights between totally obscure city pairs, that departed a single day of the year at 3am. (No scheduled flights depart between 0300 and 0359 local time anywhere in the world.)

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https://www.kayak.com/flights/MIA-MGA/2015-12-04

https://www.kayak.com/flights/JFK-SAL/2015-11-12

Avianca and Taca flights appear to be bookable. I could certainly believe that the 3am rule used to be the case though.

You might wish to delete this comment, as it could be used by a competitor to easily filter out such flights…

Given the size of flight schedules datasets and the likelihood that not all the fake flights are that obvious, it's probably easier to buy the data from one of the proprietary schedule data vendors than clean up unauthorised scraped data...

It's probably a trap comment. I'd wager the actual trap data is not as described there.

Above is probably a meta-trap comment. I'd wager the whole discussion exists only to create an impression that this is a crowded space and dissuade potential competitors from entering the market.

Got me!

On the other hand, if you have two traps, and you see them filter out this one, then you may have evidence of malicious intent and be eligible for multiplied damages. (In my totally made up guess at applicable law).

> No scheduled flights depart between 0300 and 0359 local time anywhere in the world.

Yes, they do. Take DXB for example.

Really? The 10+ years I was in the industry there weren't any such flights. I can believe it's changed, though -- that's interesting. Can you give an example flight?

Daily 03:15 Dubai (DXB) 3 06:55 Seattle-Tacoma (SEA)

  EK 227 Non-stop Boeing 777-200LR (77L) 14:40 Effective 2015-07-07 through 2015-10-31

> No scheduled flights depart between 0300 and 0359 local time anywhere in the world.

Why is that? Low demand?

combination of low demand and the fact that for an airlines to have only a single flight at this time it means keeping desk and gate staff for only 1 or 2 flights that probably wont ever be full except peak travel season

Also safety reasons. It is most people's metabolic low point, where mental functioning is quantifiably impaired. So, good idea not to be doing landings and takeoffs during that time.

But a pilot working at 3am is not "most people", and, presumably, would be on a very different metabolic schedule, no?

I'm not super familiar with what ITA does, but what if someone does decide to try and book the flight?

Probably there is no availability in any booking class, so trying to book fails at the inventory check step.

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