NOW find CHEAPEST Ryanair (and not only Ryanair) fares EVER!

Hi guys,

This is not an April 1st joke!

I am developing a little program (not a web-site) that thoroughly searches Ryanair web-site to help us find AT ONCE ALL CHEAPEST FARES AT ANY TIME TO ANY DESTINATION.

SOME FEATURES

* It has lots of search options that extend current functionality of Ryanar web-site. One example is specifying a time period within which to explore all fares. Another is searching only weekends or any other weekdays. Yet another is choosing more than one origin/destination airport.
* It shows real, final prices you are in fact paying
* It can suggest where to travel: it lists cheapest flights sorted by price in e.g. May 2009 from given multiple origin/destination airports
* You can filter and export results to Excel. Filtering can be done by one or two way prices and duration of return trip
* TUIfly is also supported at the moment, and other (only low cost) airlines are coming soon, depending on what people would need
...

COMING SOON

* Searching origin/destination airports within a given radius in km
* Searching entire regions such as "Mediterranean islands", "Spanish coast", "Morocco", "Eastern Europe", including user-defined regions
* Suggesting itineraries with stopovers
* Suggesting interesting, especially cheap and often non intuitive return itineraries with different inbound and outbound flights.

Azuon, it's current codename, is a completely free program. Initially I made it to help myself find cheap deals and create interesting combinations without clicking 100 times on Ryanair's site. Because it's a local program on your computer and not a web-site, Ryanair can't really block Azuon even if it could detect it, so everybody can use it. I am an independent programmer and a frequent flyer and have no commercial interest in Azuon.

You only need a Windows operating system and a working Internet connection, no browsers are required.

Sooo I am providing a download link here in case somebody is interested to check out and test this very first, in fact zeroth version. Comments and suggestions are VERY WELCOME, particularly positive as I am somewhat tired after three months of programming

Download link: [see the last post in this thread]

[Depending on the version of your Windows, the installer may ask you to download Microsoft .NET framework before installing my program. This is done automatically when you click OK. This additional download might last a couple of minutes in case you have a good connection and it's necessary for proper functioning of Azuon]

Tobi

I check this as I was thinking about something similar, but failed after my not enough knownledge about www connections.

Well... it really seems to be a 0.0 version When I'm trying to fire it up the error box shows that "Unhandled esception has occurres in your application
...
Input string was not in a correct format."

Windows XP, Media Center Edition, Version 2002, Service Pack 2
.NET has been installed 2 minutes before your software.
Any suggestions?
The software seems to be good as there is many options and filters, but I have to check it with real data

Yep, there are some bugs which I am not even aware of (such as this one). It needs to be tested on different platforms and computers (especially different regional & language settings - this gives rise to such errors messages). I'll try to reproduce this message immediatelly, right now can you tell me when exactly do you receive it? On start up or when you click Search button? Tell me also what options you selected (days, airports, etc) and what regional settings do you use? (date & time format + decimal separator in particular ==> Check these in Control Panel -> ReEgional Settings). And thanks for trying it out!

Well, the error window is at startup, in almost the same time as software's window appears. After I click continue button there is some informations "loading airports...". So I gues there is something with the path to your dat catalog or something like that. BTW I've installed it into Program Files catalog. There is two catalogs: bin with .exe and .dll as well as dat with one .csv and 3 .dats
So as I'm typing some airport and pressing the green button nothing happen as the "Loading airports..." message is still active.
I haven't try any option yet.
Search button causing alert box with "Please select at least one route"
My regional settings are:
Polish
number: 123 456 789,00
currency: 123 456 789,00 z³
time: 23:41:25
short date: 2009-04-01
long date: 1 kwietnia 2009 (kwietnia means april of course)
location: Poland

What may do this more difficult is that I've bought this laptop in Ireland and primary the whole Win has been instaled as english one. So all menus and whatever are in english but anything else has been turned to polish.
Hope all of this will be helpfull :-)

Thanks for info, it helped me fix the bug (airport.csv file contains geographical coordinates of airports in American format (e.g. 12.34) while your computer uses European formatting of real numbers (12,34). I prefer US style and I chose it on my computer, so I did not notice this, even though I believed I tested exactly for that previously)

Just reinstall the software (link above), now it should work for anyone.

hi how do we know that this software wont damage or infect our PCs? thanks

it still doesnt work.

All I can say is, that I'm using it since that few days and my PC looks normal
It's working cool for now. It colapsed several times, but I'm not sure why yet. Will do more tests soon and let you know Tobi what the story is.
And another thing is that I've installed it on my girlfriend's laptop and it doesn't work at all. First it was because I didn't start it as a admin's start-up, but even if I did it the program hang at the moment of downloading currencies or routes. It may be caused because of internet connection was completly bad but I didn't have time to check it yet (do it in tuesday probable).
Anyway, I give you my full opinion soon, Tobi :-)

its sound a bit too risky for me to install - lets have it on a website! if it was on a website and the public could easily access it then it has huge commercial potential for consumers and advertisers alike ...

Hi guys,

I am on Tenerife now so not much Internet access lately. To answer your question ruinair: There is no way you can know for sure that this software (or any other) is not malicious. The best you can do is scan it with an antivirus program or similar before installing it, or simply trust me.

Regarding conversion to web-site: I´ve been obviously thinking about it, in case somebody is interested to try to start this together, let me know via PM or email. I am not (so) good in web-sites as in regular programming.

Regarding crashes: yes, it crashes sometimes. Never on my computer though, but on my friend´s it does. I don´t know why yet... But it´s in still beta phase!

Tobi

Crashing in half of the searches, but idea is great! Good luck!

OK Tobi, I've tested last few minutes on my gf's computer and those are my conclusions:
- Everything at startup is OK, seems internet connection have just failed last time.
- Searchings on some routes are crashing the app down. Just check for example WRO-NRN route on 01.may-30.jun Firstly I thought it might be because of ü in the airport's name, but same happend on the same period, but with WRO-STN and WRO-PIK routes. So this way I've checked other routes and for example ZAZ-STN is crashing down as well, but for example NRN-KRK is working well, so it's not matter of Weeze itself. Even more, I'm checking WRO-LPL and WRO-STN during 10.apr-14.apr and everything is working well while WRO-NRN crashes. So I have no idea what the story is
Hope it helps after your Teneriffe trip. Have you been on the top of El-Teide?

Hello all

I have found the reason that caused (I hope all) crashes that you reported, thanks to the detailed reports about crashes, especially from amnesia. I was somewhat in a hurry to publish (any version of) Azuon before I leave for my 3-week holiday (I'm back now , so that's why there were quite some bugs.

In this new hot fix I also corrected displaying of non-English characters. In particular displaying of all umlauts should work. Here I'd like to note about a little hidden feature: in Flying From? and Flying To? text boxes, you can simply enter the three letter airport codes in case you know them, which will then automatically get converted to airport names upon pressing ENTER or the green arrow.

Before installing this version, you need to go to Add/Remove programs to uninstall the previous version. Download link is in the first post above.

Thank you again guys for spending your time with these beta if not gamma versions of my tool! I expect more serious reviews.

Tobi

@amnesia: Yes, I did climb El Teide by foot (and went back the same day), it was an impressive experience comparable only to climbing Toubkal summit in Morocco (~4200m).

Fantastic software!

It has been working flawlessly so far for me.

I know it's a lot to ask but could it be possible to implement some advanced search functions to the software so that one could search for flights from place A to place B eventhough if there was no direct flights between the two airports. It is possible to code it but that would require the software to cross check routes between a number of airports. If I select for example from Tampere (TMP) to Valencia (VLC) where there is no direct flights, the software would first have to check whether some airport that TMP does fly to flies to VLC. In this case one of these airports would be Frankfurt-Hahn (HHN). So the software would look for flights from TMP to HHN to VLC and give the results for these two flights. After that the software would look if there's more possible combination routes for example TMP to DUB to VLC and give the results for these aswell. User could adjust the maximum acceptable time for changes between flights, for example 6 hours.
It must be a lot to code but I think it would be possible and really useful. Especially for us who must nearly always use non-direct flights to get to the destination. Don't ask how many hours I have spent on HHN waiting for the connecting flight

Although, I think that adding more airlines (easyJet especially) is on priority way before the above mentioned feature.

Anyways, thank you very much for this software and I'll sure be using it the next time I'm looking for flights

Hi!

I was very happy to read your comments, thanks a lot. The feature you are describing is what I already included in the list of coming features and is exactly what I have been thinking about these days: I'll start coding it this week.

Adding new airlines is much, much easier (there is a ready interface for multiple airlines), and I know I should perhaps do this first. But there are so many things that could be done and that I plan to do that it's very easy to fall into trap of "I-don't-know-where-to-start-from" which is (for me) pretty dangerous (as I may leave it all) so I try to avoid it by doing anything, even if it is random.

Thank you so much for this cool program. I just installed it, and tested a few routes. It works absolutely perfectly.

I've found some kind of bug I mean, the software is getting a date directly from the system. My girlfriend's desktop said it's 22 may 2006 now and it's impossible to get a 2009's months

btw: I've just checked what is happening on the booking system. Many prices, many systems, many fees. This software is perfect, because shows total price and I don't have to click, check and double check again

Hi all, Ryanair changed their web-site yesterday, so I uploaded a new version of Azuon regarding that (link in the first post). @amnesia: Date limitation eliminated, now computers with wrong dates should have no problems.

cool :-) I let you know if I find something else :-)

Hi everybody.
Many compliments for tobi_boi's application and a couple of questions:
- will it be (or is it) possibile to use it from behind a proxy?
- how can I use the "multiple-leg-fare" option?

Besides I noticed that the application always adds 5€ per flight regardless origin or destination. Is there a reason for that? I solved the "problem" putting a "minus 5" extra cost in the "payment method" box.

thanks everybody

Check the payment options. If it's selected as default VISA - that's the reason.

ok you're right! thanks a lot

It doesn't work on Vista 64 bits version

It does, unless on my present laptop
Vista itself might be a problem - try to start this software up as an admin user (right mouse button on the icon and then third option of the menu) or something like that - I don't know how is it called in english