And for anyone just needing flight, availability, schedule date and having problems to structed standardized data, isn't that what the GDS is for (Amadeus, Sabre, Worldspan,...)
There you have almost all carriers (excl. some LCCs), have all the data (availaiblity, schedule, pricing, ...) and its either cheap or free to access.
Just have a look at https://developer.sabre.com/docs/read/REST_APIs for example.
You don't even need a real GDS account with an office ID, just an API access account.
Readit Newsdagoban commented on Google is shutting down the QPX Express API for airfare data · Posted by u/imartin2k
dagoban commented on Google is shutting down the QPX Express API for airfare data · Posted by u/imartin2k
What I still have problems to understand with, who really used QPX Express?
I looked at it several times over the year and it basicially only lets you search for flights (oneway, roundtrip, open jaw) but without any "advanced routing codes"
But those are the most important ones since you can specify booking class (not to be mistaken with cabin class), operating, marketing carrier, base fare code, layovers, aircraft type,...
Basicially QPX Express was always a paid and also very limited version of matrix.itasoftware.com
Instead the results were much better (and free) just scraping ITA and being able to enter all those advanced routing codes. Great way for finding error fares, fuel dumps, ... And there was no spam check from google's side, no IP request restrictions, no limit, nothing, whatsoever. The code is a bit hard to go with when they changed to ITA v3 but once you figured it out (and it took us only 2 days since we had a working scraper for the previous version) to adjust it to the new code.
dagoban commented on Google is shutting down the QPX Express API for airfare data · Posted by u/imartin2k
Looks good. I researched flight data suppliers & GDS companies recently for a side project and found them either very expensive (QPX falls in this category - having to pay several cents per query makes it virtually impossible to do anything creative) or lacking coverage for LCCs in Europe, which is my target market.
So naturally I'm quite impressed with Fareportal and will give it a try. I did do a quick search on CheapOair and didn't see Ryanair among the results (although they do have a flight for that route and date). I know they're icky about third parties advertising/[re]selling their flights but there's some suppliers that do carry their flight data (ie Travelfusion, which politely told me to come back once I have a working product, chicken and egg much?).
I'm not keen to book flights on behalf of users at this point since I have a (not thoroughly documented) fear that regulatory matters will make it difficult/expensive to operate an indie OTA but that's TBD.
If you are looking for API access for LCCs, check out http://www.azair.eu/
They are the best, they have availability + pricing + schedule +... data from every LCC that is out there in Europe.
I use their regular website myself for all travels within Europe when flying LCCs since they show you split ticketing options as well as do a real search when you enter lets say, from France to XXX (for all airports).
Skyscanner does promote the "take me anywhere feature" but it doesnt show you any real availability data, only displays flights other people have searched for.
I also got an email the other day from http://mystifly.com which also promotes LCC but I haven't tested them yet.
You're only likely to be in a Sabre system if you've been booked by your company through a travel agent and rent using legacy car/hotel companies also through your company's travel agent.
Its actually the other way around, some airlines have their own system, but most use some sort of GDS.
i.e. even when you make a booking directly with one of the airlines above mentioned, the entire PNR is still created and used in a GDS.
Even when you use Farelogix (for LH NDC bookings for example) the entire PNR also gets created in AMA. When you want to make changes in the LH PNR that FLX does not support yet, you still have to make the changes in the AMA PNR.