alt Hacker NewsSomebody once said, that airline booking pages itself are one of the most sophisticated CAPTCHAs. No idea if this is true, but they obviously don't want their customers to easily find the best deals.
I guess the best option is, to use a good reseller/travel agency that provides an API/MCP for booking and managing flights.
For finding the cheapest deals agents can still be used. Just the booking itself is probably better done manually. It also eliminates the risk that the agent does something stupid.
edit: they might try to block agents, but this won't be possible with browser use. they can always throttle users by IP or fingerprint. Letting an agent book a flight might be risky, because they might cancel a booking or impose a fee if they somehow detect it.
Replies
> I guess the best option is, to use a good reseller/travel agency that provides an API/MCP for booking and managing flights.
But do these actually exist?
I forget if it was in an official airline or an aggregator. But the page had a built in time for deal expiration that was a standalone javacript timer.
Imagine you're an airline. You have to follow the following regulations/standards:
- 24 hours to cancel any flight (or some airlines let you reserve with a 24 hour window to pay, which also fits the regulation)
- Seats that are sold cannot be sold to another passenger during this window (it's removed from inventory in GDS)
Now imagine you have people using agents to do the following:
- Book and cancel flights regularly to try to save a few bucks
- Set up an agent "if prices hit $xxx, book immediately and then cancel within 24 hours unless I tell you otherwise"
You suddenly have an inventory problem that can effectively DoS an airline.
>Somebody once said, that airline booking pages itself are one of the most sophisticated CAPTCHAs.
I think this is only true now that the AI's can interpret the pages correctly. Failing to decern the correct information is, I believe, the more human response.
It seems like the upside down turtle again.
> No idea if this is true, but they obviously don't want their customers to easily find the best deals.
CBS being, probably the most reliable and spin-free reporting, I believe the article.
FAA regulations and security are equally as good of reasons as "out to hide deals".
that's good.
Maybe I have Stockholm syndrome, but what about the booking pages is super complicated?
I often use Kayak or google flights to screen multiple airlines, but once I've found a flight I like, I generally book it on the airline's site, and the UI is basically identical to Kayak. Put in some dates, some locations, click search, browse through the options, pick the one you want. If you are flexible on dates, there is a little +/- 3 days checkbox that will show a table of flight prices.
I'm probably stupid, but what are the improvements that would help customers find the best deals?