Ask HN: Which organization stores all flight ticket prices?

4 points·tuyguntn··4 comments

I am in need of finding affordable flight ticket API, seems like most of the sources do not provide this data as a public API, orbitz, kayak and etc,.

Is there any authoritative organization which stores all of the ticket prices, maybe airlines are submitting their ticket prices there (like flights) or do above companies crawl all of the airline web-sites in order to create prices?

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I worked at GetThere/Sabre for a few years. There is no public, free API for this information. There is no "all in one" Computer Reservation System out there. You have to go through any number of CRSs depending on which airlines you want to search.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_reservations_system#M...

For example, orbitz seems to still use the Galileo CRS. That CRS gets its data from a number of airlines, but not all. I'm also certain that no access to these CRSs would considered "affordable".

Seems like no "affordable" API at all? Should I just put widget or link to big players? If so can I get any payment per sold ticket, if user bought ticket after our link?

You're probably looking for ITA Software (by Google): https://www.itasoftware.com/solutions/

However, it's not cheap. I think you have to ask for a price quote for the full QPX product, though Google offers a public "QPX Express" API, which costs 3.5¢ per query after the first 50 queries per day, just to give you an idea.

Is there a difference between QPX Express and Google Flights results?

I can't see that there is (i.e. no Southwest results etc.).

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