Yeah, there’s a central service that all Flight search is connected to, irregardless of airline. The airlines are charged per search to that api, so they monitor their ”look to book” rationvery closely. That ratio remains quite stable im the absence of bots, but skyrockets with any bot activity. Hence, they know from that metric how big of a bot problem they have and how much money they are losing. Major flight search software vendors have dedicated teams for this.

In fact the airlines are charged per book, but if and only if the look to book stays within reasonable bounds. If it rockets up, they’re on the hook for the penalties

Thanks for the clarification! I probably misremember some of the details.