> 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?

Not that I know of, the best work around is hitting up Google Flights, but even that doesn't make things easy.

Quite possibly my favourite Google product, surprised it has lived this long

It's showing its age unfortunately. For my last set of flights often the price displayed was not available after clicking through on google or on the airline's booking page and flight combos on the airline's sites that I was looking for wouldn't come up in the search :/

Duffel is the best one I know about. Not directly for consumers but good for platform businesses who need an API.

Platform business go through the GDS ( Sabre, Amadeus ) directly just fine. They have the best kind of api

I honestly can't believe there isn't a SF based startup that is already doing it.

The usual issue of flight booking APIs is, that those flights are expensive. It's what travel agencies or travel departments in companies use.

There isn't any money in building api for a platform somebody else owns. At best you do a travel management system for corporate stuff. That kind of a startup definitely exists, funded by YC about ten years ago

You have to get the data from a GDS and it looks like Sabre offers one already [1]. That said I don't know if just anyone can sign up for it.

[1] https://developer.sabre.com/product-collection/mcp-server

>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.

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?

I have no idea what the oop meant either. Pretty sure you can book a flight in ~5 minutes or so?

[delayed]

I'm not familiar with shady sites, but probably >75% of my previous 50 trips were booked through Kayak or similar sites. They make it painless to group everything you need for where you are going, and if there is any problem, like a flight delay, etc., since it was booked all together, they just adjust the future bookings/book other flights as necessary to make sure your trip is smooth riding. Any time I need more than just one resource (car, hotel, flight), I use a consolidator because if they aren't bundled, no one lifts a finger to help you when anything out of your control happens, but they bend over backwards to help if you used a booking site.

[delayed]

probably this is different between different airlines and continents, and is definitely easier if you regularly fly with the same airline on the same route and know its flow, pricing and rules...

but generally in Europe many airlines will by default show you only the base fare price without carry-on bags, checked bags, seats, etc., and the surcharges aren't fixed (some flights may have cheaper bags, seats, than the others, on the same airline), and then there are multiple levels of "Economy" pricing with some of the options packaged into the price (e.g. Austrian has "Economy Basic", "Economy Light", "Economy Comfort", "Economy Flex"), but sometimes buying Economy Basic + baggage + seat may be cheaper than Economy Comfort.

Also the rules of what is included in which package differ from the route (longer routes have more included), and from the operating airline (e.g. Air France website also allows you to book lower cost Transavia flights, Austrian/Lufthansa websites also allow you to book lower cost Eurowings/Discover flights...)

And then there is the hell which is Ryanair, where you have to go through multiple pages of "no I don't want travel insurance", "no I don't want to rent a car", "no I don't want to buy fasttrack", "no I don't want to book a hotel with you", "no I don't want to buy a seat", "no I really don't want anything else"...

And all of these employ gray patterns like the "no I don't want it" button being less visible/prominent than the "I do want to pay more" button... (and this is not only true for Ryanair, but also for Austrian's "Upgrade to Economy Comfort" vs. "Continue with current fare", which conveniently shows before selecting if you want bags, seats, etc. where it actually could've been useful if it showed you that you can pay less)

Also most of the airline search sites don't allow you to filter non-stop flights, so if you're flexible on dates it will show you "cheaper flights" on other days, but instead of 2h flight from Vienna to Paris it's gonna be 5 hours because of a transfer in Amsterdam/Frankfurt...

What could be better would be "I want to select a seat at check-in, I want to fly with 1 checked bag and no carry-on bags, I don't want anything else, I want a non-stop flight, show me cheapest prices for this"...

I have to agree, it wasn't really so hard before Basic Economy was invented like 15 years ago and spread overnight to all carriers. You mostly just wanted the normal base ticket, or you wanted the much more expensive business class. But now each airline has their own byzantine distinctions and between the lowest type and the type that used to be the lowest. You then have to know that for X airline, the cheapest ticket includes (0 or 1) rollaboard size suitcases, and that bringing one will cost ($Y) per bag. And then do the math of whether you're better off paying a bag fee or paying for the next ticket up. And that's just the bag aspect.

Some business class tickets do not include lounge access anymore. It's really labyrinthine now.

They try everything not to get scraped. But agentic browser automation defeats all those techniques. It has to be usable in a real browser obviously.

[delayed]

You have to click through multiple upsell pages, including "scary" boxes like "No, don't protect my $XXXX.XX purchase". And then "pick a seat", but once you do, it turns out there's actually a charge for that, so you click the browser back button, which ends up resetting your session.

For international flights, the prices on airlines' sites are almost always higher than what I was quoted in the search.

Running Firefox on Linux I often get stuck and need to switch to Chrome.

ITT: people who have never flown Frontier/Spirit/Ryanair

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.

I get why they have done it but it’s also a symptom of over segmenting the market based on time. The airlines have absolutely made this bed by having such adversarial pricing.

Definitely agree that those would be hostile behaviors, but I want data that shows it is happening.

Airlines are by nature a risk-averse industry, and throwing something as fundamental as inventory out of whack would lead to unjustifiable losses. Threats need to be prevented not reacted to.

Imagine you're an airline and have the ability to hire smart people and can equip them with ai tools.

This is something that should be solved with a 2 person team over a weekend.

Airline prices are the absolute worse! I'm trying to book 5 tickets together between 2 major airports that I have flown multiple times in the past. The price has been a rollercoaster!

$2200, I waited a bit too long to confirm with the group $4000 then $3500, then $2500 which changed within 5 minutes to $2600 and then $3000 and now $5000+

Other than memestocks, nothing else has such insane price volatility!

I understand you're frustrated, but "throw money and people at the problem and it will be solved somehow" doesn't address regulatory requirements.

> 24 hours to cancel any flight (or some airlines let you reserve with a 24 hour window to pay, which also fits the regulation)

I believe the 24 hours free cancellation requirement is only valid 7 days out. If it's for a recent flight I don't think you get free cancellation?

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.

> 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.

that's good.