Skip Navigation

Flight Shopping

Flight shopping is the first step of the reservation and refers to the process of searching for and comparing different flight options to find the best deal and most convenient travel itinerary. This typically involves using airline websites to search for flights by entering departure and arrival cities, travel dates, and the number of passengers.
Digital Connect supports different search types, e.g., branded, 30-day calendar, matrix, flexible calendar.
It has also many features like brand parity, context shopping and diversity.

Shopping Overview

Digital Connect shopping request is used to return different flight options to the API user. See below list of the most important request criteria (for more detailed information refer to detailed API documentation):

  • Search type: return branded list of possible flight offers or different calendar types offers
  • Itinerary type: One Way, Round Trip, Multi City (including open jaw)
  • Dates for each requested leg
  • Passenger types and quantity
  • Additional information like:
    • Preferred operating carrier
    • Request to split price per passenger
  • Point of Sale

The response returns flight offers to the API user. There are the following fields included in the response:

  • Shopping basket hash code – ID which is further used for sequential shopping or to add flights to the cart (session)
  • Detailed information about each flight returned (some of the fields are dependent on the information returned from shopping downline system):
    • origin and destination of each flight (including connecting flights details)
    • Flight number(s)
    • Detailed information about departure and arrival time
    • Reservation Booking Designator (RBD, booking class) and Fare Basis Codes (FBC)
      • Additionally, RBD on leg level, if multiple RBDs – then returned as ASSORTED
    • Brand ID for the offer
    • Duration of leg, segment
    • Additional stop airports
    • Miles flown per segment
    • Information if flight is subject to governmental approval
    • Arrival and departure terminal ID

For more information and the comprehensive list of fields which can be returned in shopping response please refer to API documentation.