Basic Air Booking Concepts

To begin using the Spotnana APIs for air bookings, you will need to first understand some basic concepts.

Conceptual overview for booking air travel

If you wish to use the Spotnana APIs to search for flight options and book them, you need to understand the following basic concepts:

• Search - Used to retrieve the flight offers you will use to book travel. Spotnana has separate APIs for air, hotel, rail, and car bookings.
• Itinerary - This is a flight offer returned by an airline based on your search.
• Leg - represents a portion of a journey with a departure location, arrival location, and a date. A one-way trip has one leg, a round-trip has two legs, and a multi-city trip has two or more legs.
• Flight - A portion of a journey between two locations. Each segment that is part of that journey is represented by a flight. If the airline is offering a direct flight, then there will only be one flight included. If there are one or more connections required, each segment will be represented by its own flight.

Workflow

The basic air flow is represented below.

Search

To locate appropriate flight itineraries, you create a search. A search will provide results based on information about the travelers, departure and arrival locations, and travel dates. The search will also include other details, including flight attributes, amenities, cabin class, fares and fare rules.

Itinerary

The Spotnana API will search across GDS, NDC, and Low-Cost Carrier (LCC) airline inventory and return multiple itineraries. These represent the offers airlines have available. Each itinerary contains a collection of legs which match the criteria you entered in your search. These legs, in turn, contain the flights that may be purchased from the airline at a particular price. Each airline can return multiple itineraries, so the list can be large.

Leg

Within your search, you will specify the leg(s) the travelers wish to fly. Each leg represents the journey the traveler wishes to make from their departure location to a particular destination location. You use an airport code (LAX for Los Angeles International) or city name (CHI for Chicago) to specify the departure and destination locations.

Flight

Within each leg, you will receive a list of flights that match the departure and destination locations and times you requested. There may be one or more flights in the leg. Each flight represents one particular segment of the journey. For example, if the flight option were a direct non-stop flight from JFK to LAX, then the flight would be for JFK to LAX. But, if it were for a one-stop JFK to LAX journey connecting through ORD, the flight might just be the JFK to ORD segment.

Booking

Once you have located the itinerary you wish to purchase, you create a booking, providing the ID of the relevant search and itinerary, as well as information about each of the travelers who will be traveling and any payment details.

Examples

Since itineraries and segments will differ depending on whether your journey is one-way direct or with connections, round-trip direct or with connections, or a multi-city trip, we will provide some examples below.

One-way direct non-stop

In this example, let’s create a search for a traveler flying from John F. Kennedy airport (JFK) to Los Angeles International airport (LAX).

Spotnana’s API sends the search to a variety of airlines and receives an itinerary from American Airlines, that costs $270 USD. The itinerary will contain the leg that we specified, namely JFK to LAX. Within that segment, we have just one flight, JFK to LAX, on non-stop American Airlines flight AA33 on November 8.

One-way with connections

Now, let’s create another search, this time for the same locations, JFK and LAX, but allowing for up to one stop. Within the itinerary that is returned from American Airlines for $184 USD, we find the leg we requested, JFK to LAX, but there are now two flights.

• The first flight in the leg is from JFK to Chicago O’Hare International airport (ORD), on American Airlines AA2819 on November 8.
• The second flight in the leg is from ORD to LAX, on American Airlines AA1800 on November 8.

Round Trip direct non-stop

Next, let’s create a search for a round trip non-stop journey for a traveler flying from New York (NYC) to London (LON).

Spotnana’s API sends the search to its airline suppliers and receives many itineraries, among them, a non-stop one from Iberia for $842 USD. Within this itinerary, there are the two legs we requested, NYC to LON on December 8 and LON to NYC on December 13.

• Within the NYC to LON leg, there is only one flight, Iberia Airlines flight IB7377 operated by British Airways and flying from John F. Kennedy (JFK) to London Heathrow (LHR) airport on December 8.
• Within the LON to NYC leg, there is one flight, Iberia Airlines flight IB4223 operated by American Airlines and flying from London Heathrow (LHR) airport to John F. Kennedy (JFK) airport on December 1

Round Trip with connections

Now, let’s create a search for a round trip journey for a traveler flying from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to London (LON).

Spotnana’s API sends the search to its airline suppliers and receives an itinerary back from Virgin Atlantic Airlines for $599 USD. Within this itinerary, there are the two legs we requested, LAX to LON on December 9 and LON to LAX on December 14.

Within the LAX to LON leg, there is only one flight, Virgin Atlantic flight VS8 and flying from LAX to London Heathrow (LHR) airport on December 9. However, inside the LON to LAX leg, we have two flights:

• London Heathrow (LHR) to Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) being flown on VS6714 with Virgin Atlantic on December 14.
• Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) to LAX being flown on VS6763 with Virgin Atlantic on December 14.

Multi-city direct non-stop

Next, we will try a multi-city trip. A multi-city trip is one with two or more legs (sometimes where one does not return from the original destination location).

In this example, let’s create a search for LAX to O’Hare International Airport (ORD) on December 8 and from ORD to London (LON) on December 14.

We get a bunch of itineraries back from the airlines, one of which is from Continental Airlines costing $680 USD. Within this itinerary we have 2 legs, each with a single flight:

• LAX to ORD being flown on UA1332 with Continental on December 8.
• ORD to Heathrow Airport (LHR) being flown on UA920 with Continental on December 14.