Want to develop a webapp for searching flights but dont know where to find the databases

Question

Hi, i want to develop a webapp like this: http://www.flights.com/ where you find flights, now i see that are many sites likes this that makes me suppose that there are free databases that contains the data. Where can i find one? Thanks!

Answer 1

I think

Probably you need to find some service provider which provides search flight service as a web service

you can use this webservice to get the search results and display them on your page

Answer 2

I doubt there are free databases. I doubt such a database exists, because it's dynamic data.

You'll probably have to query airlines for prices and sort those results out.

Answer 3

Most of these sites use a hub such as http://www.orbitz.com/ which connects to the GDS systems.

Since you can book flights on these sites, not just search for them, you will have a hard time finding a free database. The flight information is updated fairly regularly, so keeping that database in sync is a tough job (thus why we have the distributors and hubs). Companies like Orbitz do all this work for you.

If you're a registered agent with IATA or ARC etc you will be able to register and use the service provider platforms like Orbitz.

You generally don't pay to use the platforms (in fact they pay for commission for selling flights), but membership with organisation such as IATA costs a bit. See http://www.iata.org/ps/accreditation-travel/accreditation-travel/Pages/application.aspx for more info.