How XoloTrip uses flight data

XoloTrip is a personal price watch. Each user defines one specific trip and a target price. XoloTrip keeps checking that trip and tells the user when a fare is worth looking at.

The production flow

1. 1.

   The user creates a specific flight watch.

   Origin and destination airports, a date window or exact dates, trip length, travelers with ages, cabin, stops and a target price.

2. 2.

   XoloTrip identifies a small number of relevant candidate itineraries.

   Instead of searching every date combination, XoloTrip narrows the watch to the date pairs most likely to matter and checks each one sparingly. Identical checks for different users are shared, not repeated.

3. 3.

   A flight data provider is queried to confirm the current fare.

   Each check is one fare request for one exact trip: the user's travelers, cabin and stops.

4. 4.

   The user is alerted only if the confirmed fare meets the watch condition.

   Alerts are sent only when a recently confirmed fare is at or below the target, and never twice for the same price.

5. 5.

   The user checks the current fare and proceeds to booking.

   From the alert, the user re-checks the fare for that trip and then continues to book.

What the product looks like

• User-defined watches, not general browsing. There is no search box that returns a list of flights.
• A watch shows its current best fare and a few of the cheapest dates, not a large comparison grid.
• Fares are always shown with the time they were found, and users check the current fare before booking.
• Paid plans limit the number of active watches, and every account has a daily check allowance.

Current status

XoloTrip is in early access. Live production fare checks are not enabled. The public site and the product preview show the complete experience with clearly labeled example data.