Skip to content

Flight Key Concepts

You will need to understand a few important concepts to get started with searching flights and booking using via the Travlinq API.

To search for flights, you will create an airSearch request.An airsearch request describes the passenger count along with destination details. It may also include additional filters such as Cabin class, no of stops etc.

A journey segment represents a route that the passengers want to make between a particular DEPARTURE and a particular DESTINATION. For the departure and destination, you simply provide the IATA code for an Airport, for example Dubai (DXB) or for a city, for example New York (NYC). An airSearch request includes one or more flight and flight segments.

Travlinq will send your search request to a range of suppliers(Amadeus,Saber, etc..), and come back with a series of results. Each journey represents a bundle of flights that you can buy from an airline at a particular price that meet your search criteria. Each airline can send back multiple results, so you can potentially get back results hundreds or even thousands depend on request. Note that each result is known as a journey.

A journey from Mumbai to New York could be direct, made up of one flight , or there could be one or more connections in the middle, meaning multiple segments. Once you've found a journey which you want to book, you can create a booking, passing in the offer's ID, additional information about each passenger (for example their name and date of birth) and payment information.

One-way direct trip

Figure1

You can create an airSearch request for two passengers who want to travel from Mumbai (BOM) to New York (NYC) on 10th June.

Travlinq sends the search to a range of airlines, and gets a results back from Emirates Airways, costing £1,452. Inside the result, we have the flights that we have specified: BOM to NYC on requested date.

Inside that flight, there will be a segment:

  • BOM to New York's John F Kennedy Airport (JFK), travelling on a Emirates Airways operated flight, EK234, departing at 08:30 on 10th June.

One-way indirect trip

Figure1

You can create a search request, again for two passengers who want to travel from Mumbai (BOM) to New York (NYC) on 10th June.

Travlinq will send the search to a range of airlines, and gets a results back from Emirates Airways, costing £556. Inside the result, There is a flight specified: BOM to NYC on 10th June. But this time, inside that flight, There are two segments:

  • BOM to Dubai (DXB), travelling on EK203, a flight operated by Emirates , departing at 10:32 on 10th June.
  • DXB to New York's LaGuardia Airport (LGA), travelling on EK204, a flight operated by Emirates, departing at 16:00 local time on 10th June

Return direct trip

Figure1

You can create another search request, this time for one passenger who wants to travel from London (BOM) to Sydney (SYD) on 10th November and return on 18th November.

Travlinq sends the search to a range of airlines, and gets a results back from Qantas, costing $543. Inside the result, there are two flight like: BOM to SYD on 10th November, and SYD to BOM on 18th November.

  • Inside the BOM to SYD segment, we have one segment: BOM to SYD, travelling on a Qantas operated flight, QF12, departing at 11:32 on 10th November.

  • Inside the SYD to BOM segment, we also have one segment: SYD to BOM, travelling on a Qantas operated flight, QF03, departing at 19:40 on 18th November.

Return indirect trip

Figure1

You can create the same search request as above again: from Mumbai (BOM) to Sydney (SYD) on 10th November, returning on 18th November, for one passenger. Travlinq sends the search to a range of airlines, and gets a results back from Qantas, costing $545. Inside the result, we have the two segments such as: BOM to SYD on 10th November, and SYD to BOM on 18th November.

Inside the BOM to SYD segment, we have one segment: BOM to SYD, travelling on Qantas operated flight, QF123, departing at 09:40 on 10th November.

But inside the SYD to BOM segment, we have two segments such as:

  • SYD to Doha International Airport (DIA), travelling on a Qantas operated flight, QF342, departing at 13:00 on 18th November
  • DIA to BOM, travelling on QFF364, a Qantas operated flight, departing at 14:25 on 18th November

Multi-city direct trip

Figure1

A multi-city trip is one with more than two flight segments. For example, Traveler might create a search request for travel from BOM to JFK on 10th November, JFK to San Francisco International Airport (SFO) on 14th November, and SFO to BOM on 18th November.

Travlinq sends the search to a range of airlines, and gets results back from British Airways(BA), costing £645. Inside, it will have three flights, each with one segment:

  • BOM to JFK, travelling on a British Airways(BA) operated flight, BA100, departing at 18:00 on 10th November
  • JFK to SFO, travelling on BA764, a flight operated by BA Airlines, departing at 06:00 on 14th November
  • SFO to BOM, travelling on a British Airways operated flight, BA284, departing at 17:00 on 18th November