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And why is that a good thing for them? I mean if they provided an API to get their pricing, wouldn't it be in their interest? Does anyone buy airline tickets fr

And why is that a good thing for them? I mean if they provided an API to get their pricing, wouldn't it be in their interest? Does anyone buy airline tickets from the airline website ever? I don't. I use sites like Expedia and Priceline. And if an airline is not listed or has shitty prices, I don't buy it. Wouldn't it be in their interest to be listed on there? Moreover, wouldn't they want the other companies to have similar API's to have dynamic pricing? I get that at one point not having this info out there was a good thing for them. But now the car is out of the bag. You can't keep pretending that booking sites don't exist.

tyingq 9y ago
Lots of wannabe sites with heavy scraping, but no sales. There are several airlines where 50+% of all sales are on their own website. Lowest distribution cost.
vacri 9y ago
Adding to tyingq's comment, not all scrapers are efficient, either. Also, if you don't have the rock-bottom cheapest prices, you may not want to cater to aggregators that promote those.
ValentineC 9y ago
> Does anyone buy airline tickets from the airline website ever? All other things being equal, I will strongly prefer buying directly from the airline, because I've personally experienced the shifting of responsibility if things go wrong during a flight. I've also been denied boarding (not in my home country) because the airline claimed that the OTA (Netflights) didn't pay for my ticket, leaving me to spend the night in the airport and having to book a one-way flight with a different airline the next morning. That was a horrible experience I'm determined to not repeat.
mateo411 9y ago
People who have miles or points buy airline tickets directly from the airline.