The Air workflow allows you to do what most travel agents did in the past and what many search engines still do today: book a trip for a customer. Air service (Air.xsd) provides:
- Air Shop: Search for flight options by lowest fare (LowFareSearchReq) or availability (AirAvailability).
- Air Price: Price the selected flights and request additional information about rules, flight details, and seating.
- Air Book: Book the flights when you are satisfied with the times, price, and rules.
Optional and required Air workflow transactions
The following table represents a basic, end-to-end flow for air shopping and booking. Some transactions are optional, or can be performed as stand-alone functionality separate from the shopping and booking business flow.
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Functionality |
Description |
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Required. An itinerary is searched for and selected using either an Air Availability or Low Fare Shopping call. |
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Returns prices for the selected itinerary. Required for an Air Availability request. Not required for Low Fare Shopping transactions because pricing is returned in the Low Fare Shopping response. |
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Optional, stand-alone transaction. Returns all fares for the requested parameters, regardless of availability. Fare quotes can be displayed without an availability request being made. Tariff fares are often followed by a Fare Rules display (see below) to determine the requirements and/or penalties associated with a specific tariff fare, prior to determining availability. Therefore, tariff fare displays are often useful for fare-driven travelers. |
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Optional, stand-alone transaction. Flight Details is typically performed after a Low Fare Shopping or Air Pricing request to obtain additional information about the flights in an itinerary. |
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Optional, but recommended. Stand-alone or follow-on transaction. Fare rules supply the requirements or penalties associated with a specific fare quote. Fare rules are returned as free text provided by the supplier. |
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Required. Request to store an air itinerary. Air booking can include pricing information in the reservation; however, pricing data is not required to book a segment. Air booking creates a reservation based on results from any of the following three responses:
See the Air Bookability Workflow to understand the best practices for creating a workflow with minimal errors. |
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Optional. Ticketing is typically included as a follow-on request to an Air Booking response. |
When a flight is booked, a Passenger Name Record (PNR) is created and added to a booking file record that Universal API creates, called the Universal Record Locator (UR) (UniversalRecordLocatorCode). The UR identifies a traveler's entire booking file, including general traveler information and travel provider information, as well as any PNR data from air, car, hotel, rail, or other travel segments available through Universal API. This booking record is specific to the Universal API, and can include PNRs from one or more providers that supplied the data for the bookings.
The Universal Record service (UniversalRecord.xsd) allows you to cancel, modify, and retrieve an air reservation, as well as refund if allowed by the provider (refunds and exchanges are not supported by all providers).
Note: Each request has a corresponding response, with the same naming structure. For example, LowFareSearchReq (request) and LowFareSearchRsp (response).
Click a box to find out more.
Next Steps
Review specific Air Shopping transactions:
Review specific Air Pricing transactions:
- Air Pricing
- Air Fare Rules
- Flight Details
- Flight Information
- Seat Map
Review the Air Booking transaction and see the Air Bookability best practices workflow.
Review Universal Record transactions: Universal Records and Bookings.
Review the Sample Transactions.
