Value Delivered
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Minimalistic UX Design Consistent with the Original OTA style
The design required the creation of three informational widgets that naturally fit the original OTA style. The flexible flight search widget allows users to immediately find the lowest prices for departing and returning flights and compare the prices for the nearest dates. The flight status widget displays the flight route, provides schedule details, and terminal/gate info. The flight information widget contains general route info for the given airline and allows users to check the on-time rating and see the average delay. -
JavaScript Implementation of Dynamic Widgets
The front-end engineers applied pure JavaScript to build fully asynchronous widget interfaces. The flexible flight search can be customized by a user if prices for unlisted dates are required. The flight status displays the aircraft location on the map and the status bar allows for estimating the remaining in-flight time. The general info widget is updated once there are any alterations in ratings. -
The AWS-based Architecture that Unifies Multiple Data Streams
The back-end of the product was deployed on Amazon EC2 and used PHP Slim Framework. To retrieve all data displayed on the widgets, the team had to combine multiple data streams. Flight routes and airlines data were stored internally in a MySQL database, which was configured from the Innovato dataset, the IATA-backed data source that contains a broad number of routes, airlines, and flight numbers. The AltexSoft team built a REST API to connect JavaScript-based front-end with the MySQL database. The flight prices were retrieved from a separate OTA’s database. The flight status data and ratings were sourced using the FlightStats API. The team also had to optimize back-end performance via caching techniques to reduce FlightStats API and database loads.
Approach and Technical Info
The full set of services was provided by a dedicated team of three front-end JavaScript engineers, an architect, two PHP back-end specialists, and a UX designer.
The technology stack included: PHP, Slim Framework, JavaScript, AWS EC2, FlightStats API.
The project was completed in 1.5 months.
Services provided within the project framework: Travel Technology Practice.
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