Techtalks: Traveltech

What is the best way to simply get access to all airline seating information? For starters, just:

  • airplane seat map
  • available seats, unavailable seats, updated real-time
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anonymous

asked  Mar 31, 2019

7480views
1answer
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Olexander Kolisnykov, Editor at AltexSoft

answered  Apr 1, 2019

0

Hi there,

It’s nearly impossible to get access to all airline seating info as some airlines may not share this data in the first place.

However, there are two main options. The first one is obvious: you may contact airlines directly and ask for their API access with seating capabilities. For instance, Lufthansa Open API provides seat maps. But most airlines don’t support APIs at all.

The second option is to source seating info from GDSs.

Amadeus provides seat maps in their enterprise APIs.
Sabre has a broad set of APIs for seating.
And TravelPort Universal API has a seat map capability.

They still may be limited by the data that carriers provide.

It doesn’t look like SeatGuru has an open API, but it’s also worth trying to contact them directly.
Getting access to GDS APIs isn’t that simple, but it seems like the best option for your problem.