When using AwardTravel, we temporarily display an estimated price while we fetch the current price from the airline. Here's how we calculate it.
In order to provide you with the best possible user experience, we do our best to display the most up to date and accurate information each time you use our extension on Google Flights. However, due to the way the airlines system works, often it can take up to 30 seconds for us to display the most up to date information.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, when you make a request on Google Flights, Google, along with AwardTravel makes an electronic request to the airlines, to ask them the price of your route, on your requested dates. The airline comes back to us with that information, and we're able to display that to you. Airlines have much faster infrastructure to support displaying cash prices, and in many cases, it'll take up to 30 seconds for us to get the information back from the airline. Instead of leaving you with no data, or incomplete data while that request is being made, we've decided to display an "estimated" points price instead.
While this estimate may be different than the actual price you will end up seeing once we get the data from the Airline, we've added this feature so you're not left wondering weather AwardTravel is working or not. If you're curious how we calculate this estimated number, here's exactly how we do it.
The first thing to note is that if you search on Google Flights, and we've recently done that same search, we'll display the last known price of that ticket, as well as when we last saw it (i.e. was this fare seen 2 weeks ago, or 2 hours ago). If that data isn't available, we've been able to build a model that can predict the price of the ticket before we hear back from the Airline. This takes into account factors such as departure and arrival airports, date, time of year, day of the week, class of service, and more to put together an estimate for you.
All estimates are denoted as an estimate with the *estimate, so you know that the actual price may change. Additionally, the estimated price is only displayed while we're fetching the most up to date price directly with the airline, and goes away when the real-time information is displayed. AwardTravel makes no representation that the estimated price is going to be accurate, we're just taking our best guess to give you a general understanding of how many points the flight will cost you, while we retrieve the actual data.
The estimate can change from time to time, even within the same search query. We do our best to estimate the prices, and even then, there's some variance in what the model will output. We've done our best to put guard-rails on routes so that outliers in the data don't dramatically skew the estimate we show you, however, sometimes the estimates can change, even on a minute-by-minute basis.
Airlines have prioritized making revenue fare's accessible to 3rd party software providers like AwardTravel. As a result, we unfortunately, it takes a little bit longer for us to get the data and dispaly it to you. We'd rather give you complete and accurate information, even if it takes a little longer to get. Rest assured, we're working on improving these speeds as soon as we can.
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In order to provide you with the best possible user experience, we do our best to display the most up to date and accurate information each time you use our extension on Google Flights. However, due to the way the airlines system works, often it can take up to 30 seconds for us to display the most up to date information.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, when you make a request on Google Flights, Google, along with AwardTravel makes an electronic request to the airlines, to ask them the price of your route, on your requested dates. The airline comes back to us with that information, and we're able to display that to you. Airlines have much faster infrastructure to support displaying cash prices, and in many cases, it'll take up to 30 seconds for us to get the information back from the airline. Instead of leaving you with no data, or incomplete data while that request is being made, we've decided to display an "estimated" points price instead.
While this estimate may be different than the actual price you will end up seeing once we get the data from the Airline, we've added this feature so you're not left wondering weather AwardTravel is working or not. If you're curious how we calculate this estimated number, here's exactly how we do it.
The first thing to note is that if you search on Google Flights, and we've recently done that same search, we'll display the last known price of that ticket, as well as when we last saw it (i.e. was this fare seen 2 weeks ago, or 2 hours ago). If that data isn't available, we've been able to build a model that can predict the price of the ticket before we hear back from the Airline. This takes into account factors such as departure and arrival airports, date, time of year, day of the week, class of service, and more to put together an estimate for you.
All estimates are denoted as an estimate with the *estimate, so you know that the actual price may change. Additionally, the estimated price is only displayed while we're fetching the most up to date price directly with the airline, and goes away when the real-time information is displayed. AwardTravel makes no representation that the estimated price is going to be accurate, we're just taking our best guess to give you a general understanding of how many points the flight will cost you, while we retrieve the actual data.
The estimate can change from time to time, even within the same search query. We do our best to estimate the prices, and even then, there's some variance in what the model will output. We've done our best to put guard-rails on routes so that outliers in the data don't dramatically skew the estimate we show you, however, sometimes the estimates can change, even on a minute-by-minute basis.
Airlines have prioritized making revenue fare's accessible to 3rd party software providers like AwardTravel. As a result, we unfortunately, it takes a little bit longer for us to get the data and dispaly it to you. We'd rather give you complete and accurate information, even if it takes a little longer to get. Rest assured, we're working on improving these speeds as soon as we can.
