Overview

TripBuilder is a certified platform for low-cost fares, capable of searching and booking this particular flight product type. TripBuilder's low-cost flight integration was developed using AERTiCKET APIs.

Customers that intend to use low-cost fares require an individual certification process using TripBuilder. Once certified, the TripBuilder customer can set up low-cost fare sources with AERTiCKET, which can then be queried through TripBuilder. Specific to low-cost fares (compared to non-low-cost offers), there are some changes that are addressed in this article.

Setup

Not considering contractual topics as part of the setup process and focusing on a more operational layer, two initial setup actions are required for accessing low-cost fares.

AERTiCKET

First, customers must contact AERTiCKET, and follow a set of steps (with AERTiCKET's support) to have low-cost airlines and fares available via AERTiCKET's API.

TripBuilder

Second, on TripBuilder, the customer needs to configure a new transportation content rule or extend an existing content rule (if already existing) to include low-cost fares. To do so, add the fare type LOW to the list of supported Fare Types as shown below.

Supported Airlines

Some low-cost airlines (Easyjet, for example) require a credit card payment on a booking, which TripBuilder and AERTiCKET don't support. These specific airlines won't be available in TripBuilder since they're filtered out already by the AERTiCKET API.

For an updated list of unsupported airlines, contact AERTiCKET directly.

Planner

When using Planner, low-cost fares are displayed in the Transports step together with all other flight fares, according to TripBuilder's configuration. There's no graphical indicator to sign low-cost fares besides the carrier name and logo that might be a low-cost airline (Vueling, in the example below).

Checkout

During checkout, a specific set of fields needs to be collected, particularly on the Traveller Details page. Low-cost airlines require additional information during the booking. For example, it's common for the date of birth, email, and passport information to be required as part of the booking request.

Availability Check

The airline will indicate the required information during the availability check. At that point, AERTiCKET will translate this into a list of mandatory and optional fields and send it back to TripBuilder as part of the booking request format.

Traveller Details

When the user gets on the Traveller Details page, there's already knowledge of which fields are required and TripBuilder dynamically enables them. Thus, traveller detail fields configured in the Cockpit settings are overridden by what the low-cost airline requires.

TripBuilder's current implementation follows a simplified approach. When dealing with a low-cost, the following traveller detail fields are always enabled:

In Checkout, this information is presented as follows:

Booking

From the end-user's perspective, there's no difference when booking a low-cost fare.

Instant Ticketing

For a low-cost fare, booking and ticketing via the standard two-step process isn't possible. AERTiCKET will always perform instant ticketing. This is something important to notice, as it impacts:

• Clients that process ticketing as a manual step
• Potentially cancellation policies

Billing

Regarding billing information, low-cost bookings require the invoicing contact details to be defined: email and address. This information must be set up per Distribution Channel in the 3rd Party Integrations tab, within the Invoicing Contact Details for Flights section.