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Comment by timdorr | Hacker News Reader

"You don't need to take any action. However, if you are actively using this product you may want to find an alternate solution before April 10, 2018."

So, you do need to take action? That's a pretty terrible set of FAQs. They should at least provide a list of alternatives.

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For anybody looking for an alternative, there is Fareportal, which has a full featured API for flights with both search and booking ability. https://www.fareportallabs.com/Home/DownloadDocs#0

I'm happy to answer questions as I'm helping several companies switch over to Fareportal at the moment.

What is Fareportal's pricing? I can't find it.

Price for API calls? Those are free for affiliate partnerships.

The flights pricing itself matches what you would find, for example, on CheapOair.com or OneTravel.com, which are driven by Fareportal's APIs.

Do u have Gate information for live flights?

I am looking for Gate information & Flight schedules by airport.

Ex: I want to be able to query incoming/outgoing flights to Gate-A-10 in ATL today.

-------------

Query to:

find where [Flight DL123] is going next.

[ATL-LAX] -> Landing in 'Gate 10' in LAX

going next to....

[LAX-MIA] -> Landing in 'Gate A1' in MIA

going next to....

[MIA-JFK] -> Landing in 'Gate 1', Terminal 3 in JFK

------------

Gate 10 in Atlanta:

[AA38] SEA-ATL arriving at 6:37A

[AA38] ATL-LAX leaving at 7:45A

(2 hours no flights at Gate 10)

[AA99] JFK-ATL arriving at 9:45A

[AA99] ATL-JFK leaving at 10:45A

Fareportal handles bookings in advance, not really live flight data.

Hey there, need flight info for delayed flights in EU ?

My 3 usd subscription to flight stats[1] give me just 3 days history and no room for more fine tunning

[1](https://i.imgur.com/nOjjPjE.png)

Fareportal is not for live flight data, only bookings in advance.

Looks good. I researched flight data suppliers & GDS companies recently for a side project and found them either very expensive (QPX falls in this category - having to pay several cents per query makes it virtually impossible to do anything creative) or lacking coverage for LCCs in Europe, which is my target market.

So naturally I'm quite impressed with Fareportal and will give it a try. I did do a quick search on CheapOair and didn't see Ryanair among the results (although they do have a flight for that route and date). I know they're icky about third parties advertising/[re]selling their flights but there's some suppliers that do carry their flight data (ie Travelfusion, which politely told me to come back once I have a working product, chicken and egg much?).

I'm not keen to book flights on behalf of users at this point since I have a (not thoroughly documented) fear that regulatory matters will make it difficult/expensive to operate an indie OTA but that's TBD.

It's very painful to redistribute Ryanair, especially if they don't want you to. They even have captchas on their search pages to block scrapers.

If you are looking for API access for LCCs, check out http://www.azair.eu/ They are the best, they have availability + pricing + schedule +... data from every LCC that is out there in Europe. I use their regular website myself for all travels within Europe when flying LCCs since they show you split ticketing options as well as do a real search when you enter lets say, from France to XXX (for all airports). Skyscanner does promote the "take me anywhere feature" but it doesnt show you any real availability data, only displays flights other people have searched for.

I also got an email the other day from http://mystifly.com which also promotes LCC but I haven't tested them yet.

I mean, you don't NEED to take any action... if you don't care that your data feed no longer exists.

Yes. I'm sure many, possibly even the majority, of clients subscribed to the API don't have it in active use. There's a bunch defunct side projects out there. This notice likely went out to every account with a subscription to this API.

It seems clear to me -- you don't need to do anything to continue your use of the API (no website to visit, no contracts to sign, etc). But that doesn't change the fact that they are ending the service.

If a developer doesn't know what "After April 10th, you will not be able to access the API" means, I don't now how they could be more clear.

I think it's the wrong time to use the phrase 'you don't need to take any action'. You can say that when it's a new version being released without any breaking changes but not when you're shutting down a service! You must look for an alternative and implement a migration, that is action.

It is even better, as the question is "What steps should I take?", which is a very "just tell me what I need to do, step by step" way to ask this question, and yet the answer doesn't give you any concrete suggestions for what to do now other than "feel am impending sense of doom".

(Though given that Google knows the only people who care are people they likely consider to be competitors--as the whole reason they bought ITA in the first place was to obtain the power that comes from vertical integration--that is likely exactly what was going through their minds when they wrote that: "let's be particularly unhelpful".)

This is one of those cases where "let the market sort it out" is likely the right answer. If someone has an alternative, you can bet they are going to capitalize on this, and Google telling you where to go may actually hurt more than help (who days their suggestion is best?), and if there isn't an alternative, there's not much to say.

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