Web scraping is integral to run a business that relies on accurate and timely information. Sometimes the search results pages provided by airline websites must be more adequate, have inaccuracies, or need more information readily available through other means.
Using web scraping techniques to scrape an airline website for flight schedules and price data is an excellent way to provide your business with this information without requiring manual data entry. Web scraping can allow you to save money on labor costs, reduce or eliminate human error in scheduling and pricing accuracy, and gain better insight into trends that might not be possible with manual methods.
For example, you can use web scraping to collect flight information in an airline’s call center or use the data to make your flight search tool that could be integrated with a website. Web scraping lets you create your airline price comparison website that publishes real-time pricing data for thousands of flights.
To help you get started with web scraping, this article will discuss specific techniques for web scraping and provide examples of how these techniques are applied. The articles on this page are not meant to be comprehensive guides to web scraping and should not be considered complete instructions on scraping a particular website. This article introduces web grinding with an emphasis on airline travel sites.
What is Web Scraping?
Web scraping, or data extraction, is extracting information from a webpage using software to extract structured data and read text from the page. Scraping is typically done by sending requests (often HTTP GET recommendations) to the target website and parsing the HTML source code. Scrapers can extract data from HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, etc., which are the main elements of web pages. If you have a website, web scraping data from it could be precious.
Using web scraping techniques, you can obtain data from the target website for a lower cost than if you were to perform the same task manually. You can send queries to various sections of a website to extract information for your business.
What Data Can You Extract From The Airline Website?
- Flight Schedules
Flight schedules are the most valuable data extracted from an airline website. To get the flight schedules, you use the Travel departing from and Travel arriving boxes on the search results page to pull a list of available flights. The list can be in any format. You need to set up a new WebLogic instance for each flight you want information about and scrape again for flight schedule information. However, each time you scrape the page, it will generate different flights.
- Flight Status and Tracking
Status and tracking information is also helpful for businesses. This data is usually presented on a separate web page, but scrapers can also extract it from the search results pages. If you can get the flight status, you can also get the arrival and departure times, gate information, and estimated arrival time. The capability of getting flight status using web scraping is valuable for tracking necessary flights without manually searching for them.
- Flight Price Information
Getting flight price information using web scraping is also possible if price data are provided on a call center or another website like a shopping comparison site. Price information can be collected from a call center or another airline website. Ticket price data is usually available for all direct and connecting flights. You can use these data to create price comparisons or availability look-up tools that could be integrated with a website.
Scraping Airline Websites for Flight Schedules and Price Data
This blog will use Python and the BeautifulSoup module to give you a broad overview and sample code for web scraping airline websites. You should review and abide by the terms and conditions of the website before continuing because web scraping may be prohibited under the terms of use of some websites.
This example demonstrates how to scrape flight schedules and cost information from a fictitious airline website. You will need to modify the code according to the specific website you want to scrape.
Keep in mind that websites’ layouts and structures can change, which may need updating your scraping code. Additionally, if a website’s terms of service allow for more structured and allowed data access, think about leveraging APIs.
How can you Leverage the Above-Extracted Data for Your Business?
There are multiple methods to use the web scraping flight data for your business. Here are some of the top choices that will result in profitable returns and streamline your operations:
- Create More Effective Search Tools
You can use these flight schedule data to create a more practical search tool, which will be more valuable than the travel websites’ built-in search features. It can also be used for the airline’s in-house online booking service. You can use this data to create a price comparison tool to quickly compare flight prices obtained from multiple airlines and book tickets online.
- Monitor Frequent Travel Routes and Seat Availability
Business professionals usually have regular routes for their trips, so they need to regularly monitor seat availability and airline schedules on their assigned flights . This can be done by collecting flight schedules and prices regularly. The information can then be used to monitor the flights and get notices when seats become available or if their preferred airline changes the plan. Business people may also use this information to find alternative flights to accommodate unexpected last-minute schedule changes.
To make your web scraper more realistic, you must modify the code by capturing more elements than the ones used in this blog because it is rare for travel websites to disclose all flight schedule data on one page. In addition, there may be different ways to get data from targeted travel websites and other data you might need or want.
- Use Data to Optimize Flight Schedules
Airlines can use flight schedules and price information from scrapping to optimize their existing flight schedules. They can analyze the data and identify the best flight route plan for when it departs or arrives at a destination, which maximizes the number of passengers and minimizes total travel time. They can also use this data to identify flights with high demand and frequencies that need to be adjusted or canceled, such as seasonal flights that are only operated during specific months to avoid an imbalance between supply and demand.
Conclusion
Using web scraping techniques can be a smart way for businesses to obtain vital information without much effort. The right amount of knowledge and appropriate actions can enable you to send requests to various parts of a website without breaching its terms and conditions. You can then extract valuable information from the website and use it for your benefit.
