What it is
A demonstration of how a flight search and booking site is built. It is not a travel agency and not a business, and the terms say so at more length, including the part that matters most: no booking made here will get you onto an aeroplane.
That is not a disclaimer buried at the bottom. It changes what every step of this site means, which is why it is the first thing on this page.
The flights are invented
Airlines, airports, cities and countries are real names. Everything else is generated — the schedules, the prices, the seats available on each one. A flight you find here at a price you like is not a flight you can be on.
So the search is real and what it searches is not. That is worth knowing before you spend time comparing fares.
What happens in order
- You search a route and a date. The calendar shows the cheapest generated fare for each day — see Searching for flights.
- You set who is travelling, before searching rather than after, because a child and an infant pay differently.
- You pick a result. Its six fare lines say what that fare allows: bags, changes, cancellation, seat choice — see Baggage.
- You fill in the passengers and a card. Nothing is charged and no card is kept beyond its brand and last four digits — see Paying for a booking.
- Checkout writes a row and shows you a reference. That is the booking.
What is genuinely real
The arithmetic. Fares are held in Canadian dollars and converted at rates fetched from the European Central Bank, and the fare, the taxes and the total always add up in whichever currency you pick — see Prices and currencies.
The booking record is real too, in the sense that it is a row that exists and can be read back and cancelled. What it is not is an arrangement with an airline.
Where your things are kept
There are no accounts. Your currency and your saved flights live in this browser for a year; your bookings live only as long as the browsing session, which ends when you close the browser. That last one catches people out, so it has an article of its own — Ticket did not arrive.