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Thread: Award Seats API/Data?
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Old Mar 25, 2016 | 9:25 pm
  #13  
JDiver
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Originally Posted by LondonElite
If you read the KVS wiki thread you'll have noticed that application doesn't pay anyone for the GDS data. KVS asks for donations from users in exchange for which they get access to fare inventory data from the airlines. How does KVS get the data? Well, from a variety of sources. It has created dummy accounts with various travel service providers from which it sweeps GDS data, and it asks you to enter your own FF account information so that it can question that airline/alliance search form to scrape that data. Every so often it goes down for a while because an airline or travel service provider has noticed hundreds of thousand of requests through its system. KVS then finds a new one.
Though KVS may call their fees "donations" they are fees. Donations are generally suggested contributions, mostly to not for profit endeavors. KVS is certainly for profit, and they "data scrape" airline and other travel provider websites, as you say - often in contravention of airline copyrights and terms of use.
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