Originally Posted by
esplanades
You could also argue that seats.aero searches is actually *limiting* the number of baseline searches by users of that site, since it uses cached information rather than individuals launching dozens of "live" requests, especially if changing the day requires an entirely new request.
Only if seats.aero is a mindreader and knows in advance the precise subset of routes and dates its users will want to search for, and ensures it has already searched and cached only those routes that will be "needed" that day.
If seats.aero has instead searched for other city pairs and dates that nobody bothered to check for since they last searched for those city pairs and dates and scraped that data into their cache - it hasn't limited the number of baseline searches; it has made unnecessary searches.
(If seats.aero was a mindreader or could somehow foretell future customer demands, I'm sure it would be dedicated to a far more profitable and lucrative endeavour than scraping award booking sites!!!)