bengl3rt

Hey folks,

I've been busy writing a middleware layer (all my IT people know what I'm talkin' bout) that presents a simple, unified API for retrieving frequent flier account information (status, balances, recent itineraries) from all the legacy carriers. It hides all the nasty screen scraping away behind a magical wall of REST/JSON consistency

Now it's time to do something with it. What I find myself doing all the time is logging into Mileage Plus (in my case), figuring out how many EQMs or EQSs I need this year if I want to hit the next level of status, and then doing calculations like how many miles/segments I would need to fly per week to get there, as well as looking up fares for some of my common/favorite routes as well as ones for places I've never been but would like to do, and plan out in my head how I could cost effectively go about hitting status (Premier in my case). The reason I built this piece of software is so I could build another piece of software that would automate this process.

So, Flyertalkers, my question to you is: Would you use a free or cheap web/mobile application that...

v1.0
-Aggregates your progress towards status from all of the major US legacy FF programs
-Shows you how many miles/segments you have to fly per week to get to the various remaining status level within the year
-Looks at your past itineraries, figures out your "favorite" (most frequently traveled) routes, and tells you how many times you have to fly them within the year to get to the remaining status levels

v2.0
-Takes into account your favorite routes, as well as a list of destinations you entered that you want to go to, and presents potential itineraries to you that take you to those places while minimizing cents per mile (would involve integrating ITA or some other fare search engine)

So, v1.0 just does some basic math on your FF data to give you some "fun facts" at a glance (for example: using my prototype I figured out that I need to fly home from school and back - BOS-SFO-BOS - once every 3.8 weeks for the rest of 2010 to hit Premier), whereas v2.0 would get closer to a "mileage-run-o-matic", helping you figure out the best times to go places you go often or want to go to minimize cents per mile.

I should have some time in the coming year to make this a real application and put it up somewhere where y'all can give it a try. Interested?

clbm12

Free Yes....pay no

SANspotter

I'd be much more interested in a mobile app vs. a website.

v1.0 should be free (you could offset dev costs with advertising)
v2.0 could be $1-3 (at least that's what I would be comfortable paying)

obscure2k

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Obscure2k
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UALOneKPlus

Apps like this sounds interesting, but I don't use them because I don't trust 3rd parties with my login credentials, especially to a mass of accounts all at once.

Hackers can do some real damage with that info - buy airplane tickets for others, cancel existing trips if they're malicious, etc etc.

Good luck with your app though.

bengl3rt

I definitely considered that and figured the best way to solve that problem is to have the app never remember your mileage account password - so, every time you updated the app's local cache of your status information, you would have to enter the password. It would be tedious but it would certainly make me sleep easier knowing I wasn't liable for a ton of passwords if my server got broken into.

UALOneKPlus

Yes that sounds like a good idea. The issue is you will have to make the source open to vet this out by other developers / hackers. If the software is closed source then it would be impossible to vet this independently.

bengl3rt

I would be open to architecting the application in such a way that the "trusted path" (i.e. all the code handling sensitive user credentials) could be open sourced without giving away too much of the "secret sauce" (algorithms etc).

Security concerns, anyone else have any other thoughts?

travisc

The answer here is to have an application master password that you use to encrypt all mileage account passwords AND usernames AND personal data (name,email,dob if you keep it,etc...). So when the app opens, you only ever enter the application password. If your server is broken into, no passwords will be compromised as the master password is never stored on it, it only ever exists over the air and in RAM (so your server's vulnerability in this case is the same as your original plan - minimized).

As for the original idea, I don't use US carriers much so not really focused on me. Sounds good in principle. Would be nice to see V3 cover Europe, V4 MiddleEast/AsiaPacific.

yevlesh2

Interesting idea . As far as the pricing:

v1 should be free - it is not particularly practical and it is really more of a proof of concept

v2 I would be willing to pay a bit for. Maybe price it the way AwardWallet prices their platform - have a "suggested price", but also allow people to pay what they wish .


The app would be more useful if it could automatically register you for all available promos that are relevant to your itineraries.

Support for international carriers would be good as well.

UALOneKPlus

You're missing the point though. Despite a master password, the program will still have to transmit the specific username / password to the FF sites to get the mileage data. The program will always have the theoretical ability to have the user specific login info.

marksskram

I've written code for my favorite loyalty websites but what you forget are the legal considerations. There are several sites that do this (I use TripIt now, and have checked out MileageManager). Because of their volume of customers, I highly doubt they are doing something so wishy-washy as screen scraping. If you're serious about this, contact the airlines and/or points.com and get their permission and/or pay for their APIs. A screen scraping application is not only inefficient but likely against the sites' terms of service.

bengl3rt

Word on the street is that TripIt is screen scraping, just like Mint.com is for your bank/financial info. However I did hear also that the guy who wrote the Apptify iCenter iPhone app got some heat from United's lawyers until he made some changes to the look of the app so it was clear it wasn't associated with United.

bobes

I'd be interested and probably wait for v2. I'm currently using Apptify iCenter on my iPhone and it does the job similar to your V1.

what you can add as a v2 feature would be somehow mining (anonymously) popular MR routes and current prices for FT folks.

CPRich

Do you mean enter the passwords? I currently track 28 programs in AwardWallet and certainly wouldn't want to type in 28 passwords to get an update every session.

The other question is what would differentiate this from AwardWallet, GoMiles, Acruw, MileageManager, Yodlee, FullView, or the myriad other apps that seem to do some version of this already?