{"id":13655,"date":"2021-02-09T19:47:10","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T18:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/help-flight-search-f-a-q\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T08:22:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T06:22:57","slug":"help-flight-search-f-a-q","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/help-flight-search-f-a-q\/","title":{"rendered":"Help Flight Search FAQ"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=\"in_container\" full_screen_row_position=\"middle\" column_margin=\"default\" column_direction=\"default\" column_direction_tablet=\"default\" column_direction_phone=\"default\" scene_position=\"center\" text_color=\"dark\" text_align=\"left\" row_border_radius=\"none\" row_border_radius_applies=\"bg\" overflow=\"visible\" overlay_strength=\"0.3\" gradient_direction=\"left_to_right\" shape_divider_position=\"bottom\" bg_image_animation=\"none\"][vc_column column_padding=\"no-extra-padding\" column_padding_tablet=\"inherit\" column_padding_phone=\"inherit\" column_padding_position=\"all\" bottom_margin=\"64px\" column_element_direction_desktop=\"default\" column_element_spacing=\"default\" desktop_text_alignment=\"default\" tablet_text_alignment=\"default\" phone_text_alignment=\"default\" background_color_opacity=\"1\" background_hover_color_opacity=\"1\" column_backdrop_filter=\"none\" column_shadow=\"none\" column_border_radius=\"none\" column_link_target=\"_self\" max_width_desktop=\"1200\" column_position=\"default\" gradient_direction=\"left_to_right\" overlay_strength=\"0.3\" width=\"1\/1\" tablet_width_inherit=\"default\" animation_type=\"default\" bg_image_animation=\"none\" border_type=\"simple\" column_border_width=\"none\" column_border_style=\"solid\" column_padding_type=\"default\" gradient_type=\"default\"][heading]\n

Help | Flight Search F.A.Q.<\/strong><\/h1>\n[\/heading][vc_column_text css=\".vc_custom_1734618377557{margin-bottom: 64px !important;}\" text_direction=\"default\"]\n

1. Who is the provider?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Skyscanner<\/em><\/p>\n

ForwardKeys\u00a0receives a daily feed with searches performed through\u00a0Skyscanner, a\u00a0travel metasearch engine and fare aggregator website. For the sake of clarity, a\u00a0metasearch engine\u00a0is a type of search engine that collects the results from other search engine databases. The Skyscanner site\u00a0is available in over 30 languages and is used by 60 million people each month. It concatenates results from online travel agencies (OTAs) and airline websites, including low-cost carriers, and it returns a more comprehensive output to the client. Consequently, clients can take better decisions according to their preferences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. What is a \u201csearch\u201d?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Before booking a flight, travellers search to find the best offers for themselves in regards to itinerary, timings and fare.<\/p>\n

When a user does a\u00a0\u201csearch\u201d<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0on Skyscanner, they add in the origin and the destination\u00a0 (ie: city, country); the travel dates and the number of pax per booking. When the search is run, all the different possible options will be displayed on the screen from the city of origin to the destination for the selected dates.<\/p>\n

Therefore a\u00a0\u201csearch\u201d<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0contains the details regarding the city of origin, destination, travel dates and number of passengers the traveller has provided in the search parameters. This reveals the \u201cwillingness to travel\u201d and the true intention of the traveller regardless of any service limitation (ie: not the availability of direct connections).<\/p>\n

Please note:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>It is NOT possible to analyzed \u201cSearches\u201d by airport. The lowest level is \u201ccity\u201d level. The reason is because typically, when someone\u2019s looking for a trip in Skyscanner does not look for a specific airport to another airport, but they do city to city, instead. For instance: Like\u00a0London (UK) to San Jos\u00e9 (Costa Rica) and then, among all options, they will pick one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. What is a \u201cpick\u201d?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Among all the different options displayed on Skyscanner after performing a search, the user may select one of the options available to get from the origin to the destination for the selected dates. When the user selects a specific travel agency or airline to proceed further with the purchase of the flight ticket, and the user is redirected to the third party\u2019s website, this is what is considered a\u00a0\u201cpick\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Therefore, on top of the details of origin, destination, travel dates and number of passengers,\u00a0a \u201cpick\u201d also contains the details about\u00a0airline and fares,\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>from the offer actually chosen by the traveller.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0the best possible scenario, each\u00a0search should lead to a \u201cPick\u201d but in reality, the number of searches far exceeds the number of Flight Picks due to several reasons such as a lack of non-stop routes, expensive fares and\/or inappropriate departure\/arrival times, etc.<\/p>\n

In addition, a \u201cpick\u201d does not necessarily translated into a \u201cbooking\u201d. The transaction may not be \u201cfinalised\u201d on the after steps. However, when the user selects a \u201cpick\u201d, they have moved to a further step in the decision-making process of purchasing an air ticket,\u00a0 from the \u201cwillingness to travel\u201d, which we can assess with the \u201csearch\u201d, to a more firm\u201dintention to travel\u201d. Therefore the ratio between picks and bookings is much higher than searches and final bookings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4.Which kind of data is provided?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Up until July 2020, ForwardKeys received sample data. Now, we have full access to the entire Skyscanner database with historical data going back to 2017.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. How often is the data updated?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

ForwardKeys receives data from Skyscanner on a daily basis. Normally there is a 1-day delay for the data to be refreshed and in some cases, it can take up to 2 days.<\/p>\n

There is an automated process to update the data in PROD early in the morning, around 7 am to refresh the data, and if by any reason it\u00b4s not updated, the automatic process is repeated again around 2 pm until it\u00b4s completed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6. What is the coverage of Skyscanner compared to the entire search worldwide?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Attached is the Skyscanner coverage analysis per country. To create this report we have used Google Trends to analyse how Skyscanner is searched in Google against Kayak, Google Flights and Momodo \u2013 who are considered their main competitors. We did not consider OTAs in this analysis. Please take into account that in some countries, such as China, it is not representative since they have other competing search engines.<\/p>\n

Presence.Skyscanner.CountriesWorldwide.xlsx<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

7. How many pax does a \u201csearch\u201d account for?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When a person searches a trip with 4 pax, it is then counted as 4 searches, not 1.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

8. What does \u201cpicks\u201d account for?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s the same as with searches. If the user selects a flight for a search for 4 pax, it\u2019s counted as 4 picks. The number of picks is counted by the number of pax, not by the Skyscanner user nor session.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

9. Is Flight Search data accessible via API?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

No, Flight Search \u2018raw\u2019 data cannot be delivered via API or any other alternative method (ie: AWS) due to contractual specifications with our provider. You are able to download the data by using the Export options on the bottom left-hand side.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

10. How did Skyscanner recognize searchers\u2019 pax residence area?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Pax residence area is recognized by the Internet IP address of the Skyscanner user. If the searchers are on their mobile data plan, no pax residence area is recognized.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

11. Does Skyscanner report on the breakdown of the app vs desktop vs browser?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

es, they do but we do not display this segmentation. The segmentation available are Mobile \/ Desktop \/ API.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

12. Does Skyscanner report back using Longitude \/ Latitude or town level?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

They do not report coordinates, ForwardKeys matches the town names with their coordinates on our side, it\u2019s one of the hardest of parts of the Skyscanner implementation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=\"Full Width Line\" line_thickness=\"1\" divider_color=\"accent-color\"][vc_column_text css=\"\" text_direction=\"default\"]If you have any doubts and questions,
\nplease do not hesitate to contact the Customer Support team by submitting a ticket at:
\nhttps:\/\/support.forwardkeys.com<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row type=\u00bbin_container\u00bb full_screen_row_position=\u00bbmiddle\u00bb column_margin=\u00bbdefault\u00bb column_direction=\u00bbdefault\u00bb column_direction_tablet=\u00bbdefault\u00bb column_direction_phone=\u00bbdefault\u00bb scene_position=\u00bbcenter\u00bb text_color=\u00bbdark\u00bb text_align=\u00bbleft\u00bb row_border_radius=\u00bbnone\u00bb row_border_radius_applies=\u00bbbg\u00bb overflow=\u00bbvisible\u00bb overlay_strength=\u00bb0.3″ gradient_direction=\u00bbleft_to_right\u00bb shape_divider_position=\u00bbbottom\u00bb bg_image_animation=\u00bbnone\u00bb][vc_column column_padding=\u00bbno-extra-padding\u00bb column_padding_tablet=\u00bbinherit\u00bb column_padding_phone=\u00bbinherit\u00bb column_padding_position=\u00bball\u00bb bottom_margin=\u00bb64px\u00bb column_element_direction_desktop=\u00bbdefault\u00bb column_element_spacing=\u00bbdefault\u00bb desktop_text_alignment=\u00bbdefault\u00bb tablet_text_alignment=\u00bbdefault\u00bb phone_text_alignment=\u00bbdefault\u00bb background_color_opacity=\u00bb1″ background_hover_color_opacity=\u00bb1″ column_backdrop_filter=\u00bbnone\u00bb…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categoria":[],"class_list":["post-13655","page","type-page","status-publish"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14522,"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13655\/revisions\/14522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"categoria","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forwardkeys.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categoria?post=13655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}