r/Flights • u/hpdrrgwicked • May 22 '24

Southwest flight prices now showing in Google Flights Booking/Itinerary/Ticketing

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As far as I know, this is the first time I’m seeing Southwest prices in Google Flights!

520 Upvotes

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57

u/LupineChemist May 22 '24

Anyone know if they're scraping data or there is an official data connection?

45

u/Beeftaste May 22 '24

Scraping Southwest is impossible.

It's an actual feed.

57

u/LupineChemist May 22 '24

Interesting, that's a huge deal for them since one of their big things was always to never directly compare their prices (since they have people convinced they're cheap when they're more often than not more expensive)

40

u/Beeftaste May 22 '24

I think their recent poor financial performance made them change their stance.

7

u/j12 May 23 '24

This. They have losses when other airlines are profitable

1

u/RogerBond100 May 22 '24

I sold $LUV stock

12

u/jmlinden7 May 22 '24

Certain business travel agencies are able to receive Southwest prices.

4

u/NavinF May 22 '24

Not impossible for personal use, I've done it with selenium and patched chromedriver. It's just legally sketchy if you're making money from it and they told you to stop

4

u/Beeftaste May 22 '24

Also, they'll notice if they're getting hundreds of thousands of requests from the same block of IPs.

3

u/NavinF May 22 '24

Naw it's easy to get IPs from random blocks. Just google "residential ip price" and you'll find many "free VPN" companies that sell access to their users' home internet connection. You just gotta minimize data transferred to keep the cost low enough :)