How does Seats.aero display the seat map showing which seats are available and which are booked for airline flights?
63% View from the Wing
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Seats.aero displays the seat‑map by pulling the visual information straight from the airlines’ reservation systems rather than generating it themselves.
Data‑collection process
- The platform runs automated bots that perform both screen‑scraping and API‑scraping of airline loyalty program interfaces, such as Aeroplan for Air Canada, to capture the exact seat‑map graphics and availability markers shown to a logged‑in user.
- These bots mimic a regular user’s search, loading the airline’s seat‑selection page and extracting the layout that indicates which seats are open, blocked, or already booked. 🔗
- Seats.aero then stores these extracted seat‑map images and associated availability data in a cache, allowing users to view the map instantly without re‑querying the airline on every request.
- In the Seats.aero “Explore” feature, the service highlights directly available flights in green and connecting options in blue, which is derived from the same scraped seat‑map information that shows real‑time open seats versus taken seats.
Why the approach works
- Because the seat‑map is part of the publicly accessible reservation interface, the bots can retrieve it without needing a formal API partnership.
- Rate‑limiting is applied to keep the request load low, reducing the risk of overburdening the airline’s servers while still keeping the cached seat‑maps fairly up‑to‑date.🔗
In short, Seats.aero captures the airline’s own seat‑map display through automated scraping, caches the images and availability flags, and then serves that cached view to users for fast, visual insight into which seats are open.
View from the Wing 63%
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