Flight Pricing clarification in part II

[Parag Doshi]

Hi,
If the flight pricing model is supposed to be quite simple (one price for coach and one price for first class), then why is the prices retrieved after the flights have been selected? wouldnt it be better to retrieve the prices along with the flight search results? any thoughts?

I hope I am not breaking any rules here as I am not trying to find out how to implement the pricing module, i am just trying to understand the sequence of steps as listed in the use case.

Thanks,
Parag

[Ray Ye]

Hi Parag,

Actually, I have the same concern. Why waste an extra network call for the price? If a customer send flight request along with the times, cities and services of class in one call, the flight with price info should be returned aggregatedly. That is more efficient, and quite popular in travel industry. (see www.travelocity.com)

Anyways, I am going to do that way. Thanks for bring this up.

[Parag Doshi]

Yeah Ray, I do agree, but, I have also seen sites (expedia.com) which brings the flight details first and then checks the prices. So, wanted to understand the reasoning behind it.
Lets see if there are any other views expressed for this post. Maybe, someone might see some other reasoning than the one we summed up.

Parag

[Gerald Davis]

Dudes , I cannot help much but I can give you more ideas to throw into the equation.

When customer enters flight info and system responds ,we cannot assume that system uses a remote network call, it might use a local call or a semi remote call. In the case study it did not say anything about a system being a server system.

There could be commercial reasons why the price does not show up on when system returns flight on first network call-does listing prices make the site look cheap? In some expensive department stories in London if you ask he price of a smart jacket before buying , you probably cannot afford it anyway.

With so many other clients using the system, could there be a concurrent reason why the flight-pricing model is the way it is. There are issues like flight availability and what happens if there are no seats available and how this can affect profits. Maybe prices of the flights can change ( like due to inflation or interest rates or something) and this flight pricing model can handle it more elegantly. What happens when prices go up while a client are booking a flight.

I might be able to answer some of these questions, ja ,but it will take so much time because I am not most smartest road sweeper on the block.

[Parag Doshi]

Originally posted by Gerald Davis:
Dudes , I cannot help much but I can give you more ideas to throw into the equation.

When customer enters flight info and system responds ,we cannot assume that system uses a remote network call, it might use a local call or a semi remote call. In the case study it did not say anything about a system being a server system.

There could be commercial reasons why the price does not show up on when system returns flight on first network call-does listing prices make the site look cheap? In some expensive department stories in London if you ask he price of a smart jacket before buying , you probably cannot afford it anyway.

With so many other clients using the system, could there be a concurrent reason why the flight-pricing model is the way it is. There are issues like flight availability and what happens if there are no seats available and how this can affect profits. Maybe prices of the flights can change ( like due to inflation or interest rates or something) and this flight pricing model can handle it more elegantly. What happens when prices go up while a client are booking a flight.

I might be able to answer some of these questions, ja ,but it will take so much time because I am not most smartest road sweeper on the block.

Thanks for your ideas. And I agree that the reason for not showing the prices in the search results sounds more non technical than technical. And if the pricing model was sensitive to external factors, then, yeah, the prices should be only shown when the user selects the flight. I think the system can be made smarter and for meeting the current requirements, the prices can be retrieved during the flight search, though, it can be shown after the flight selection.that way, i save a network or local call and also fulfil the requirements.
Damn ! road sweepers are smarter in London

Parag

[Ray Ye]

When customer enters flight info and system responds ,we cannot assume that system uses a remote network call, it might use a local call or a semi remote call. In the case study it did not say anything about a system being a server system.

This got to be a network call. Thinking that customer is using a browser or Swing application, not a mainframe terminal. The results was retrieved from backend database/mainframe and then sent to front end.

There could be commercial reasons why the price does not show up on when system returns flight on first network call-does listing prices make the site look cheap?

The site is used to generate revenue, the price will have to show sooner or later, does it mean it's better to be looking cheap later than sooner? In order to maximize the revenue, usability/performance/scalability is much more important than being looking cheap. I think every single makes the contribution to the overall system performance in internet.

Maybe prices of the flights can change ( like due to inflation or interest rates or something) and this flight pricing model can handle it more elegantly. What happens when prices go up while a client are booking a flight.

Maybe, but it is unlikely in the middle of a booking transaction, and it is not in the requirement statement.

And if the pricing model was sensitive to external factors, then, yeah, the prices should be only shown when the user selects the flight. I think the system can be made smarter and for meeting the current requirements, the prices can be retrieved during the flight search, though, it can be shown after the flight selection.

I used to work on a major airline reservation system. I never heard of such things that price system is so volatile. If I book the ticket a minute later than you, and I got $10 cheaper because of the "inflation", what do you think? This is not a stock market, guys!

And let's assume this is the case, then, you can not select the price while you are retrieving the flights, since the price could be changed after the flights were retrieved.

Anyways, I don't think we need to make the design unnecessary over complexed than the requirements.