TravelPal

Know before you go.

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The problem:

Missing flights or having to wait at airports because of delays or cancellations is very common. This is a huge problem and hassle because many travelers could choose to wait at home or stay at work instead of in the airport. Although 25% of flights are delayed, this information can be gathered and given to the traveler before many of them leave for the airport.

Solution:

We are developing a product that will provide In-Location targeted and time specific information to help travelers get to their flight on time.

How it works:

TravelPal gives the traveler real time updates on traffic and flights, alerting them when they should leave for the airport. TravelPal also guides travelers through the airport process (check-in), security and boarding.

We are using BLE technology based Beacons to identify the precise locations of the check-in counter, security check point and boarding gates inside the airport. In the origin city, each beacon will help to measure the line time at check-in and security and in the destination city they will be used to help send notifications about relevant information and deals (rental cars and transportation deals).

The TravelPal application will be used for traveler tracking before entering the airport and the beacons will be used to track progress once inside the airport.

Challenges we ran into:

We had a hard time with the Sabre API:

  • It looks like there's no flight status REST API, the suggestion was to use the schedules API which uses a different technology (SOAP) than the InstaFlight API which we used to get the upcoming flights given the current date and time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

We got flights from current time through the end of the day to load in the event that you miss your flight.

What I learned:

  • We learned what you can use the Sabre API for roundtrips.
  • AngularJS

What's next for TravelPal:

We'd like to integrate TravelPal with other API's to get traffic, route information and also flight status and test out the beacon technology. TravelPal is an end-to-end trip product that will aid the traveler on their entire journey.

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