R Flights

Query plane tickets, from several airlines, using the Kiwi API (similar to Google Flights).

The API is documented at https://docs.kiwi.com/.

Installation

You can install the rflights package from CRAN:

install.packages("rflights")

Or get the latest version from GitHub:

if (!require("remotes")) {
  install.packages("remotes")
}
remotes::install_github("jcrodriguez1989/rflights")

Usage

Get city or country IDs

library("rflights")
# get Argentina and toulouse IDs
arg_id <- find_location("Argentina", "country")
length(arg_id) # only one result, so it might be the one

## [1] 1

arg_id <- arg_id[[1]]
names(arg_id)

##  [1] "id"                "active"            "code"             
##  [4] "code_alpha_3"      "name"              "slug"             
##  [7] "alternative_names" "rank"              "global_rank_dst"  
## [10] "neighbours"        "organizations"     "currency"         
## [13] "region"            "continent"         "location"         
## [16] "type"

arg_id$id

## [1] "AR"

arg_id$continent

## $id
## [1] "south-america"
## 
## $code
## [1] "SA"
## 
## $name
## [1] "South America"
## 
## $slug
## [1] "south-america"

arg_id <- arg_id$id

tl_id <- find_location("toulouse")
length(tl_id)

## [1] 5

lapply(tl_id, function(x) x$type)

## [[1]]
## [1] "city"
## 
## [[2]]
## [1] "airport"
## 
## [[3]]
## [1] "bus_station"
## 
## [[4]]
## [1] "tourist_region"
## 
## [[5]]
## [1] "bus_station"

# we are looking for the city
tl_id <- tl_id[[which(sapply(tl_id, function(x) x$type == "city"))]]
tl_id$country

## $id
## [1] "FR"
## 
## $name
## [1] "France"
## 
## $slug
## [1] "france"
## 
## $code
## [1] "FR"

tl_id <- tl_id$id
tl_id

## [1] "toulouse_fr"

Get flight prices

# get flights from Argentina to toulouse around 01 July to 09 July
# Maybe I can go to the user2019??
flights <- get_flights(
  fly_from = "AR", fly_to = "toulouse_fr",
  date_from = "01/09/2019", date_to = "09/09/2019"
)
length(flights)
names(flights[[1]])
sapply(flights, function(x) x$price)

Examples

Create flight price alarms

I used it to alert through a Pushbullet message.

my_savings <- 25 # yup, just 25USD
found_ticket <- FALSE
while (!found_ticket) {
  flights <- get_flights(
    fly_from = "AR", fly_to = "toulouse_fr",
    date_from = "01/09/2019", date_to = "09/09/2019"
  )
  flights <- flights[sapply(flights, function(x) x$price) <= my_savings]
  if (length(flights) > 0) {
    send_alert(paste0(
      "There is a plane ticket you can afford!\n",
      "Check it out at Kiwi.com"
    ))
    # user-defined alert function (not in rflights)
  }
}

Fly to anywhere

Find plane tickets from my city to anywhere, from today to 2 next weeks.

# I am a freelancer, let's go anywhere!
flights <- get_flights(
  fly_from = "GNV",
  date_from = Sys.Date(), date_to = Sys.Date() + 2 * 7
)
length(flights)

## [1] 235

head(t(sapply(flights, function(x) c(x$price, x$cityTo))), n = 20)

##       [,1]  [,2]       
##  [1,] "148" "New York" 
##  [2,] "150" "New York" 
##  [3,] "167" "New York" 
##  [4,] "170" "Orlando"  
##  [5,] "170" "Orlando"  
##  [6,] "170" "Orlando"  
##  [7,] "170" "Orlando"  
##  [8,] "175" "Orlando"  
##  [9,] "176" "Las Vegas"
## [10,] "183" "Orlando"  
## [11,] "183" "Las Vegas"
## [12,] "185" "New York" 
## [13,] "185" "New York" 
## [14,] "185" "New York" 
## [15,] "186" "Orlando"  
## [16,] "189" "Orlando"  
## [17,] "190" "Miami"    
## [18,] "190" "Miami"    
## [19,] "190" "New York" 
## [20,] "191" "Las Vegas"