Trip Planner — honest fares and a budget itinerary
Open Trip Planner →Trip Planner makes two things: a labelled flight result set — offers, filter facets, visa verdicts, and the provider's own honesty label on every price — and a day-by-day itinerary that fits a budget. The label is the feature. A fare is marked confirmed only when it came from live bookable inventory; anything a model read off the web is marked estimated, and the banner says so above the list rather than in a footnote.
What Trip Planner makes
- A flight result set — offers with an honesty label, filter facets that agree with the list, a price-by-departure-date graph, and a visa verdict for your passport.
- A budget itinerary — a day-by-day plan with costs, holding back a flat 10% contingency so the total is one you can actually spend.
Read the banner before you read a price. Live fares means bookable inventory. Estimated fares — not bookable prices means a model read the web and the number is an informed guess.
Walkthrough: search, then plan
Open the Find flights tab
Fill in From and To as IATA codes, Depart, an optional Return, Travellers (1 to 12), Cabin, and your Passport — the passport is what turns the visa column from blank into an answer.
Tick "My dates are flexible" if they are
Flexible search reads cached price data to find the cheapest day, then runs a real search for that day. The cache narrows the question; it never becomes an offer you could book.
Press Search flights, then read the banner
The honesty banner is above the results on purpose. A list of estimated fares looks exactly like a list of live ones, and the difference decides whether you can act on it.
Narrow the list
Sort, stops, price, journey length, airlines, documents and confidence. Every filter re-asks the server, so the facet counts and the list cannot disagree with each other — a filter that showed "12" and returned 3 would be worse than no facets at all.
Use the price graph as a control, not a picture
The bars in the price-by-departure-date graph are buttons. Clicking one runs a real search for that date.
Carry a fare into a plan
Plan a trip around this takes the fare you are looking at across to the planning tab.
Describe the trip
One sentence, a budget, a currency, 1 to 60 days, travellers and a style — budget, balanced or comfort. An impossible budget is rejected by a feasibility check before any model is paid for.
Options
- Travellers — 1 to 12; Cabin — the usual classes; Passport — drives the visa verdicts.
- Flexible dates — resolve the cheapest day from cached prices, then search it for real.
- Filters — sort, stops, price, journey, airlines, documents, confidence. All server-side.
- Trip length — 1 to 60 days.
- Style — budget, balanced or comfort, with a flat 10% contingency held back either way.
Limits and what the labels mean
- Confirmed — live inventory from the flight provider.
- Not confirmed — the provider's test mode. Deliberately never labelled confirmed, even though the data looks real.
- Estimated — web search plus a model, with citations so you can see where the number came from.
- Cached prices are at most 48 hours old and back only the graph and flexible search. They never become offers.
- The Book link is a route search, not this exact itinerary — the page says so, because a link that looked like a booking for a price that is an estimate would be the worst version of this feature.
What it costs
Trip Planner is a Starter app. Three things call a model and cost credits:
- The itinerary.
- Reading fares off the web, when there is no live inventory connection to ask.
- The visa ruleset — cached for four hours, one lookup per search.
Free: the price calendar, flexible search, filtering, the config, your saved items, and the budget feasibility check — which is arithmetic, and runs first precisely so that an impossible budget costs nothing to discover.
Frequently asked questions
Why does a fare say "estimated"?
Because it did not come from live bookable inventory. A model read prices off the web and cited its sources. It is useful for planning and it is not a price you can pay, and the banner says so above the list rather than under it.
Can I book a flight here?
No. The Book link is a route search on the airline or agency side, not a booking for this exact itinerary, and the page states that where you click it.
What does "My dates are flexible" actually do?
It reads cached price data — at most 48 hours old — to pick the cheapest departure day, then runs a genuine search for that day. The cached number narrows the question; the result you see is a real search.
Are the visa answers legal advice?
No. They are a ruleset looked up for your passport and destination, cached for four hours. Treat them as a prompt to check the official source, not as a substitute for it.
What if my budget is too small for the trip?
You are told before anything is generated. The feasibility check is arithmetic and runs first, so an impossible budget costs you nothing.
Why do the filters reload the results?
Because filtering client-side lets the facet counts drift away from the list. Every filter re-asks the server, so what the counts say and what you see are the same answer.