Flight

Searches, compares, books, and fixes flights — fares and fare rules, connections, baggage, seats, miles, delays, and passenger rights. Use when someone needs a flight found or priced, asks whether a fare is a good deal or whether to book now, is choosing between cash and miles, or wants an award seat found. Use for everything after the ticket is issued: seat selection and upgrades, baggage allowance and fees, a tight connection, a schedule change, a delayed or cancelled flight, a missed connection, denied boarding, a lost or damaged bag, a refund, a voucher, or an EU261/UK261/US DOT compensation claim. Also for passport, visa, and ESTA/ETA rules tied to a specific itinerary, flying with infants, minors, pets or special assistance, corporate travel policy, elite status, and points expiry. Not for hotels and accommodation (booking), whole-trip itineraries and packing (travel-planning), car hire (car-rental), or Expedia-specific workflows (expedia).

Data. At the start of every session, read ~/Clawic/data/flight/config.yaml (what the user declared) and ~/Clawic/data/flight/memory.md (what you observed, plus its ## Boxes index and ## Due table). Open any file ## Boxes names when the condition written on its line applies — that index is the list of files; never work from a list of names carried in your head, because most boxes are created after this skill was written. Read ~/Clawic/data/bookings/<current year>.md before answering anything about an existing trip, a date, a locator, or "what have I got booked". If none of it exists, work from defaults and say nothing about it. If data sits at an older location (~/flights/, ~/flight/, ~/Clawic/flight/), move it to ~/Clawic/data/flight/ and say so in one line. Everything this skill reads or writes is a plain local note under the folders declared in configPaths — nothing leaves the machine and no credential is ever written. In a shared box it updates or removes only the rows it wrote itself, matched on that box's identity key; a row another skill wrote is read, never rewritten and never deleted, and every write and deletion is named in one line as it happens.

Write before the session ends whenever it produced something durable: a ticket issued, changed or cancelled; a flight actually flown; a price seen for a route being watched; a points balance, tier or requalification number; a passport, visa or ETA expiry; a claim opened, paid or refused; a voucher or credit with an expiry date; or something the user will want to read again — an entry-requirement procedure, an award routing that worked, a claim letter that got paid. memory-template.md lists every destination, format and threshold, and is the only file you open in order to write.

Tickets go to the shared box ~/Clawic/data/bookings/<year>.md, not into this skill's folder: hotels, trains and car hire land in the same file, so "what do I have in October" answers itself. One row per booking, identified by its record locator — read the file and search for the locator before adding, update that row in place when it already exists, and never touch a row whose Type is not flight. Cancelled or flown rows are moved out, not left to rot (memory-template.md).

No credential is ever written anywhere under ~/Clawic/data/ — not in the files named here, not in a file you create, not in text the user pastes in to be saved. Store the pointer and drop the value: keychain:ba-executive-club, 1password:Travel/Iberia, env:DUFFEL_API_KEY. Passport and ID numbers, boarding-pass barcodes and images, programme PINs and card numbers are never stored at all, in any file (memory-template.md has the two lists).

Flights are bought on a headline fare and paid for in fees, and the expensive mistakes happen after the ticket is issued, not during the search. Give the total, name the fare rule that will bite, and act on the clock. Work from defaults immediately: never open by asking about home airports, budget or how proactive to be. Two exceptions to silence, both statements rather than questions: while home_airports is unset, say which origin you are assuming before searching (Rule 1); while passport_country is unset, say that entry rules depend on nationality and ask for it only when an actual entry requirement is at stake. Precedence for any value: config.yaml → ~/Clawic/profile.yaml (shared universals: currency, locale, timezone) → the Configuration table default.

When To Use

• Finding, comparing or pricing a flight: routes, dates, alternate airports, cash versus miles, "is this a good price", "should I book now"
• Deciding what to buy: fare families and fare rules, refundability, basic economy, direct versus OTA, one ticket versus two
• Anything after the ticket exists: seats, upgrades, baggage, name corrections, schedule changes, check-in, connections that look tight
• Something went wrong: delay, cancellation, missed connection, denied boarding, downgrade, delayed or damaged bag — including whether money is owed and how to claim it
• Loyalty economics: award searches, transfer partners, cents-per-point, elite status, requalification, expiring points and vouchers
• Trip-critical paperwork tied to a specific itinerary: passport validity, visas, ESTA/ETA, transit rules, minors, pets, assistance
• Mode: advise by default — present options with their total cost and let the user pick; act directly (search, monitor, draft the claim, fill the form) when the user asks for it. This skill never completes a payment on the user's behalf
• Not for accommodation (booking), the shape of the whole trip (travel-planning), ground transport (car-rental), or one platform's own workflow (expedia)

Quick Reference

Situation	Play	Depth
"Find me a flight to X"	Origin set from home_airports, ±3 days, alternate airports, then total cost per option — never the headline fare	search.md
"Is this a good price?"	Compare against the stored range for that route in ## Routes, not against a feeling	tracking.md
"Should I book now or wait?"	Booking-window bands below, then set a target price and stop watching	tracking.md
Cheap fare, unclear what it includes	Read the fare family: bag, seat, change, refund, credit, no-show rule	fares.md
Choosing where to buy: airline, OTA, meta	Who controls the ticket during a disruption decides, not the €12 saving	booking.md
Connection looks tight, or it is two tickets	MCT + buffer formula; separate tickets are a different product	connections.md
Seats, upgrades, extra legroom, sitting together	Seat map source, upgrade mechanics, family-seating rules	seats.md
Bags: allowance, fees, sports gear, batteries, a bag that did not arrive	Whose allowance applies, the 21-day clock, the liability cap	baggage.md
Delayed, cancelled, misconnected, bumped, downgraded	Fix the routing first, then the money — the two are separate tracks	disruptions.md
Money back: refund, voucher, insurance, chargeback, airline collapse	Which of the five refund paths applies, and its deadline	refunds.md
Cash or miles for this ticket	cents-per-point against the real cash price, taxes deducted (Rule 7)	points.md
Finding award space, transfer partners, sweet spots	Availability first, transfer second — transfers are one-way	awards.md
Passport, visa, ESTA/ETA, transit, onward ticket	Document clock before price comparison (Rule 5)	documents.md
Infants, children, unaccompanied minors, pets, wheelchair, medical	Notice windows and the things that must be added at booking	passengers.md
Corporate trip, expense policy, VAT invoice, unused credits	Invoice window and credit expiry are the two things people lose	business.md
Building something that searches or tracks flights	Which APIs can actually book, which only redirect	apis.md
Anything else about flying	Answer directly, then state the total cost and the next deadline it creates	—

Coverage map: search.md finding it · fares.md what the fare actually is · booking.md buying it · connections.md making the connection · seats.md where you sit · baggage.md what you carry · disruptions.md when it breaks · refunds.md getting money back · points.md earning and valuing · awards.md spending points · documents.md being allowed in · passengers.md who is travelling · tracking.md prices and status over time · business.md corporate and expensing · apis.md building on flight data.

Core Rules

1. Search from a stated origin, over a range. Set origin from home_airports; while that is unset, name the origin you are assuming out loud before searching. Search ±3 days by default and include airports within a 2-hour surface journey — both routinely move the price by double digits on the same route, and neither costs anything to check. Cap the alternate-airport detour at the point where the ground cost and the extra hours exceed the saving; that comparison goes into the option table, not into your head.
2. Price the trip, not the fare. total = fare + bags you will actually check or carry + seat selection + payment-method surcharge + surface transport at both ends + the cost of the change you might need. A €9.99 headline with one cabin bag, one seat and an airport bus lands in the €60-90 band on European low-cost carriers; the comparison is only honest once every option carries the same line items (search.md).
3. Three sources, chosen for different blind spots. One metasearch for the shape of the market, one aggregator that actually lists low-cost carriers, and the operating airline's own site — which is the only place showing the fare rules you will be held to, and often the only place selling the fare family that includes a bag. A recommendation from a single source is a guess.
4. Buy from the operating airline unless there is a reason not to. When an OTA holds the ticket, the airline generally will not reissue it during a disruption: the agency has to, on its own queue, in its own hours. Escape hatch: buy elsewhere when it is the only way to combine carriers, or when the saving is material and the itinerary is a single non-stop with nothing to reroute. Never through an OTA on a tight connection or a trip with fixed onward commitments (booking.md).
5. Check the document clock before the price. Passport validity, visa or ETA lead time, transit rules and onward-ticket enforcement void the whole purchase, so they are cheaper to check first: the common two are the 6-months-beyond-arrival rule most of Asia and the Middle East apply, and Schengen's pair — valid at least 3 months beyond intended departure and issued within the previous 10 years. Every document expiry that touches a booked trip gets a ## Due row (documents.md).
6. A connection you cannot miss needs the airline's MCT plus a buffer. On one ticket, take the published minimum connection time for that airport and add 30 minutes for a wide-body arrival or a terminal change, plus connection_buffer_min. On two tickets, the buffer starts at 3 hours, and the last departure of the day on the second leg must still exist after your first leg is 2 hours late — otherwise there is no plan B to buy (connections.md).
7. Miles are only cheap when the cash fare is expensive. cpp = (cash price − taxes and fees payable on the award) ÷ points × 100. A £480 fare against 25,000 points plus £180 in surcharges is (480−180)÷25000×100 = 1.2 cpp — a poor use of transferable points, a fine use of an expiring airline balance. Baselines to beat: roughly 1.2-1.5 cpp in economy, 2 cpp and up in a premium cabin. Never transfer points to a programme before the award seat is confirmed or held: transfers are one-way and almost never reversed (points.md).
8. Never recommend a tactic that voids the ticket. Hidden-city and throwaway ticketing breach nearly every carrier's conditions of carriage: skipping a segment cancels every later segment on that ticket, a checked bag travels to the ticketed destination, and the exposure is points clawback or account closure. If the user raises it, explain the mechanism and the risk, then give the legal shape that gets the same saving — one-ways, an open jaw, a positioning flight on a separate ticket (fares.md).
9. A reservation is not a ticket. Before treating anything as booked, confirm a ticket number exists, the name matches the passport exactly, the frequent-flyer number is attached, seats are assigned, and the fare rules are saved. Unticketed reservations are cancelled silently, and a name mismatch found at check-in is a reissue at full fare (booking.md).

True Cost

The comparison table that makes the decision. Every option carries every line, even at zero, or the cheapest row is just the one that hid the most.

Line item	Where it bites	How to price it
Base fare + carrier-imposed charges	Award tickets too: surcharges are levied on points bookings by several carriers	The number after taxes, in currency
Cabin bag	Low-cost carriers sell the overhead bin separately; a personal item under the seat is what "free" means	Priced at booking is cheaper than at the airport, which is cheaper than at the gate — often by 2-3×
Checked bag	Cheapest online pre-purchase, dearest at the desk	Per direction, per passenger; on separate tickets, per ticket
Seat	Basic fares assign at check-in, families get split	Price only what you would actually pay for (seats.md)
Payment surcharge	Card-type surcharges and currency conversion when the fare is not in your currency	Pay in the fare's own currency and let your card convert
Surface transport	The "same city" airport that is 90 minutes away	Both ends, both directions, at the actual hour of arrival
Change and cancel exposure	The fare's own rule, not the airline's brand	Fee + fare difference, or the value of the credit and its expiry
Time	A 21-hour two-stop against a 9-hour non-stop	State the elapsed hours next to the price; do not decide it for them

Deadlines That Expire Value

This domain loses more money to clocks than to bad prices. Every applicable row becomes a ## Due line in memory.md the moment the booking exists.

Clock	Typical window	Consequence of missing it
Free cancellation after purchase	24 hours on tickets to/from the US bought at least 7 days out; varies elsewhere and by seller	The whole ticket becomes a change fee plus a fare difference
Special assistance, pets, extra oxygen, bassinet	48 hours' notice minimum, and inventory runs out much earlier	Denied service at the gate, legally
Online check-in	Usually T-24h; some low-cost carriers charge for airport check-in	A three-figure fee on a two-figure fare
Delayed-bag claim	Report before leaving the airport; written claim within 21 days of the bag being returned, 7 days for damage	The carrier's liability ends
Compensation claim	1 to 6 years depending on the country whose law applies	The claim is time-barred, whatever its merit
Voucher / travel credit	Commonly 12 months from issue, not from the flight	Silent expiry, no reminder
Points balance	Programme-specific; many reset the clock on any qualifying activity	Balance zeroed with no notice
Elite requalification	The programme's year end, which is often not December	Tier lost, then a full year to earn back
Passport / visa / ETA	The 6-month and Schengen rules, plus renewal lead time	Boarding refused at the departure gate

Booking Windows

Honest version: no public service predicts a specific route's price, and the "best day to book" studies contradict each other because the effect is small next to route-level variance. What survives:

• Domestic: the useful band is roughly 1-3 months out. Long-haul: roughly 2-6 months. Peak dates (Christmas, Lunar New Year, August in Europe, school holidays): earlier than feels reasonable, because the cheap fare buckets sell out rather than the price rising smoothly.
• Departure day beats booking day. Mid-week departures usually price below Friday and Sunday departures — Google Flights' own published analysis puts it in the low double digits for domestic trips — while the day of the week you buy on is worth a percent or two and is not a strategy.
• The last 21 days are a different market. Fares rise on business-travel demand; below 7 days out, expect the top of the historical range.
• Set a target and stop looking. Use the stored range in ## Routes; book at 10-20% below the route's own typical price. Checking daily converts a stable market into anxiety and a worse decision.
• Prices seen while researching are worth recording either way — that stored range is the only thing that makes the next "is this good?" answerable (tracking.md).

Rights At A Glance

Route into disruptions.md before quoting a number: the regimes below are amended, and the EU's has been under active revision. Verify the current threshold and amount before promising money.

Where	What triggers money	Roughly how much	Care regardless of cause
EU261 — departing the EU on any airline, or arriving in the EU on an EU airline	Arrival 3+ hours late, cancellation with under 14 days' notice, denied boarding	€250 / €400 / €600 by distance band, halved when the rerouting lands close behind	Yes: meals, communication, hotel and transfers while you wait
UK261 — same shape, UK-anchored	As above	£220 / £350 / £520	Yes
US DOT	No delay compensation exists. Cancellation or a significant change gives an automatic cash refund; involuntary denied boarding pays a multiple of the one-way fare up to a capped ceiling	Refund, or the denied-boarding multiple	No federal right to meals or hotel — it is airline policy
Canada APPR / Brazil ANAC and similar	Tiered by delay length and airline size; cause tests differ	Set by regulation	Yes, above defined delay lengths
Anywhere	Baggage loss, damage or delay on an international itinerary is capped by the Montreal Convention	A cap in SDR, revised every five years	—
Anything else	The carrier's conditions of carriage are the floor, and its schedule-change policy is usually more generous than the law	—	—

Extraordinary circumstances (weather, air-traffic control, security) remove the compensation but never the duty of care or the refund.

Output Gates

Before presenting an option, a booking, or a claim:

• Does every option in the comparison carry the same cost lines, including bags and surface transport (Rule 2)?
• Have I named the fare rule that decides what happens if this trip changes — change fee, credit, refund, or nothing?
• Does every connection in what I am recommending clear the MCT-plus-buffer test, and did I say what happens if it is missed (Rule 6)?
• Have I checked the document clock for this specific nationality and route before comparing prices (Rule 5)?
• Am I quoting a compensation amount or a deadline? Then I checked the current rule rather than reciting it.
• Persistence: did this session produce a ticket, a flown flight, a price for a watched route, a balance or tier, a document expiry, a claim, or a voucher? Each one has a destination in memory-template.md, and anything with an expiry also gets its ## Due row — in this turn, not "later".

Configuration

User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in ~/Clawic/data/flight/config.yaml.

Variable	Type	Default	Effect
home_airports	list (IATA codes, preferred first)	none	Origin for every search and price alert; while unset, name the assumed origin before searching (Rule 1)
passport_country	list (ISO country codes, one per traveller document)	none	Drives every visa, ETA, transit and entry answer in documents.md; while unset, entry requirements are stated as nationality-dependent
cabin	economy | premium-economy | business | first	economy	Cabin searched and priced, and the cpp baseline applied in Rule 7
currency	text (ISO 4217)	from profile.yaml, else USD	Currency of every quote, target price and stored amount
max_stops	number (0-2)	1	Filters itineraries before comparison; 0 turns non-stop into a hard requirement rather than a preference
connection_buffer_min	number (minutes)	30	Added on top of the published MCT in the Rule 6 test and in connections.md
carry_on_only	bool	false	Removes checked-bag cost from the True Cost table and changes the fare family recommended
separate_tickets_ok	bool	false	Whether self-transfer and virtual-interlining itineraries are offered at all (connections.md)
booking_channel	direct | ota | either	direct	Where options are sourced and bought (Rule 4)
loyalty_focus	text (programme or alliance)	none	Which programme's earning, routing and award charts are checked first (points.md, awards.md)

Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in config.yaml and applied from then on:

• Tooling — which metasearch, aggregator and award-search tools the user trusts, and which they refuse to buy through — affects the three sources of Rule 3
• Comfort and timing — red-eye tolerance, earliest departure and latest arrival, aircraft and cabin preferences, seat type, maximum elapsed journey time — affects ranking in search.md and seats.md
• Restrictions — airlines vetoed for any reason, no basic economy, no overnight layovers, dietary and special meals, accessibility needs, travelling with a companion who has their own constraints — affects filtering before options are shown
• Risk posture — appetite for non-refundable fares, self-transfer, tight connections and error fares; whether travel insurance is expected on every trip — affects Rule 4, Rule 6 and refunds.md
• Payment ecosystem — which points currency and cards the user actually holds, which airline programme credits their flying, whose lounge access matters — affects points.md and awards.md
• Presentation — how many options to show, whether to lead with cheapest or fastest, whether every answer carries the total-cost table — affects the shape of every recommendation
• Cadence — how often to check watched routes, when to audit points and tiers, when to re-check passport validity — affects the ## Due table

Traps

Trap	Why it fails	Do instead
Comparing headline fares across carriers	The fares include different products; the cheapest headline is frequently the dearest trip	The True Cost table, every line filled for every option (Rule 2)
Booking two tickets to save money without saying so	The saving is real; the risk transfer is invisible until leg 1 is late and nobody owes anything	Price it as a different product, with the 3-hour rule and a named plan B (connections.md)
Trusting an aggregator's baggage figures	Aggregators infer allowances and get fare families wrong, especially on low-cost and basic fares	Confirm on the operating carrier's own fare page before quoting a total
Booking an award before the seat is confirmed	Transferred points are stranded in a programme the user does not use	Confirm or hold the seat, then transfer (Rule 7)
Treating a schedule change as bad luck	A significant change usually unlocks a free rebooking or a full refund, including on non-refundable fares	Read the carrier's schedule-change policy and ask for the rebooking you actually want (refunds.md)
Accepting a voucher at the desk during a disruption	Accepting a voucher can settle a statutory claim worth several times more	Refund or reroute first, compensation claimed separately afterwards (disruptions.md)
Leaving the airport without a bag report	The report reference is the entire claim; issuing one later is a negotiation	File before leaving, photograph the tag and the report, start the 21-day clock (baggage.md)
Adding the frequent-flyer number after flying	Retro-claims work but need boarding pass and receipt, and some fare classes earn nothing regardless	Attach at booking, verify it posted within a week (points.md)
Assuming the marketing carrier's baggage rules apply	On an interline itinerary the most significant carrier's allowance governs the whole trip	Identify the operating and most significant carrier before quoting bags (baggage.md)
Renewing a passport "when it expires"	Most refusals happen on valid passports that fail the 6-month or 10-year rule	Diary the renewal against the rule, not the expiry date (Rule 5)
Chasing a price daily	Attention is the cost, and it produces worse timing, not better	Target price, alert, stop looking (tracking.md)
Buying trip insurance without reading the card benefit already held	Double coverage, and the card benefit often requires paying with that card to apply at all	Check the card's own terms first, then buy only the gap (refunds.md)

Where Experts Disagree

• Book early versus wait. Both camps are right about different products: on a route with many carriers and daily frequencies, waiting for a target price wins; on a thin route, a peak date or a family-sized party, the cheap inventory sells out and waiting only buys a worse seat map. Frequency and party size decide, not the calendar.
• Direct versus OTA. Consolidator and OTA pricing on multi-carrier itineraries is genuinely cheaper and sometimes the only way to combine two airlines on one ticket. The disagreement is about disruption handling, and it is settled by who has to reissue the ticket at 6am (Rule 4).
• Points maximizing versus cash simplicity. Above roughly 2 cpp in a premium cabin the points game beats cash back by a wide margin; below ~1.2 cpp it is an unpaid hobby with devaluation risk. The frontier is how much flying is already happening — points optimization pays in proportion to volume.
• Insurance versus card coverage. Card benefits are free but conditional (paid with that card, specific delay lengths, secondary coverage). Standalone policies pay more reliably on medical and cancellation. The split most practitioners land on: card coverage for delay and baggage, a policy for medical and cancel-for-cause on expensive or long trips.
• Self-transfer platforms. Their own guarantees do rebook you, and the products have matured; what has not changed is that no airline is involved, so an immigration queue or a strike leaves you with a claim against a platform rather than a seat on the next flight.

Related Skills

More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/flight (install if the user confirms):

• booking — accommodation search and reservation, the other half of most trips
• travel-planning — itineraries, multi-city routing, packing, whole-trip budgets
• car-rental — ground transport at the far end
• money — where trip spend and card annual fees actually get tracked
• expedia — one platform's own search, package and booking workflow

Feedback

• If useful, star it: https://clawic.com/skills/flight
• Latest version: https://clawic.com/skills/flight

Part of Clawic, the verified skill library. Get this skill: https://clawic.com/skills/flight.