Streaming Flight Search: Why Agents See Results Sooner

A multi-supplier flight search asks many airlines and GDS systems the same question at once. They do not answer at the same speed. One responds in a second, another takes several, and one occasionally times out.

The slowest-supplier problem

If the engine waits for every supplier before showing anything, the agent's wait equals the slowest answer, and one flaky supplier slows every search. Agents notice, and some quietly go back to searching suppliers one by one.

Streaming results as they arrive

Streaming reverses this. The engine returns each supplier's results as they come back, so fares appear within the first few seconds and the list fills in while the agent is already reading. A slow or failed supplier delays only its own results.

What it needs behind the scenes

Each supplier has to be queried independently so one failure cannot stall the others. Results have to be normalised on arrival so they can be ranked together. And the screen has to re-rank as new results land without jumping under the agent's cursor.

What to look for when evaluating

Ask to see a live search with a deliberately slow supplier. Watch whether the first results appear quickly, whether the list reorders sensibly, and what the agent is told when a supplier fails to respond.

How FareOS does it

FareOS streams flight search results to the agent interface using server-sent events, so results from different suppliers render progressively instead of all at once. To watch it run against your own routes, request a demo at ecogo.ai.