Can I see how much baggage is included on a flight and add extra bags through my flight booking API?

Yes, in most cases you can see the baggage allowance included with a fare, and with some airlines you can add extra bags at the time of booking. When flight results come back, the baggage detail usually arrives alongside the fare, showing what each passenger may carry in the cabin and what they can check in. Some airlines express this as a number of pieces and others as a weight limit, so the wording your staff see varies from one carrier to the next.

Selling extra bags through the API is less consistent. Low cost carriers usually treat bags as an add on that is chosen before the booking is completed, so those options can be shown to your customer and paid for along with the ticket. Full service airlines handle it differently, and with some of them extra baggage can only be bought later, at the airport or directly with the airline. What you can offer depends on the supplier behind that particular fare, so it will not be the same for every flight you sell.

Two things are worth warning your team about. On a journey with connecting flights operated by different airlines, the allowance can change between legs, and the allowance for children and infants is often not the same as for an adult. Treat what the API returns as the airline's own information for that fare, and point your customer to the airline conditions before they travel.

A good next step is to run a few searches for the routes you sell most often, look at the baggage detail that comes back, and ask us which of your connected suppliers allow paid bags to be added during booking.