Can I show my customer the cancellation charges for a flight before they pay for it?

Yes, in most cases you can, because flight booking APIs usually return the airline's fare rules along with the fare, and those rules can be displayed on your review or payment page before your customer confirms. This is one of the most useful things to put in front of a traveller, since most complaints come from people who did not realise what a change or a cancellation would cost them.

The rules normally come back in one of two forms. The first is a short summary that tells you whether the ticket is refundable, whether a date change is allowed, and what the airline charges for each, often split by how close to departure the request is made. The second is the full fare rule text from the airline, which is long, written in airline language, and really only suitable for showing as it is in a separate tab or a link. Which one you get depends on the airline and on the content source you are connected to, so some results will give you a neat breakdown and others will give you a wall of text.

Be honest with your customers about what these amounts are. They are indicative at the time of search, and the airline applies its current rules when the cancellation is actually processed, so the final deduction can differ. Many low cost carriers are non refundable apart from certain taxes, and your own service fee is separate from whatever the airline keeps. Whether you can show the tidy summary version also depends on your supplier and plan.

Ask us which rule format your connected content returns, then decide where to display it on your booking flow and repeat the same wording on the confirmation you send out.