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Automatically Check In To (get an awesome seat on) Your Next Southwest Flight

checkintomyflight.com

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Re: Automatically Check In To (get an awesome seat on) Your Next Southwest Flight

#42

Post by nikilster »

thecoffman wrote: post #37

This is awesome - I've often thought about building something like this myself. Have you considered writing a little about your implementation? Background jobs and web scraping? An API?

Good idea! I literally just built this for myself so I didn't think about anything like that.

Would it be interesting?

Thanks!

Re: Automatically Check In To (get an awesome seat on) Your Next Southwest Flight

#43

Post by nikilster »

patrickod wrote: post #34
nikilster wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks!! Awesome idea - totally - do you think people would be okay forwarding their itinerary?

They're giving you enough information to get the itinerary through the website no? If so then I see no reason why I wouldn't just forward the email for the sake of convenience.

That's true - okay good idea - I'll see if I can whip this up. Any ideas on the best way to receive and have a system to grab and parse email?

Re: Automatically Check In To (get an awesome seat on) Your Next Southwest Flight

#46

Post by _rs »

nikilster wrote: post #43
patrickod wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're giving you enough information to get the itinerary through the website no? If so then I see no reason why I wouldn't just forward the email for the sake of convenience.

That's true - okay good idea - I'll see if I can whip this up. Any ideas on the best way to receive and have a system to grab and parse email?

One method would be to setup a normal email address (even something like gmail) and on the server setup a cron job that connects to it via imap and downloads the messages. Probably not the nicest solution, but it might be easiest.

Re: Automatically Check In To (get an awesome seat on) Your Next Southwest Flight

#47

Post by dave5104 »

nikilster wrote: post #6
mherdeg wrote: post #2

Southwest sues people who monetize this kind of product -- see a 2012 example at http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2012/03/02/Southwest-... or a 2007 example at http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case511.cfm .

I'm not making money off of it. I just built it for myself and thought I would share

Making money or not, this kind of service is explicitly forbidden by Southwest.com's Terms of Conditions:

"You may not use Southwest's sites for or in connection with offering any third party product or service not authorized or approved by Southwest. For example, online check-in service providers may not use Southwest web pages to check-in Customers online or attempt to obtain for them a boarding pass in any certain boarding group."

http://www.southwest.com/html/about-southwest/terms-and-cond...

Which sucks, because your product looks really cool. (And I'd forego paying $10 to use your service... which is probably why it's banned. :P)

Re: Automatically Check In To (get an awesome seat on) Your Next Southwest Flight

#48

Post by caseysoftware »

nikilster wrote: post #32
caseysoftware wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't feel bummed this is pretty nifty. I've been meaning to do this for a while, but you actually made it happen. :) The only thing I was going to do different is then text me that the check in occurred and tell me what the boarding number is. It's just an FYI but would make me feel better. (And since I work for Twilio, obviously I was going to use that. :) )

Brilliant idea! Mind if I do that? Also a lot of the checkins are early in the morning or late at night so maybe I should have an option for not texting if you don't want to be woken up from sleeping. Thanks again!

Go for it!

I've signed up for alerts on my flights to/from TwilioCon next weekend. Don't let me down. ;)

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