The Seats.aero API has a few concepts that are important to be aware of.

Sources

A source in the Seats.aero API is one mileage program. For example, the lifemiles source contains results for Avianca LifeMiles. Every mileage program has its own source; they are listed below.

Not all programs provide us the number of available seats or individual flight data. In these cases, you may see availability listed with zero seats, or no results for trip data.

Source	Mileage Program	Supported Cabins	Has Seat Count	Has Trip Data
`lifemiles`	Avianca LifeMiles	Y/J/F	Yes	Yes
`virginatlantic`	Virgin Atlantic Flying Club	Y/W/J	Yes	Yes
`aeromexico`	Aeromexico Club Premier	Y/W/J	Yes	No
`american`	American Airlines	Y/W/J/F	No	Yes
`delta`	Delta SkyMiles	Y/W/J	Yes	Yes
`etihad`	Etihad Guest	Y/J	Yes	No
`united`	United MileagePlus	Y/W/J/F	Yes	Yes
`emirates`	Emirates Skywards	Y/W/J/F	No	No
`aeroplan`	Air Canada Aeroplan	Y/W/J/F	No	Yes
`alaska`	Alaska Mileage Plan	Y/W/J/F	Yes	Yes
`velocity`	Virgin Australia Velocity	Y/W/J/F	Yes	Yes
`qantas`	Qantas Frequent Flyer	Y/W/J/F	No	Yes

Availability Objects

Seats.aero uses a summary object called Availability to summarize the availability for a route on a given departure date. For example, all flights available on Alaska Mileage Plan from SFO to LAX departing on 2023-08-11 are summarized into one Availability object. Flights on the same date and route but available from United would be summarized into a different Availability object.

Imagine the following flights are available on Alaska Mileage Plan on 2024-03-16:

AS123, direct, SFO to LAX, economy with 5 seats @ 5,000 miles, business with one seat @ 10,000 miles
AA456, one stop, SFO to LAX, economy with 7 seats @ 7,500 miles, business with three seats @ 15,000 miles

These would be summarized into the following availability object:

{
  "ID": "abcdef",
  "Route": {
    "ID": "ghijkl",
    "OriginAirport": "SFO",
    "DestinationAirport": "LAX",
    "Source": "alaska"
  },
  "Date": "2024-03-16",
  "YAvailable": true,
  "YDirect": true,
  "YMileageCost": "5000",
  "YRemainingSeats": 7,
  "YAirlines": "AA, AS",
  "JAvailable": true,
  "JDirect": true,
  "JMileageCost": "10000",
  "JRemainingSeats": 3,
  "JAirlines": "AA, AS",
  "Source": "alaska"
}