How TripCheap flight prices work
TripCheap’s flight pages use the same live flight search as the customer search. A fare is shown only when that search returns a positive amount for a real destination and date pair. We do not create fallback prices when there is no usable observation.
Observed fare, not a guaranteed checkout quote
The flight prices represent fares seen in searches across the Travelpayouts network. Airlines and agencies can change availability or price between the observation and checkout, so each fare row shows the time the provider says it was seen (or says that none was given) and the exact travel dates beside the fare. The amount should be read as a comparison signal, not a promise that the same seat is still available at the same price.
Airport pages combine genuine observations across the short-break search lengths used by the product. Individual rows keep their actual departure and return dates; TripCheap does not rewrite a three-night or seven-night observation as a five-night deal.
When we list a page in search engines
An airport or month page is only listed in search engines when we have seen real prices for at least five different destinations. The page must also show the time the provider says each fare was seen (or say that none was given), carry its own title, description and page address, and contain useful flight-only copy. Pages below that line stay out of search engines and our sitemap until they qualify.
The flight cache follows the existing one-hour application cache. Our sitemap remembers which pages have met this rule, so a restart or a quiet hour does not remove pages that still qualify, and a page that later stops meeting the rule is removed the next time it is checked. Loading these pages never triggers extra flight searches for search-engine robots.
Booking links and affiliate handling
A price can be displayed without claiming that TripCheap controls the checkout. A “Book flight” link appears only when we have a safe HTTPS booking link for that fare; otherwise the row says booking is not available for that fare yet. Affiliate attribution does not change the fare amount shown on the page.
Why hotel and complete-trip totals are still separate
The long-term product compares the full trip, but today’s pages are deliberately flight-only. A hotel search result is not treated as a priced stay. Complete-trip pages remain unpublished until we can return dated accommodation prices, combine them correctly with the flight amount, expose working booking links and pass the separate activation checks.
This fail-closed rule also applies to marketing copy: TripCheap does not describe a flight-only observation as the cheapest complete holiday and does not invent accommodation totals to make a page look complete.