Frequent Flyer Points Calculator: More Than Just a Table Lookup

摘要

Frequent flyer program is a popular promotional tool used by most major airlines in the world. The trend of airlines forming alliances with other airlines to expand their service-base means that the potential routes that one can take to get from one city to another have increased exponentially. Airline customers however are typically provided with a table which only shows the list of direct flights or flights with a transit point that can be booked using frequent flyer points. The online frequent flyer calculators available on the internet seem to basically work based on this incomplete table. To optimise the use of available frequent flyer points and to provide satisfactory automated customer service, a belter frequent flyer points calculator which accesses the complete map of the available routes and the distance of each sector of a route needs to be built. This paper shows the use of standard graph algorithms to build such a frequent flyer points calculator.