smartBooking API
A private Lufthansa Cargo API for qualified digital air-cargo offers, direct bookings, booking lifecycle operations, partner integrations, and AWB Auto Assign context.
Fullstack Software Engineer at Lufthansa Cargo, Jul 2022 - Jan 2024
- Offer
- search to booking
- AWB
- auto assign context
- K8s
- API delivery
Work overview
A quick read on where the work sat, what made it hard, what I owned, and what changed.
Context
smartBooking is the API side of Lufthansa Cargo's digital cargo booking flow. External partner systems, booking platforms, or TMS-style applications can request qualified product offers with routing, capacity, and price context, create bookings, retrieve booking details, update or delete bookings, and connect the flow with AWB Auto Assign where applicable.
What was hard
This was not a simple booking endpoint. The API represented an offer-to-confirmation process: offer search, route and capacity context, price and product qualification, booking creation, lifecycle operations, and integration with internal decisioning such as CurationEngine.
My part
I worked across backend API implementation, integration, and platform ownership: offer and booking service changes, partner and ecommerce integration support, Docker/Kubernetes delivery, Azure/ELK monitoring, CI/CD, code reviews, SCRUM collaboration, and runtime troubleshooting.
What changed
The work supported digital air-cargo booking flows where API consumers could receive validated, immediately bookable offers and manage booking details through system-to-system integration instead of manual re-entry.
Constraints that mattered
- API details and partner behavior varied by integration, so changes had to be validated without assuming one generic client.
- Partner integrations needed stable contracts around auth, environment configuration, updates, key handling, and regression behavior.
- Offer quality depended on several moving parts: routing, capacity, pricing context, product eligibility, booking validation, and CurationEngine rule decisions.
- Booking API changes can become customer-facing quickly, so monitoring, rollback, release support, and troubleshooting were part of the engineering work.
Approach
Treat booking as a full process
The useful mental model was not one endpoint, but an offer-to-booking chain from external request to qualified offers, booking creation, lifecycle operations, and confirmation.
Keep partner contracts stable
For system-to-system cargo booking, small changes in auth, request handling, environment config, or response behavior can break downstream partner workflows.
Connect API work to rule decisions
smartBooking exposed the digital interface, while CurationEngine helped qualify which cargo products, routes, warnings, rejections, or follow-up checks made sense for a booking context.
Key decisions
A few engineering choices that shaped the implementation and delivery path.
Describe smartBooking as a cargo sales channel
The API matters because it lets partners and platforms book Lufthansa Cargo capacity from their own systems.
The case study reads like digital cargo distribution, not like a set of isolated endpoints.
Keep CurationEngine as the internal decision boundary
Offer qualification depends on changing business rules, while the external API contract needs to remain stable for consumers.
The architecture separates external booking integration from internal rule execution and validation logic.
Make operational details part of the API story
Private partner APIs depend on environment configuration, secrets, monitoring, release support, and fast troubleshooting.
The page shows why CI/CD, ELK, Kubernetes, and review discipline mattered to the booking flow.
What I did
Built
- Java/Spring service changes for offer requests, direct bookings, booking updates, retrievals, deletions, and status-related flows.
- Integration support for freight-forwarder, ecommerce, and partner-facing booking workflows.
- Delivery and runtime support across Docker, Kubernetes, Azure, ELK, CI/CD, Maven, and environment-specific configuration.
Improved
- Stability of offer and booking flows through reviews, deployment support, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
- Operational visibility for API services using logs, deployment diagnostics, and runtime investigation.
- Separation of API responsibilities from CurationEngine rule decisions and cargo-booking business logic.
Owned
- Backend and platform engineering tasks inside SCRUM delivery.
- Code reviews, release support, documentation, and support for partner/API integration issues.
- Documentation of API behavior, release implications, and integration support without relying on tribal knowledge.
Digital cargo offer-to-booking flow
A sanitized view of how external systems could move from cargo offer search to a qualified booking flow.
Partner Systems
Forwarder systems, booking platforms, or TMS-style clients sending cargo offer and booking requests.
smartBooking API
Private Java/REST API for offer search, booking creation, booking details, updates, deletion, and AWB Auto Assign context.
Curation / Validation
Booking context evaluated against product, route, capacity, pricing, customer, station, and operational constraints.
Delivery & Operations
Docker/Kubernetes deployments, Azure/ELK monitoring, CI/CD, configuration, secrets, release support, and rollback.
Learnings
- A cargo booking API is a business workflow, not just a technical interface.
- Partner-facing APIs need careful release discipline because response changes can break downstream booking systems.
- The cleanest architecture keeps the public API contract stable while moving volatile booking rules into a managed decision layer.