Heathrow Helper

An unofficial passenger assistant for London Heathrow Airport (LHR). A chat web app that answers natural-language travel questions using live data from Heathrow's own public APIs.

Live demo: https://heathrow-helper.vercel.app

Built to help first-time fliers and older travellers find flight, terminal, lounge and transport info without needing flight numbers or juggling multiple apps.

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Screenshots

Welcome	Live flight card	Live security waits

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Features

• Live flight status — departures and arrivals from Heathrow's live board, including delays, gate states (Gate Open / Boarding / Closing / Closed), cancellations and baggage belts.
• Search by destination — "flights to Dubai", "flights from T3 to New York"; no flight number required.
• Smart connection check — paste two flight numbers, get a realistic-layover verdict with alliance-specific minimum connection times.
• Lounges + credit-card access — accurate per-terminal lounge listings plus card-specific access (Amex, HSBC, Barclays, Chase, Capital One, Revolut, Priority Pass, LoungeKey, DragonPass).
• Live security & immigration waits — from Heathrow's official feed.
• Disruption alerts — scraped from Heathrow's homepage banner.
• Transport, customs, VAT, parking, baggage, special assistance and more.
• Multi-language — language auto-detected, replies translated on the fly (15+ languages).
• No accounts, no tracking — chat processed in-memory only.

Tech Stack

Layer	Choice
Backend	Python 3.12, Flask (app-factory pattern)
NLP	langdetect, deep-translator, fuzzy matching (difflib), n-gram intent routing
Live data	Heathrow public flight + wait-time APIs, AviationStack fallback
Static data	17 curated JSON datasets (airlines, lounges, cards, transport, customs, etc.)
Frontend	Server-rendered Jinja2, vanilla CSS (tokens / dark mode), progressive enhancement JS
Deploy	Vercel (serverless via api/index.py)

Architecture

The Flask app is built with the application-factory pattern. The app/ package exposes create_app(), which assembles a Flask instance and registers all routes from app/routes.py. Both the local runner (app.py) and the Vercel serverless entrypoint (api/index.py) construct their instance via this factory — no global app at import time.

┌─────────────┐    POST /chat   ┌──────────────────────┐
│  Browser    │ ──────────────▶ │  app/ package        │
│  (Jinja2)   │ ◀────────────── │  create_app()        │
└─────────────┘     JSON        │   └─ routes.py       │
                                └──────────┬───────────┘
                                           │
                                           ▼
                                  ┌──────────────────┐
                                  │  app/bot.py      │  intent router
                                  └─────┬────────────┘
                                        │
                ┌───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┐
                ▼                       ▼                       ▼
         Heathrow live API       17× JSON datasets        AviationStack
         (flights, waits,        (lounges, cards,         (non-LHR legs
          disruptions)            transport, customs)      for connections)

Entry points:

Context	File	What it does
Local dev	app.py	Thin runner — calls create_app(), then app.run()
Vercel prod	api/index.py	Imports create_app() and exposes the WSGI app
Tests	tests/test_live.py	Smoke-tests intent routing via app.bot.respond

In-memory TTL cache (60 s) shields upstream APIs from repeat calls.

Run locally

Clone and create a virtual environment:

git clone https://github.com/rec0334/Heathrow-Helper.git
cd Heathrow-Helper
python -m venv .venv

Activate the venv. Windows (PowerShell):

.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

macOS / Linux:

source .venv/bin/activate

Install deps, copy the env template, and run:

pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env          # Windows: copy .env.example .env
python app.py

Then open http://localhost:5000.

Environment

Variable	Required	Purpose
AVIATIONSTACK_KEY	optional	Enables non-LHR flight lookups for connection checks

The Heathrow live-board API needs no key.

Deploy

Deployed on Vercel — vercel.json rewrites all traffic to api/index.py, which wraps the Flask app as a serverless function. Push to main triggers an auto-deploy.

vercel link        # one-time
vercel --prod      # deploy
vercel env add AVIATIONSTACK_KEY production

Project structure

Heathrow-Helper/
├── app.py                  # Thin local runner — instantiates create_app()
├── app/                    # Application package
│   ├── __init__.py         #   create_app() factory
│   ├── routes.py           #   HTTP routes (registered on the Flask instance)
│   ├── bot.py              #   Intent routing, live-data clients, translation
│   ├── templates/          #   Jinja2 (index, about, privacy, terms, contact)
│   └── static/             #   CSS tokens, dark theme, chat JS, favicon
├── api/
│   └── index.py            # Vercel serverless entrypoint (imports create_app)
├── data/                   # 17 curated JSON datasets
├── tests/
│   └── test_live.py        # Smoke test for bot intent routing
├── docs/                   # Tech-stack PDF
├── vercel.json             # Vercel rewrites
├── requirements.txt
├── .env.example            # AVIATIONSTACK_KEY placeholder
├── LICENSE                 # All Rights Reserved
└── README.md

Why both app.py and app/? app.py is intentionally kept as a thin runner so python app.py still works for local development. Python's import system prefers the package over the module of the same name, so inside the runner from app import create_app resolves to app/__init__.py. No collision.

Endpoints

Route	Method	Purpose
/	GET	Chat UI
/chat	POST	{ "message": "..." } → bot reply JSON
/health	GET	Liveness probe
/sitemap.xml, /robots.txt	GET	SEO
/about, /privacy, /terms, /contact	GET	Static pages

Roadmap

• Arrivals coverage on par with departures
• Per-lounge live capacity hints
• PWA install / offline shell

Disclaimer

Independent project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Heathrow Airport Limited or LHR Airports Limited. Always confirm critical travel info with your airline and the official Heathrow channels.

License

All Rights Reserved © 2026 Revanth Reddy Chitti.

This repository is published for portfolio and review only. The source code, curated data, and "Heathrow Helper" branding are not licensed for reuse, redistribution, hosting, or model training. See LICENSE for the full notice. For licensing inquiries, contact chittirev559451@gmail.com.