Travel search site Skyscanner says it has developed and launched @FlyScan Twitter flight finder tool from scratch in only 24 hours.

Published: 25 Mar 2011

Travel search site Skyscanner says it has developed and launched @FlyScan Twitter flight finder tool from scratch in only 24 hours.

The company set itself a 24-hour challenge to develop and launch a new @FlyScan flight finder search tool which lets travellers tweet destinations and dates and get an immediate tweet back with the best price available and a link to buy it.

“Development is going to continue today while we iron out a couple of glitches. For instance we’d hoped we could get a million Tweets out in the first 24 hours but we didn’t anticipate some of the volume constraints on the Twitter platform. We’re working out now how to boost capacity so we can keep up with demand, so please bear with us while we do that,” said Skyscanner’s development director Bonamy Grimes .

Over 5000 prizes are being given away to Tweeters, including an iPad2, flights to New York with British Airways, £250 lastminute vouchers, exclusive deals from netflights.com, flights to Europe with Monarch and ebookers hotel discount vouchers.

Skyscanner is donating £5,000 to Comic Relief to celebrate hitting the 24-hour deadline and pledged a further £20,000 when the first 1 million @FlyScan tweets have been sent.

@FlyScan – a step-by-step guide

1) Tweet @FlyScan with details of the flight you’re looking for, e.g. @FlyScan London to New York on 14 June, or @FlyScan flights from Edinburgh to Paris in August

2) @FlyScan will send you a customised response with details of your flight

3) Click on the link to go to the Skyscanner website and book your flight!