Flight Booking MCP Server

A simple MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets an AI assistant like Claude search for flights, book them, check booking status, and cancel bookings — using mock flight data, so it runs with zero API keys or signups.

What is this?

MCP is a standard that lets AI models call external tools. This project exposes 4 tools an AI assistant can call directly in conversation:

Flight data is generated by mock_data.py — deterministic fake flights (same query always returns the same results), so you can build and test without a real flight API. A real-API version (amadeus_client.py) is included as a reference but is disabled by default — see the note near the bottom.

Related MCP server: Google Flights MCP Server

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+

• uv — used to manage dependencies and the virtual environment

• Node.js (only needed if you want to test with MCP Inspector, step 3 below)

• An MCP-compatible client, e.g. Claude Desktop

Setup

1. Clone the repo

   git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/flight-booking-mcp.git
   cd flight-booking-mcp

2. Install dependencies

   uv sync

   This creates a .venv and installs everything listed in pyproject.toml.

3. (Optional) Test it standalone first

   uv run python -c "import main; print(main.search_flights('BLR','DEL','2026-08-15'))"

   You should see a list of 3 fake flight offers printed as JSON — this confirms the code itself works, before wiring up any MCP client.

4. (Optional) Test it as a real MCP server with the Inspector

   npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run main.py

   This opens a browser UI where you can call each tool manually and see the JSON response — the fastest way to confirm everything works before connecting a real client.

Connect it to Claude Desktop

Open your Claude Desktop config file:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Add this entry, replacing the path with the absolute path to where you cloned the repo:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "flight-booking": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/absolute/path/to/flight-booking-mcp",
        "run",
        "main.py"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop completely (quit fully, don't just close the window). You should see "flight-booking" listed as a connected tool.

Try it

Ask your AI assistant things like:

Search flights from BLR to DEL on 2026-08-15

Book the IndiGo flight (IN855-2) for passenger Jane Doe, email jane@example.com

What's the status of booking BK1000?

Cancel booking BK1000

Project structure

flight-booking-mcp/
├── main.py             # the MCP server — defines the 4 tools
├── mock_data.py         # fake flight data generator + in-memory bookings (default backend)
├── amadeus_client.py    # real flight API backend (Amadeus) — disabled by default, see note below
├── pyproject.toml       # project + dependency config (used by uv)
├── uv.lock              # exact locked dependency versions
├── .env.example         # template for real-API credentials
├── .gitignore
└── README.md

How the mock/real switch works: main.py picks a backend based on the USE_REAL_API environment variable (defaults to false). Every tool calls a generic flight_backend.search_flights(...) etc., rather than naming mock_data directly — so swapping data sources never requires touching the tool definitions themselves.

Note on real flight data

amadeus_client.py shows how to wire this up to Amadeus's real sandbox API (OAuth2 token handling, normalizing their nested JSON into the same shape mock_data.py returns). However, Amadeus's Self-Service developer portal was decommissioned in July 2026, so new signups currently aren't possible. The file is kept as a reference pattern for integrating any real flight API later — the mock backend is fully sufficient for using and understanding this project as-is.