Where our data comes from
Every price, opening hour and flight chance on cappadocia.ai comes from a record in our dataset. Each record says where it came from and when someone last checked it, and the page shows that next to the fact. Nothing is invented to fill a gap: when we don’t know, we say so.
Where a record comes from
Each record has one of six source types.
Official
Published by a public body, such as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s museum site.
From the business
Published by the business itself, such as an operator’s own price list.
Checked on site
Checked by us on the spot.
Secondary source
Reported by a third party, such as a news agency. We name the source.
Calculated
Worked out from other records by a formula the record states, such as a month’s usual flight chance from the official monthly flight days. The record names the records it uses.
Sample data
A placeholder while the real record is being verified. Every screen that uses one says “Sample data”, and sample values never count as facts.
How long a fact stays fresh
A record goes stale by itself when its validity ends or when nobody has checked it for too long:
- Prices and opening hours90 days
- Tours and activities180 days
- Places, towns and travel timesa year
- approx
- A stale fact is still shown, marked “approx” with the date it was last verified, so you know to check before you go.
- disputed
- When sources disagree about a record, it is marked disputed and left out of every plan until it is resolved.
Flight chance
Every flight chance on the site is our estimate, not a guarantee, written as “about N in 10”. Turkey’s civil aviation authority (SHGM) sets the rules, and the Kapadokya Slot Service Center publishes each morning’s flight status for the operators; the official decision is theirs, not ours.
For dates more than a week ahead we use a monthly rate: how many mornings in 10 usually fly in that month. We calculate it from the monthly flight days published by the Kapadokya Slot Service Center (Kapadokya Slot Hizmet Merkezi), Kapadokya University, operating under SHGM authorisation: each month’s flight days divided by its number of days, averaged over the years on record. A month without an official figure yet keeps a sample rate, labelled “Sample data”.
We never add several mornings up into one chance: bad weather often lasts several days, so mornings are not independent.
A cancelled morning switches your plan to its Plan B only on an official cancellation or an operator’s notice, never because of our estimate. Your bookings never change by themselves: cancellations, date changes and refunds happen only with your approval and on the provider’s terms.
The next 7 balloon mornings
For the next seven mornings, the home page and the dates calendar can show the flight outlook of Cappadocia Balloon Flights, our own booking site, run by the same company as cappadocia.ai. It gives each morning one word: likely to fly, borderline, unlikely, or not forecast yet. We show those words, each with a bar whose length goes with the word, and when the outlook was last updated; never a number.
The outlook does not choose your balloon morning: plans use our own estimate, described above.
It is a forecast, not a guarantee and not a flight status: the official go/no-go for each morning is set under SHGM rules, and your operator tells you.
When the outlook can’t be reached, or hasn’t been updated for 12 hours, we hide it and its bars instead of guessing.
Where places are on the map
Each place’s position has its own source, apart from the rest of its record. For the ministry’s museums and sites it is the map pin on their official pages (muze.gov.tr). For other places, such as valleys, viewpoints, castles and towns, it comes from OpenStreetMap: map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, opens in a new tab, available under the Open Database License. For a valley walk, the record says whether the position is the start of the trail or a point in the valley. A few places keep a sample position until we check them on the spot.
Drive times between places are computed with OSRM, an open-source route planner, from OpenStreetMap road data (© OpenStreetMap contributors, opens in a new tab), and only between places whose positions have a source. Pages state the driving time only, without parking and the walk in.
Airports and bus stations: what an airport is, its name and IATA code, comes from the page its operator DHMİ keeps for it (official). Its position is the passenger terminal, where drives start, and the bus stations’ positions come from OpenStreetMap too (© OpenStreetMap contributors, opens in a new tab). Transfer prices, shuttle and bus timetables and flight lists are not in our data yet, so no page states them.
Sunrise and sunset
Calculated for Göreme for each date with the NOAA solar calculator.
Travel times
Plans use the drive between two places plus 5 min for parking and the walk in. The drive comes from a road route (see above) when both places’ positions have a source and the nearest road is close to them; otherwise it is estimated from the straight-line distance, and pages give only that distance.
Where your bookings go
We are a planning site; you book with the provider. Every booking link says who it goes to.
- “Our own booking site” is Cappadocia Balloon Flights, run by the same company as cappadocia.ai.
- “Partner” means we may earn a commission if you book, at no extra cost to you. Our partners are GetYourGuide and Booking.com.
- “Sponsored” would mark a paid placement. We have none.
- Museum tickets are information only: we link to the official e-ticket site and sell nothing.
- Opening a link is not a booking: an item counts as booked only when the provider confirms it.
How we use AI
We draft some pages with AI from our dataset and the sources named on them. A person checks each page before it is offered to search engines, and every page says how it was made. AI never sets a price, an opening hour or a flight chance: those come only from records.
When you describe your trip in your own words on the home page, an AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) reads your note and picks out only what our planner can use: when you’re coming and for how long, who’s travelling, your pace, budget and balloon wish, and places and activities from our dataset. It can only choose from those fixed options, and every name you see comes from our records. It never writes a time, a price or a flight chance, and it never chooses a Deluxe or Private flight or a paid activity unless you asked for it. You see each choice under “What we understood” and can change it, and you always choose your dates on the calendar. We don’t store or log your note.
Found a mistake?
Write to fly@cappadociaballoonflights.com. We correct records by adding a new, dated record, never by quietly changing the old one.