Back in the good old days, say around 20 years ago, airline systems had a 10:1 ratio of searches to actual bookings.
Fast forward to 2015 and a metric of such apparent efficiency is extremely hard to come by now.
In fact, it's nigh on impossible.
Amadeus says over the course of the last two decades the look-to-book ratios for many airline systems have climbed to somewhere in the region of 1,000:1.
This leap has been as a result of a number of important factors.
The switch to digital and online services by consumers has obviously seen the entry of online travel agencies and metasearch engines in the equation, but in turn these now send millions of call queries to airlines systems to obtain information on fares and availability on flights.
But, according to Christophe Defayet, director of research and development for airline IT at Amadeus, consumer habits in general have also had a major impact on the volume of information required from an airline's system.
Previously, a traveller would potentially have just one destination and a specific time in mind when they search for a ticket.
But in the last five years in particular, travellers are considering more products, are flexible on their schedules, and seeking ideas and fares for multiple destinations.
Add the complexity around the fares themselves, such as the inclusion of ancillary products, then the volume increases even further.
The result for the airlines can often be a creaking system under the weight of traffic, but arguably a more important factor is the fact that results being returned to the consumer are not entirely accurate.
Defayet says 100% accuracy can never be guaranteed, but a system it has built, known as Amadeus Cloud Availability, will go some way to helping carriers cope with the volume of traffic coming their way.
Furthermore, the 1,000:1 figure that many airlines are facing on a daily basis is not the end of the story when it comes to an increase in look-to-book ratios.
Defayet predicts the metric could see another ten-fold increase over the next few years to around 10,000:1, as the factors outlined earlier continue to evolve both in terms of changes to consumer behaviour and more third party services requiring information from an airline.
"We have not reached a plateau," he argues,"with more products, different criteria, more flexible [traveller] behaviour and more destinations needed in a search".
Amadeus has been piloting the Cloud Availability system with Lufthansa during 2015, using the Google Cloud Platform to host the service.
In particular, Lufthansa argues that being able to cope with massive demand is a way of handling the "new era in real time merchandising".
NB: Airline search image via Shutterstock.