Airline reservation system

Group Members
• Awais Ali Umer
• Taimour Gondal
• Irfan

Important Key Terms in Airline
• Aircraft: A vehicle capable of air transport, such as an airplane, a
helicopter, etc.
• Airline: A company that provides air transport services for passengers or
freight under license from a recognized public authority. Also known as
Carrier in some geographies
• Scheduled airline: An airline that operates its flights to a fixed schedule, i.e.
flight timings are fixed

Important Key Terms in Airline
(continued…)
Charter airline: An airline whose flights do not have a fixed schedule
Itinerary: A route of journey proposed to a flight.
Travel agency: A business that attends to the travel needs of an individual or a group
of individuals

History of Reservation System
• Prior to 1950 all information about reservation was published by airlines in large books, with
separate books for each type of information
• Travel agents had a really tough time looking through multiple books for booking tickets that
covered multiple airlines
• It was impossible to get a real-time view of the inventory (available seats on a flight) since
airlines could synchronize data from multiple locations only once a day
• In order to make a booking, a customer would call up a travel agent, providing them details of
their itinerary
• Travel agent would first look up airlines, flights and schedules matching the customer’s
itinerary then Customer would call up individual airlines to check seat availability
• Once seat availability was confirmed, travel agent would look up the price appropriate for the
flights selected and inform the customer
• Upon confirmation from customer, travel agent would call the airlines back to reserve the seats

(continued…)
• In 1950 American Airlines decided to set up a computerized
system that would allow real-time access to all its data across all
its offices and travel agents
• As a result, Semi-Automated Business Research Environment, or
SABRE was born in 1964. It was the first computerized airline
system (CRS) in the world
• SABRE was developed as a joint effort between IBM and
American Airlines

Functions provided by a CRS
A CRS typically provides the following functions
 Flight schedule information: Days and times for flights operated by the airline
 Availability information: Seat availability on a flight by service class, i.e.
Economy, Business or First class
 Fare quotes: A consolidated fare for an itinerary based on flight, day, time,
service class and passenger types chosen
 Reservation information: Seat bookings
 Ticketing information: Generating and storing tickets
 Refunds and cancellations: Cancellation of existing reservations and tickets

An availability display screen by
Galileo

The birth of Global Distribution
Systems
Although the CRSs simplified the task of maintaining airline data, they brought in new problems
 In order to handle increasing passenger traffic, large computer systems were required
for CRSs. This created a cost burden for airlines, especially the smaller ones which did
not have enough money to spend on expensive mainframe technology
 CRSs were airline specific. This required travel agencies who wanted to sell tickets for
multiple airlines to have individual connections to each airline separately
 Availability and fare searches across airlines was not possible since each airline had its
own CRS. Since most passengers were interested in purchasing the cheapest fare rather
than a specific airline, travel agents had to spend inordinate amount of time to
determine cheapest fares across airlines

• CRSs recognized the need to host data for more than one airline in order to bring
efficiencies to a growing airline industry
• Thus, CRSs transformed from being single airline reservation systems to multi
airline distribution systems (GDSs)
• These GDSs also decided to share data among each other to bring in additional
efficiencies

Life of a travel agent before GDSs
Travel agent
Mainframe connectivity
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Airline CRS

Problems before advent of GDSs
• Travel agents required individual connections to airlines
• If two or more airlines used different mainframe systems, travel agents had
to use and be trained on different mainframe clients
• Inability to perform direct searches across airline systems
• Combining airline inventories a tedious process because inventory searches
and reservations had to be performed in individual airline CRSs separately

Travel agent
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Airline CRS
Synchronization link
Mainframe / TCP-IP connectivity
GDS
GDS
GDS
Life of a travel agent after GDSs

GDS
1.A GDS practically centralizes access to multiple airline CRSs, thereby making
the lives of travel agents simpler. A GDS provides a single interface to
schedule, availability, fare and reservation databases of multiple airlines.
2.Each GDS has direct connectivity to a fixed number of airlines. These
airlines are known as hosted airlines for that GDS. The GDS is usually in
real-time sync with its hosted airlines.
3.GDSs synchronize with each other to share information about their hosted
airlines.

Advantages of a GDS
• Simplified access to possibly all airlines, through a single interface
• Ability to connect to multiple airlines either through legacy mainframe
clients or modern PC based clients
• Less maintenance and up-keep overhead
• Ability to combine airline inventories

How GDSs have evolved
• Due to airline CRSs being based on mainframes, GDSs have been based on
mainframes as well
• Over the last few decades, GDSs have started providing direct connectivity
from non-mainframe clients such as PCs
• GDSs have also started leasing hosting space (hardware, software and
connectivity) to airlines which do not want to create and host their own CRSs
• The advent of Internet has seen GDSs offer innovative products suited for
accessing airline information over the Internet

How GDSs have evolved (continued…)
• GDSs now provide access to non-air products as well:
 Car rentals
 Hotel booking
 Packaged holidays
 Cruises and ships
 Railways
 Local road transport: bus, tram, taxi

Major GDSs in operation today
• Amadeus
 Founded in 1987 by Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa and SAS
 Head-quartered in Madrid, Spain
 Largest booking share in Europe
 Third largest booking share across the globe
 Used by www.ebookers.com, www.expedia.co.uk and www.opodo.com
• Galileo
 Founded in 1993 by 11 major North American and European airlines
 Head-quartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA
 Second largest booking share across the globe
 Used by www.cheaptickets.com, www.ebookers.com

Major GDSs in operation today (continued…)
• SABRE
 Founded in 1964 by American Airlines and IBM
 Head-quartered in Southlake, Texas, USA
 Largest booking share across the world
 Used by www.expedia.com, www.travelocity.com
• Worldspan
 Founded in 1990 by Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Transworld Airlines
 Merged with Galileo in 2006
 Used by www.orbitz.com, www.hotwire.com, www.priceline.com

Booking File
A Galileo Booking File always consists of five mandatory fields. If not all fields are present, the Booking File
can not be closed or saved.
Mandatory fields:
Itinerary Name Field N.
Phone Field P.
Ticketing Field T.
Received Field R.
Beside the mandatory fields, optional fields can be applicable.
Optional fields:
Review Booking File Field RB.
Email address from /to MF./MT./MC.
Form of Payment Field F.
Notepad NP. Mileage Membership Field M.
Servicing Request RQ.
Service Information SI.
Vendor Remarks V.
Seats S.
Itinerary Remarks RI.

Airline reservation system

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