An airline's direct distribution works within their own reservation system, as well as pushing out

information to the GDS. A second type of direct distribution channel are consumers who use the
internet or mobile applications to make their own reservations. Travel agencies and other indirect
distribution channels access the same GDS as those accessed by the airlines' reservation systems,
and all messaging is transmitted by a standardized messaging system that functions on two types of
messaging that transmit on SITA's HLN [high level network]. These message types are called Type A
[usually EDIFACT format] for real time interactive communication and Type B [TTY] for informational
and booking type of messages. Message construction standards set by IATA and ICAO, are global,
and apply to more than air transportation. Since airline reservation systems are business critical
applications, and their functionally quite complex, the operation of an in-house airline reservation
system is relatively expensive.
Prior to deregulation, airlines owned their own reservation systems with travel agents subscribing to
them. Today, the GDS are run by independent companies with airlines and travel agencies as major
subscribers.
As of February 2009, there are only four major GDS providers in the market
space: Amadeus, Travelport (which operates the
Apollo, Worldspan and Galileo systems), Sabre and Shares. There is one major Regional GDS,
Abacus, serving the Asian marketplace and a number of regional players serving single countries,
including Travelsky (China), Infiniand Axess (both Japan) and Topas (South Korea). Of these, Infini
is hosted within the Sabre complex, Axess is in the process of moving into a partition within the
Worldspan complex, and Topas agencies will be migrating into Amadeus.
Reservation systems like Navitaire hosts "ticket-less" airlines such as Ryanair and AirAsia and
"hybrid" - (airlines that use e-ticketing in addition to ticket-less to accommodate code-shares and
interlines) airlines such as AirTran, GOL and Jetstar.
In additional to these "standardized" GDS, some airlines have proprietary versions which they use to
run their flight operations. A few examples are Deltamatic's OSS system and EDS SHARES. SITA
Reservations remains the largest neutral multi-host airline reservations system, with over 100
airlines currently managing inventory.

Inventory management[edit]
An airlines inventory contains all flights with their available seats. The inventory of an airline is
generally divided into service classes (e.g. first, business or economy class) and up to 26 booking
classes, for which different prices and booking conditions apply. Inventory data is imported and
maintained through a schedule distribution system over standardized interfaces. One of the core
functions of the inventory management is the inventory control. Inventory control steers how many
seats are available in the different booking classes, by opening and closing individual booking

classes for sale. In combination with the fares and booking conditions stored in the Fare Quote
System the price for each sold seat is determined. In most cases inventory control has a real time
interface to an airlines Yield management system to support a permanent optimization of the offered
booking classes in response to changes in demand or pricing strategies of a competitor.

Availability display and reservation (PNR)[edit]

Users access an airlines inventory through an availability display. It contains all offered flights for a
particular city-pair with their available seats in the different booking classes. This display contains
flights which are operated by the airline itself as well as code share flights which are operated in cooperation with another airline. If the city pair is not one on which the airline offers service it may
display a connection using its own flights or display the flights of other airlines. The availability of
seats of other airlines is updated through standard industry interfaces. Depending on the type of cooperation it supports access to the last seat (last seat availability) in real-time. reservations for
individual passengers or groups are stored in a so-called passenger name record (PNR). Among
other data, the PNR contains personal information such as name, contact information or special
services requests (SSRs) e.g. for a vegetarian meal, as well as the flights (segments) and issued
tickets. Some reservation systems also allow to store customer data in profiles to avoid data re-entry
each time a new reservation is made for a known passenger. In addition most systems have
interfaces to CRM systems or customer loyalty applications (aka frequent traveller systems). Before
a flight departs the so-called passenger name list (PNL) is handed over to the departure control
system that is used to check-in passengers and baggage. Reservation data such as the number of
booked passengers and special service requests is also transferred to flight operations systems,
crew management and catering systems. Once a flight has departed the reservation system is
updated with a list of the checked-in passengers (e.g. passengers who had a reservation but did not
check in (no shows) and passengers who checked in, but didnt have a reservation (go shows)).
Finally data needed for revenue accounting and reporting is handed over to administrative systems.

Fare quote and ticketing[edit]

List of fares for travel on Delta Airlines from San Francisco, CA to Boston, MA. Applicable booking classes, as
well as specific restrictions such as minimum stay and advance purchase can be seen.

The Fares data store contains fare tariffs, rule sets, routing maps, class of service tables, and some
tax information that construct the price "the fare". Rules like booking conditions (e.g. minimum stay,
advance purchase, etc.) are tailored differently between different city pairs or zones, and assigned a
class of service corresponding to its appropriate inventory bucket. Inventory control can also be
manipulated manually through the availability feeds, dynamically controlling how many seats are
offered for a particular price by opening and closing particular classes.
The compiled set of fare conditions is called a fare basis code. There are two systems set up for the
interchange of fares data ATPCOand SITA, plus some system to system direct connects. This
system distributes the fare tariffs and rule sets to all GDSs and other subscribers. Every airline
employs staff who code air fare rules in accordance with yield management intent. There are also
revenue managers who watch fares as they are filed into the public tariffs and make competitive
recommendations. Inventory control is typically manipulated from here, using availability feeds to
open and close classes of service.
The role of the ticketing complex is to issue and store electronic ticket records and the very small
number of paper tickets that are still issued. Miscellaneous charges order (MCO) is still a paper
document; IATA has working groups defining the replacement document the electronic multipurpose
document (EMD) as at 2010. The electronic ticket information is stored in a database containing the
data that historically was printed on a paper ticket including items such as the ticket number, the fare
and tax components of the ticket price or exchange rate information. In the past airlines issued paper
tickets; since 2008 IATA has been supporting a resolution to move to 100% electronic ticketing. So
far, the industry has not been able to comply due to various technological and international
limitations. The industry is at 98% electronic ticket issuance today although electronic processing for
MCOs was not available in time for the IATA mandate.

Major Systems[edit]
Name

Description

Vendor

Reservations system, data warehousing, loyalty

AirKiosk

program, accounting, check-in with the real-time link with

AirKiosk

Department for Homeland Security, which can be

systems/[1]

packaged to be operated by airline, or third party.

A complete airline management solution, including

ameliaRES

Reservations, Ancillary Sales, DCS, Flight Operations,

Cargo and Charter etc...

InteliSys Aviation
Systems/[2]

A-ICE Smart Booking System. Together with A-DCS is a

A-SBS

comprehensive airlines solution to manage the overall

A-ICE[3]

Airline & Passenger process.

A complete Passenger Service System (PSS) built for

LCC, regional, and hybrid carriers, including
Avantik

Reservations, DCS, IBE, FFP, Inventory Control,

Schedule Management, Weight & Balance, Revenue
Accounting, etc.

iFly Res is the next generation Airline Passenger

IFlyRes

Services System. Including Booking, Fares, DCS, GDS,

Internet Booking,... etc.

Bravo
Passenger
Solutions, Pte.,
Ltd.[4]

IBS Software
Services[5]

Crane PAX is a web based airline reservations and

ticketing system. With inventory control, fares, pricing
Crane PAX

and ticketing, advance reservation, Internet Booking

Hitit Computer

Engine, seat selection and sales distribution functions it

Services[6]

manages the whole airline operations cycle up to the

point of departure.

Is an online web based aviation system providing

AvAIO

marketing, reservation, inventory and pricing to sell

seats, is part of a full enterprise system to operate the

SysAIO Inc[7]

major parts of an airline.

Travel Technology

Integrated Airline Management System and global

Interactive Solutions distribution system (GDS).

Travel
Technology

Interactive[8]

Navitaire New Skies

Integrated
Customer Centric
Passenger Service

Integrated reservations, departure control, inventory

system and e-commerce platform.

Navitaire[9]

System

Radixx Air
Enterprise

SabreSonic
Customer Sales &
Service

ISA

SITA Horizon
Customer Sales &
Service

Alta Res

Takeflite Solutions

Topware AirSuite

Integrated Passenger Services System

Radixx
International[10]

Integrated reservations, departure control, inventory

Sabre Airline

system and e-commerce platform.

Solutions[11]

Airline Reservation System, departure control and ecommerce.

Integrated reservations, departure control, inventory

system and e-commerce platform.

ISA[12]

SITA[13]

Integrated Airline Reservation System and global

Amadeus IT

distribution system (GDS).

Group[14]

Online Airline Management & Maintenance Software

Takeflite

Service.

Solutions[15]

European Airline Reservation System

Maxxcom[16]

SkyVantage Airline
Management
System (SVAMS)

SkyVantage Airline Management System. Full suite of

SkyVantage

reservations, PSS, distribution and operations software.

Corp[17]

Information
AccelAero

Airline Reservation System

Systems
Associates[18]

AirKiosk

A complete reservations system, including IATA eticketing and interline e-ticketing, DCS

SUTRA Inc.[19]

One stop cloud reservations system, including full eAeroCRS

commerce website, Flight information displays, Check-in

Enoyaone LTD[20]

and DCS, BI Dashboard.

KIU

Horizon

A computer reservations system (CRS) and global

distribution system (GDS).

A Passenger Service System (PSS).

KIU System[21]

SITA Inc[22]

A complete airline management solution, including

Jupiter

Reservations, DCS, IBE, Revenue Accounting, FFP,

Mercator, Inc.[23]

Staff Travel, etc.

COMPASS

SpotU Digital

A comprehensive Passenger Service System (PSS)

used by Garuda Indonesia

A targeted airline itinerary advertising platform used

by Jetstar Airlines

PT Aero
Systems
Indonesia[24]

SpotU Digital[25]

AeroTech Flight
AerRES

Charter Airline Reservation System

Safety
Solutions[26]

RESIBER

Videcom VRS

A Passenger Service System (PSS).

Iberia[27]

Videcom Reservations System, GDS,IET,Codeshare for

Videcom

regional and international airlines.

international[28]

WorldTicket Dimensions, Sell-More-Seats, W2 SubWorldTicket

hosting and 365 TKT are products for regional and mid-

WorldTicket [29]

sized airlines.

AirMax System

Airline Reservation System

AirMax System

History[edit]

Agent set of the Magnetronic Reservisor system

The history of airline reservations systems began in the late 1950s when American Airlines required
a system that would allow real-time access to flight details in all of its offices, and the integration and
automation of its booking and ticketing processes. As a result, the first electronic reservations
system, Magnetronic Reservisor, was introduced in 1952.[30] Many years later, Sabre (SemiAutomated Business Research Environment) was developed and launched in 1964. Sabre's

breakthrough was its ability to keep inventory correct in real time, accessible to agents around the
world. Prior to this, manual systems required centralized reservation centers, groups of people in a
room with the physical cards that represented inventory, in this case, seats on airplanes.
The deregulation of the airline industry, in the Airline Deregulation Act, meant that airlines, which had
previously operated under government-set fares ensuring airlines at least broke even, now needed
to improve efficiency to compete in a free market. In this deregulated environment the ARS and its
descendants became vital to the travel industry.