21-04-2010, 11:50 PM
Airline Reservations Systems contain airline schedules, fare tariffs, passenger reservations and ticket records.An airlineâ„¢s 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.
Users access an airlineâ„¢s 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 co-operation with another airline. The availability of seats of other airlines is updated through standard industry interfaces. Depending on the type of co-operation 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 Traveler 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 didnâ„¢t have a reservation (Go Shows)). Finally data needed for revenue accounting and reporting is handed over to the administrative systems
