Airline reservations system

It contains information on schedules and fares and contains a database of reservations (or passenger name records) and of tickets issued (if applicable).

An airline's direct distribution works within their own reservation system, as well as pushing out information to the GDS.

The second type of direct distribution channel are consumers who use the internet or mobile applications to make their own reservations.

Message construction standards set by IATA and ICAO, are global, and apply to more than air transportation.

Today, the GDS are run by independent companies with airlines and travel agencies being major subscribers.

As of February 2009, there are only a few major GDS providers in the market: Amadeus, Travelport (which operates the Apollo, Worldspan and Galileo systems), Sabre, InteliSys Aviation (which owns ameliaRES PSS) and Shares.

Some seats may not be available for open sale, but reserved for example for connecting flight or loyalty scheme passengers.

Besides other functions, it is critical for ticket sales, crew member assignments, aircraft maintenance, airport coordination, and connections to partner airlines.

In most cases, inventory control has a real time interface to an airline's yield management system to support a permanent optimization of the offered booking classes in response to changes in demand or pricing strategies of competitors.

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.

These simple vacuum tube and electromechanical computers were based on telephone switching systems made by Teleregister.

[6] In the late 1950s, the American Airles wanted 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.

[8] Developed by Evelyn Berezin at the Teleregister Company, it was an update to the era of the transistor of its line of Reservisor systems making them now fully electronic.

In 1964, American Airlines developed the Sabre (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment) using IBM hardware.