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Airline reservation systems (ARS) are systems that allow an airline to sell its inventory (seats). It contains information on schedules and fares and contains a database of reservations (or passenger name records) and of tickets issued (if applicable).
Airline reservation systems incorporate airline schedules, fare tariffs, passenger reservations and ticket records. An airline’s direct distribution works within its reservation system, as well as pushing out information to the GDS. The second type of direct distribution channel is consumers who use the internet or mobile applications to make their reservations. Travel agencies and other indirect distribution channels access the same GDS as those accessed by the airline reservation systems, and all messaging is transmitted by a standardized messaging system that functions on two types of messaging that transmit on SITA’s high-level network (HLN).

These messaging types are called Type A [usually EDIFACT format] for real-time interactive communication and Type B [TTY] for informational and booking-type 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 are functionally quite complex, the operation of an in-house airline reservation system is relatively expensive. Before deregulation, airlines owned their reservation systems with travel agents subscribing to them. Today, the GDSs 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. There is one major Regional GDS, Abacus, serving the Asian market and several regional players serving single countries, including Travelsky (China), ORS (Russia), Infini and 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 may host “ticket-less” airlines and “hybrid” airlines that use e-ticketing in addition to ticket-less to accommodate code-shares and interlines.

Inventory management

In the airline industry, available seats are commonly referred to as inventory. The inventory of an airline is generally classified into service classes (e.g., economy, premium economy, business or first class) and any number of fare classes, to which different prices and booking conditions may apply. Fare classes are complicated and vary from airline to airline, often indicated by a one-letter code. The meaning of these codes is not often known by the passenger, but conveys information to airline staff, for example, they may indicate that a ticket was fully paid, or discounted or purchased through a loyalty scheme, etc. Some seats may not be available for open sale, but reserved, for example, for connecting flights or loyalty scheme passengers. Overbooking is also a common practice and is an exception to inventory management principles. One of the core functions of inventory management is inventory control. Inventory control monitors how many seats are available in the different fare classes and opens and closes individual fare classes for sale.

A flight schedule management system forms the foundation of the inventory management system. Besides other functions, it is critical for ticket sales, crew member assignments, aircraft maintenance, airport coordination, and connections to partner airlines. The schedule system monitors what and when aircraft will be available on particular routes, and their internal configuration. Inventory data is imported and maintained from the scheduled distribution system. Changes to aircraft availability would immediately impact the available seats of the fleet, as well as the seats that had been sold.

The price for each sold seat is determined by a combination of the fares and booking conditions stored in the Fare Quote System. 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.