Airline Reservations System - Overview

Overview

Airline reservations systems contain airline schedules, fare tariffs, passenger reservations and ticket records. 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 . These message types are called Type B for remarks-like communications and Type A for secured information. Message construction standards are 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 three major GDS providers in the market space: Amadeus, Travelport (the merged 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), Infini and Axess (both Japan) and Topas (South Korea).

Reservation systems like Navitaire hosts "ticket less" airlines such as AirTran, and previously hosted JetBlue. Virgin America is hosted by iflyRes(aiRes), which is a new generation reservation system developed and operated by IBS Software Service Pvt. Ltd. Virgin America has decided to move to Sabre now (ref: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/01/26/2800193/virgin-america-chooses-southlake.html)

In additional to these "standardized" GDS, some airlines have proprietary versions which they use to run their flight operations. A few examples of this kind of system are Deltamatic (built off the Worldspan platform) and EDS SHARES. SITA Reservations remains the largest neutral multi-host airline reservations system, with over 100 airlines currently managing inventory.