Sabre (computer system)
Encyclopedia
Sabre Global Distribution System (GDS), owned by Sabre Holdings
, is used by more than 55,000 travel agencies around the world with more than 400 airlines, 88,000 hotels, 24 car rental brands, and 13 cruise lines. The Sabre GDS enables companies such as American Airlines
, American Express
, BCD Travel
, Carlson Wagonlit Travel
, HRG, Expedia
, Frontier
, LastMinute
, JetBlue, GetThere
and Travelocity
to search, price, book, and ticket travel services provided by airlines, hotels, car rental companies, rail providers and tour operators.
Sabre Holdings is a travel technology company serving airlines, hotels, online and offline travel agents and travel buyers. The company is organized into four business units:
The company is headquartered in Southlake, Texas, and has 9,000 employees in 59 locations around the world with datacenters in global locations including Tulsa, Oklahoma.
booked reservations.
In the 1950s, American Airlines was facing a serious challenge in its ability to quickly handle airline reservations in an era that witnessed high growth in passenger volumes in the airline industry. Before the introduction of SABRE, the airline's system for booking flights was entirely manual, having developed from the techniques originally developed at its Little Rock, Arkansas
reservations center in the 1920s. In this manual system, a team of eight operators would sort through a rotating file with cards for every flight. When a seat was booked, the operators would place a mark on the side of the card, and knew visually whether it was full. This part of the process was not all that slow, at least when there were not that many planes, but the entire end-to-end task of looking for a flight, reserving a seat and then writing up the ticket could take up to three hours in some cases, and 90 minutes on average. The system also had limited room to scale. It was limited to about eight operators because that was the maximum that could fit around the file, so in order to handle more queries the only solution was to add more layers of hierarchy to filter down requests into batches.
American Airlines had already attacked the problem to some degree, and was in the process of introducing their new Magnetronic Reservisor, an electromechanical computer, in 1952 to replace the card files. This computer consisted of a single magnetic drum, each memory location holding the number of seats left on a particular flight. Using this system, a large number of operators could look up information simultaneously, so the ticket agents could be told over the phone whether a seat was available. On the downside, a staff member was still needed at each end of the phone line, and actually handling the ticket still took considerable effort and filing. Something much more highly automated was needed if AA was going to enter the jet age
, booking many times more seats.
It was during the testing phase of the Reservisor that a high-ranking IBM
salesman, Blair Smith, was flying on an American Airlines
flight from Los Angeles
back to IBM in New York
in 1953.
He found himself sitting next to AA president C. R. Smith
. Noting that they shared a family name, they began talking.
Just prior to this chance meeting, IBM
had been working with the US Air Force on their Semi Automatic Ground Environment
(SAGE) project. SAGE used a series of large computers to coordinate the message flow from radar
sites to interceptors, dramatically reducing the time needed to direct an attack on an incoming bomber. The system used teleprinter
machines located all around the world to feed information into the system, which then sent orders back out to teleprinters located at the fighter bases. It was one of the first online
systems.
It was not lost on either man that the basic idea of the SAGE system was perfectly suited to AA's booking needs. Teleprinters would be placed at AA's ticketing offices to send in requests and receive responses directly, without the need for anyone on the other end of the phone. The number of available seats on the aircraft could be tracked automatically, and if a seat was available the ticket agent could be notified instantly. Booking simply took one more command, updating the availability and even printing out the ticket for them.
Only 30 days later IBM sent a research proposal to AA, suggesting that they really study the problem and see if an "electronic brain" could actually help. They set up a team consisting of IBM engineers led by John Siegfried and a large number of AA's staff led by Malcolm Perry, taken from booking, reservations and ticket sales, calling the effort the Semi-Automated Business Research Environment, or SABRE.
A formal development arrangement was signed in 1957, and the first experimental system went online in 1960, based on two IBM 7090
mainframes in a new data center located in Briarcliff Manor, New York
. The system was a success. Up until this point it had cost the astonishing sum of $40 million to develop and install (about $350 million in 2000 dollars).
The SABRE system by IBM in the 1960s was specified to process a very large number of transactions, such as handling 83,000 daily phone calls. The system took over all booking functions in 1964, at which point the name had changed to the more familiar SABRE.
In 1972 the system was migrated to IBM System/360
systems in a new underground location in Tulsa, Oklahoma
. Max Hopper
joined American Airlines in 1972 as director of Sabre, and pioneered its use. Originally used only by American Airlines, the system was expanded to travel agents in 1976.
With SABRE up and running, IBM offered its expertise to other airlines, and soon developed Deltamatic for Delta Air Lines
on the IBM 7074, and PANAMAC for Pan American World Airways
using an IBM 7080
. In 1968 they generalized their work into the PARS (Programmed Airline Reservation System), which ran on any member of the IBM System/360
family and thus could support any sized airline. This evolved into ACP
(Airlines Control Program), and later to TPF
(Transaction Processing Facility). Programs were originally written in assembly language
, later in SabreTalk
, a proprietary dialect of PL/I
, and now in C
.
By the 1980s, SABRE offered airline reservations through the CompuServe Information Service
and GEnie
under the Eaasy SABRE brand. This service was extended to America Online in the 1990s.
American and Sabre separated on March 15, 2000. Sabre had been a publicly traded corporation, Sabre Holdings
, stock symbol TSG on the NYSE until taken private in March 2007. The corporation introduced the new logo and changed from the all-caps acronym "SABRE" to the mixed-case "Sabre Holdings", when the new corporation was formed. The Travelocity
website, introduced in 1996, is owned by Sabre Holdings, and along with its three other business units, Sabre Travel Network, Sabre Airline Solutions and Sabre Hospitality, today serves as a global travel technology company. The system connects more than travel agents and millions of travelers with more than 400 airlines, 90,000 hotels, 30 car-rental companies, 200 tour operators, and dozens of railways, ferries and cruise lines.
At first this was limited to juggling the relative importance of factors such as the length of the flight, how close the actual departure time was to the desired time, and whether the flight had a connection. But with each success American became bolder. In late 1981, New York Air
added a flight from La Guardia
to Detroit, challenging American in an important market. Before long the new flights suddenly started appearing at the bottom of the screen. Its reservations dried up, and it was forced to cut back from eight Detroit flights a day to none.
On one occasion, Sabre deliberately withheld Continental
's discount fares on 49 routes where American competed. A Sabre staffer had been directed to work on a program that would automatically suppress any discount fares loaded into the computer system.
Congress investigated these practices and in 1983 Bob Crandall, president of American, was the most vocal supporter of the systems. "The preferential display of our flights, and the corresponding increase in our market share, is the competitive raison d'être for having created the system in the first place," he told them. Unimpressed, in 1984 the United States government outlawed screen bias.
Even after biases were eliminated, travel agents using the system leased and serviced by American were significantly more likely to choose American over other airlines. The same was true of United and its Apollo system. The airlines referred to this phenomenon as the "halo" effect.
The fairness rules were eliminated/allowed to expire in 2004.
In 1987 Sabre's success of selling to European travel agents was inhibited by the refusal of big European carriers led by British Airways
to grant the system ticketing authority for their flights even though Sabre had obtained BSP clearance for the UK in 1986. American brought High Court Action which alleged that after the arrival of Sabre on its doorstep British Airways
immediately offered financial incentives to travel agents who continued to use Travicom
and would tie any override commissions to use of the Travicom
system. Travicom
was a company created by Videcom
, British Airways
and British Caledonian
and launched in 1976 as the world's first multi-access reservations system based on Videcom technology which eventually became part of Galileo UK. Travicom
connected 49 subscribing international airlines (including British Airways
, British Caledonian
, TWA
, Pan American World Airways
, Qantas
, Singapore Airlines
, Air France
, Lufthansa
, SAS
, Air Canada
, KLM, Alitalia
, Cathay Pacific
and JAL
) to thousands of travel agents in the UK. It allowed agents and airlines to communicate via a common distribution language and network, handling 97% of UK airline business trade bookings by 1987.
British Airways
eventually bought out the stakes held by Videcom
and British Caledonian
in Travicom
to become the sole owner and although Sabre's vice-president in London, David Schwarte, made representations to the US Department of Transportation and the British Monopolies Commission, BA defended the use of Travicom as a truly non-discriminatory system in flight selection because an agent had access to some 50 carriers worldwide, including Sabre, for flight information.
One shortcoming of the Sabre reservations system that frustrates some travelers is that it only facilitates booking flights within 330 days of the booking date. Therefore, travelers who intend to stay in their destination for longer 330 days are unable to purchase their return ticket at the same time they buy their departure ticket and are forced to buy more expensive one-way tickets for each leg of their travel. Likewise, if the return date is to be 330 days after the departure date, round-trip tickets can only be purchased (at exorbitant rates) on the day of departure, if they are even available at such a late date. Most airlines, though, have a program where you can book your return within 330 days and change it for a later date free of charge.
Sabre, Expedia, Orbitz and some consumer advocates think that American's tactics with Direct Connect are aimed at making fare comparisons harder for online travel sites and for customers. American says its new system lowers its costs and lets it display its increasingly complex airfare and travel products to consumers. Especially the generation of ancillary revenue
plays an important role behind AA's effort to establish Direct Connects.
Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings or Sabre, Inc. is an American privately held travel technology company, encompassing several brands in three global distribution system channels: travel agency, airline, and direct to consumer. These areas are serviced by TSG's three main business groups...
, is used by more than 55,000 travel agencies around the world with more than 400 airlines, 88,000 hotels, 24 car rental brands, and 13 cruise lines. The Sabre GDS enables companies such as American Airlines
American Airlines
American Airlines, Inc. is the world's fourth-largest airline in passenger miles transported and operating revenues. American Airlines is a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas adjacent to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...
, American Express
American Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
, BCD Travel
BCD Travel
BCD Travel is a provider of global corporate travel management. The company, based in Utrecht, operates in 90 countries, with US$14 billion in total sales and a combined worldwide workforce of 10,800. BCD Travel is a BCD Holdings N.V. company.- History :...
, Carlson Wagonlit Travel
Carlson Wagonlit Travel
Carlson Wagonlit Travel is a large travel agency, handling both business and leisure clients.It operates in 157 countries and territories, with 22,000 employees. According to Business Travel News Online.com, in 2007, CWT surpassed American Express Business Travel and became the world's largest...
, HRG, Expedia
Expedia, Inc.
Expedia, Inc. is an American company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington that operates several travel brands including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Egencia , TripAdvisor, Expedia Local Expert, Classic Vacations and eLong. Expedia, Inc.’s companies operate more than 90 branded points of...
, Frontier
Frontier Airlines
Frontier Airlines, Inc., is an American airline headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The carrier, which is a subsidiary and operating brand of Republic Airways Holdings, operates flights to 83 destinations throughout the United States, Mexico, and Costa Rica and maintains hubs at...
, LastMinute
Lastminute.com
lastminute.com is an online travel and leisure retailer. The company was founded by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman in 1998 and became an icon of the UK internet boom of the late 1990s, floating at the peak of the dot com bubble and trading on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol...
, JetBlue, GetThere
GetThere
GetThere is a corporate travel reservation system that is owned by Sabre Holdings. GetThere started in 1995 as a web-based booking tool and was acquired by Sabre in August of 2000 for $757 million. Following the acquisition, GetThere merged with the Sabre Business Travel Solutions system...
and Travelocity
Travelocity
Travelocity is an online travel agency and wholly owned subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corporation, which was a publicly traded company until taken private by Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group in March 2007...
to search, price, book, and ticket travel services provided by airlines, hotels, car rental companies, rail providers and tour operators.
Sabre Holdings is a travel technology company serving airlines, hotels, online and offline travel agents and travel buyers. The company is organized into four business units:
- Travelocity: online travel agency
- Sabre Travel Network: global distribution system
- Sabre Airline Solutions: airline technology
- Sabre Hospitality Solutions: hotel technology solutions
The company is headquartered in Southlake, Texas, and has 9,000 employees in 59 locations around the world with datacenters in global locations including Tulsa, Oklahoma.
History
Sabre Holdings' history starts with SABRE (Semi-Automatic Business-Related Environment), a computer reservation system or GDS which was developed to automate the way American AirlinesAmerican Airlines
American Airlines, Inc. is the world's fourth-largest airline in passenger miles transported and operating revenues. American Airlines is a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas adjacent to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...
booked reservations.
In the 1950s, American Airlines was facing a serious challenge in its ability to quickly handle airline reservations in an era that witnessed high growth in passenger volumes in the airline industry. Before the introduction of SABRE, the airline's system for booking flights was entirely manual, having developed from the techniques originally developed at its Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock is the capital and the largest city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 699,757 people in the 2010 census...
reservations center in the 1920s. In this manual system, a team of eight operators would sort through a rotating file with cards for every flight. When a seat was booked, the operators would place a mark on the side of the card, and knew visually whether it was full. This part of the process was not all that slow, at least when there were not that many planes, but the entire end-to-end task of looking for a flight, reserving a seat and then writing up the ticket could take up to three hours in some cases, and 90 minutes on average. The system also had limited room to scale. It was limited to about eight operators because that was the maximum that could fit around the file, so in order to handle more queries the only solution was to add more layers of hierarchy to filter down requests into batches.
American Airlines had already attacked the problem to some degree, and was in the process of introducing their new Magnetronic Reservisor, an electromechanical computer, in 1952 to replace the card files. This computer consisted of a single magnetic drum, each memory location holding the number of seats left on a particular flight. Using this system, a large number of operators could look up information simultaneously, so the ticket agents could be told over the phone whether a seat was available. On the downside, a staff member was still needed at each end of the phone line, and actually handling the ticket still took considerable effort and filing. Something much more highly automated was needed if AA was going to enter the jet age
Jet age
The Jet Age is a period of history defined by the social change brought about by the advent of large aircraft powered by turbine engines. These aircraft are able to fly much higher, faster, and farther than older piston-powered propliners, making transcontinental and inter-continental travel...
, booking many times more seats.
It was during the testing phase of the Reservisor that a high-ranking IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
salesman, Blair Smith, was flying on an American Airlines
American Airlines
American Airlines, Inc. is the world's fourth-largest airline in passenger miles transported and operating revenues. American Airlines is a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas adjacent to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...
flight from Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
back to IBM in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1953.
He found himself sitting next to AA president C. R. Smith
C. R. Smith
Cyrus Rowlett Smith , known throughout his life as C. R. Smith, was the CEO of American Airlines from 1934 to 1968 and from 1973 to 1974. He was also United States Secretary of Commerce for a brief period under President Lyndon B...
. Noting that they shared a family name, they began talking.
Just prior to this chance meeting, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
had been working with the US Air Force on their Semi Automatic Ground Environment
Semi Automatic Ground Environment
The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment was an automated control system for tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft used by NORAD from the late 1950s into the 1980s...
(SAGE) project. SAGE used a series of large computers to coordinate the message flow from radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
sites to interceptors, dramatically reducing the time needed to direct an attack on an incoming bomber. The system used teleprinter
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
machines located all around the world to feed information into the system, which then sent orders back out to teleprinters located at the fighter bases. It was one of the first online
ONLINE
ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
systems.
It was not lost on either man that the basic idea of the SAGE system was perfectly suited to AA's booking needs. Teleprinters would be placed at AA's ticketing offices to send in requests and receive responses directly, without the need for anyone on the other end of the phone. The number of available seats on the aircraft could be tracked automatically, and if a seat was available the ticket agent could be notified instantly. Booking simply took one more command, updating the availability and even printing out the ticket for them.
Only 30 days later IBM sent a research proposal to AA, suggesting that they really study the problem and see if an "electronic brain" could actually help. They set up a team consisting of IBM engineers led by John Siegfried and a large number of AA's staff led by Malcolm Perry, taken from booking, reservations and ticket sales, calling the effort the Semi-Automated Business Research Environment, or SABRE.
A formal development arrangement was signed in 1957, and the first experimental system went online in 1960, based on two IBM 7090
IBM 7090
The IBM 7090 was a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computers and was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 was the third member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. The first 7090 installation...
mainframes in a new data center located in Briarcliff Manor, New York
Briarcliff Manor, New York
Briarcliff Manor is a village in Westchester County in the state of New York. It is shared between the towns of Mount Pleasant and Ossining, and lies entirely within the ZIP code of 10510...
. The system was a success. Up until this point it had cost the astonishing sum of $40 million to develop and install (about $350 million in 2000 dollars).
The SABRE system by IBM in the 1960s was specified to process a very large number of transactions, such as handling 83,000 daily phone calls. The system took over all booking functions in 1964, at which point the name had changed to the more familiar SABRE.
In 1972 the system was migrated to IBM System/360
System/360
The IBM System/360 was a mainframe computer system family first announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and sold between 1964 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific...
systems in a new underground location in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...
. Max Hopper
Max Hopper
Max D. Hopper was an American IT manager, who served as the CIO of Bank of America, the SVP of American Airlines and the chairman of the Sabre group...
joined American Airlines in 1972 as director of Sabre, and pioneered its use. Originally used only by American Airlines, the system was expanded to travel agents in 1976.
With SABRE up and running, IBM offered its expertise to other airlines, and soon developed Deltamatic for Delta Air Lines
Delta Air Lines
Delta Air Lines, Inc. is a major airline based in the United States and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The airline operates an extensive domestic and international network serving all continents except Antarctica. Delta and its subsidiaries operate over 4,000 flights every day...
on the IBM 7074, and PANAMAC for Pan American World Airways
Pan American World Airways
Pan American World Airways, commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991...
using an IBM 7080
IBM 7080
The IBM 7080 was a variable word length BCD transistor computer in the IBM 700/7000 series commercial architecture line, introduced in August 1961, that provided an upgrade path from the vacuum tube IBM 705 computer....
. In 1968 they generalized their work into the PARS (Programmed Airline Reservation System), which ran on any member of the IBM System/360
System/360
The IBM System/360 was a mainframe computer system family first announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and sold between 1964 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific...
family and thus could support any sized airline. This evolved into ACP
Airlines Control Program
IBM Airline Control Program, or ACP, was an operating system developed by IBM beginning about 1965. In contrast to previous airline transaction processing systems, the most notable aspect of ACP is that it was designed to run on most models of the IBM System/360 mainframe computer family...
(Airlines Control Program), and later to TPF
Transaction Processing Facility
TPF is an IBM real-time operating system for mainframes descended from the IBM System/360 family, including zSeries and System z9. The name is an initialism for Transaction Processing Facility....
(Transaction Processing Facility). Programs were originally written in assembly language
Assembly language
An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...
, later in SabreTalk
SabreTalk
SabreTalk is a dialect of PL/I for the S/360 IBM mainframes running the TPF platform. SabreTalk was developed jointly by American Airlines, Eastern Air Lines and IBM....
, a proprietary dialect of PL/I
PL/I
PL/I is a procedural, imperative computer programming language designed for scientific, engineering, business and systems programming applications...
, and now in C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
.
By the 1980s, SABRE offered airline reservations through the CompuServe Information Service
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
and GEnie
GEnie
GEnie was an online service created by a General Electric business - GEIS that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users...
under the Eaasy SABRE brand. This service was extended to America Online in the 1990s.
American and Sabre separated on March 15, 2000. Sabre had been a publicly traded corporation, Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings or Sabre, Inc. is an American privately held travel technology company, encompassing several brands in three global distribution system channels: travel agency, airline, and direct to consumer. These areas are serviced by TSG's three main business groups...
, stock symbol TSG on the NYSE until taken private in March 2007. The corporation introduced the new logo and changed from the all-caps acronym "SABRE" to the mixed-case "Sabre Holdings", when the new corporation was formed. The Travelocity
Travelocity
Travelocity is an online travel agency and wholly owned subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corporation, which was a publicly traded company until taken private by Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group in March 2007...
website, introduced in 1996, is owned by Sabre Holdings, and along with its three other business units, Sabre Travel Network, Sabre Airline Solutions and Sabre Hospitality, today serves as a global travel technology company. The system connects more than travel agents and millions of travelers with more than 400 airlines, 90,000 hotels, 30 car-rental companies, 200 tour operators, and dozens of railways, ferries and cruise lines.
Controversy
A 1981 study by American Airlines found that travel agents selected the flight appearing on the first line more than half the time. Ninety-two percent of the time, the selected flight was on the first screen. This provided a huge incentive for American to manipulate their ranking formula, or even corrupt the search algorithm outright, to favor American flights. American eventually did just that under the name "screen science."At first this was limited to juggling the relative importance of factors such as the length of the flight, how close the actual departure time was to the desired time, and whether the flight had a connection. But with each success American became bolder. In late 1981, New York Air
New York Air
New York Air was a 1980s startup airline owned by Texas Air Corporation and based at LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, Queens, New York City.-History:...
added a flight from La Guardia
LaGuardia Airport
LaGuardia Airport is an airport located in the northern part of Queens County on Long Island in the City of New York. The airport is located on the waterfront of Flushing Bay and Bowery Bay, and borders the neighborhoods of Astoria, Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst. The airport was originally...
to Detroit, challenging American in an important market. Before long the new flights suddenly started appearing at the bottom of the screen. Its reservations dried up, and it was forced to cut back from eight Detroit flights a day to none.
On one occasion, Sabre deliberately withheld Continental
Continental Airlines
Continental Airlines was a major American airline now merged with United Airlines. On May 3, 2010, Continental Airlines, Inc. and UAL, Inc. announced a merger via a stock swap, and on October 1, 2010, the merger closed and UAL changed its name to United Continental Holdings, Inc...
's discount fares on 49 routes where American competed. A Sabre staffer had been directed to work on a program that would automatically suppress any discount fares loaded into the computer system.
Congress investigated these practices and in 1983 Bob Crandall, president of American, was the most vocal supporter of the systems. "The preferential display of our flights, and the corresponding increase in our market share, is the competitive raison d'être for having created the system in the first place," he told them. Unimpressed, in 1984 the United States government outlawed screen bias.
Even after biases were eliminated, travel agents using the system leased and serviced by American were significantly more likely to choose American over other airlines. The same was true of United and its Apollo system. The airlines referred to this phenomenon as the "halo" effect.
The fairness rules were eliminated/allowed to expire in 2004.
In 1987 Sabre's success of selling to European travel agents was inhibited by the refusal of big European carriers led by British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
to grant the system ticketing authority for their flights even though Sabre had obtained BSP clearance for the UK in 1986. American brought High Court Action which alleged that after the arrival of Sabre on its doorstep British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
immediately offered financial incentives to travel agents who continued to use Travicom
Travicom
Travicom was the trading name of Travel Automation Services Ltd a travel technology company based in the United Kingdom providing a global distribution system between airlines and travel agencies....
and would tie any override commissions to use of the Travicom
Travicom
Travicom was the trading name of Travel Automation Services Ltd a travel technology company based in the United Kingdom providing a global distribution system between airlines and travel agencies....
system. Travicom
Travicom
Travicom was the trading name of Travel Automation Services Ltd a travel technology company based in the United Kingdom providing a global distribution system between airlines and travel agencies....
was a company created by Videcom
Videcom international
Videcom International Limited is a United Kingdom travel technology company based in Henley-on-Thames, it designs, develops and provides modern computer reservations systems to airlines and the travel industry, specializing in the hosting and distribution of airline sales.The system is connected to...
, British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
and British Caledonian
British Caledonian
British Caledonian was a private, British independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline, operating out of Gatwick Airport in the 1970s and 1980s...
and launched in 1976 as the world's first multi-access reservations system based on Videcom technology which eventually became part of Galileo UK. Travicom
Travicom
Travicom was the trading name of Travel Automation Services Ltd a travel technology company based in the United Kingdom providing a global distribution system between airlines and travel agencies....
connected 49 subscribing international airlines (including British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
, British Caledonian
British Caledonian
British Caledonian was a private, British independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline, operating out of Gatwick Airport in the 1970s and 1980s...
, TWA
Twa
The Twa are any of several hunting peoples of Africa who live interdependently with agricultural Bantu populations, and generally hold a socially subordinate position: They provide the farming population with game in exchange for agricultural products....
, Pan American World Airways
Pan American World Airways
Pan American World Airways, commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991...
, Qantas
Qantas
Qantas Airways Limited is the flag carrier of Australia. The name was originally "QANTAS", an initialism for "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services". Nicknamed "The Flying Kangaroo", the airline is based in Sydney, with its main hub at Sydney Airport...
, Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines Limited is the flag carrier airline of Singapore. Singapore Airlines operates a hub at Changi Airport and has a strong presence in the Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and "Kangaroo Route" markets...
, Air France
Air France
Air France , stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France, , and is one of the world's largest airlines. It is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance...
, Lufthansa
Lufthansa
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is the flag carrier of Germany and the largest airline in Europe in terms of overall passengers carried. The name of the company is derived from Luft , and Hansa .The airline is the world's fourth-largest airline in terms of overall passengers carried, operating...
, SAS
Scandinavian Airlines System
Scandinavian Airlines or SAS, previously Scandinavian Airlines System, is the flag carrier of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and the largest airline in Scandinavia....
, Air Canada
Air Canada
Air Canada is the flag carrier and largest airline of Canada. The airline, founded in 1936, provides scheduled and charter air transport for passengers and cargo to 178 destinations worldwide. It is the world's tenth largest passenger airline by number of destinations, and the airline is a...
, KLM, Alitalia
Alitalia
Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A. , in its later stages known as Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A. in Extraordinary Administration, was the former Italian flag carrier...
, Cathay Pacific
Cathay Pacific
Cathay Pacific is the flag carrier of Hong Kong, with its head office and main hub located at Hong Kong International Airport, although the airline's registered office is on the 33rd floor of One Pacific Place...
and JAL
Japan Airlines
is an airline headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan. It is the flag carrier of Japan and its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport and Tokyo International Airport , as well as Nagoya's Chūbu Centrair International Airport and Osaka's Kansai International Airport...
) to thousands of travel agents in the UK. It allowed agents and airlines to communicate via a common distribution language and network, handling 97% of UK airline business trade bookings by 1987.
British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
eventually bought out the stakes held by Videcom
Videcom international
Videcom International Limited is a United Kingdom travel technology company based in Henley-on-Thames, it designs, develops and provides modern computer reservations systems to airlines and the travel industry, specializing in the hosting and distribution of airline sales.The system is connected to...
and British Caledonian
British Caledonian
British Caledonian was a private, British independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline, operating out of Gatwick Airport in the 1970s and 1980s...
in Travicom
Travicom
Travicom was the trading name of Travel Automation Services Ltd a travel technology company based in the United Kingdom providing a global distribution system between airlines and travel agencies....
to become the sole owner and although Sabre's vice-president in London, David Schwarte, made representations to the US Department of Transportation and the British Monopolies Commission, BA defended the use of Travicom as a truly non-discriminatory system in flight selection because an agent had access to some 50 carriers worldwide, including Sabre, for flight information.
One shortcoming of the Sabre reservations system that frustrates some travelers is that it only facilitates booking flights within 330 days of the booking date. Therefore, travelers who intend to stay in their destination for longer 330 days are unable to purchase their return ticket at the same time they buy their departure ticket and are forced to buy more expensive one-way tickets for each leg of their travel. Likewise, if the return date is to be 330 days after the departure date, round-trip tickets can only be purchased (at exorbitant rates) on the day of departure, if they are even available at such a late date. Most airlines, though, have a program where you can book your return within 330 days and change it for a later date free of charge.
Sabre, Expedia, Orbitz and some consumer advocates think that American's tactics with Direct Connect are aimed at making fare comparisons harder for online travel sites and for customers. American says its new system lowers its costs and lets it display its increasingly complex airfare and travel products to consumers. Especially the generation of ancillary revenue
Ancillary revenue
Ancillary revenue refers to airline revenue from non-ticket sources, such as baggage fees and on-board food and services, and has become an important financial component for low-cost carriers in Europe, the United States and other global regions...
plays an important role behind AA's effort to establish Direct Connects.
See also
- Amadeus IT GroupAmadeus IT GroupAmadeus IT Group is a transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry. The company is structured around two key related areas - its global distribution system and its IT Solutions business area...
- TravelocityTravelocityTravelocity is an online travel agency and wholly owned subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corporation, which was a publicly traded company until taken private by Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group in March 2007...
- List of global distribution systems
- Passenger Name RecordPassenger Name RecordIn the travel industry, a passenger name record is a record in the database of a computer reservation system that contains the itinerary for a passenger, or a group of passengers traveling together...
- Code sharingCode sharingA codeshare agreement, sometimes simply codeshare, is an aviation business arrangement where two or more airlines share the same flight. A seat can be purchased on one airline but is actually operated by a cooperating airline under a different flight number or code...
- Electronic Recording Machine, AccountingElectronic Recording Machine, AccountingERMA , was a pioneering computer development project run at SRI under contract to Bank of America in order to automate banking bookkeeping...
(ERMA) - another pioneering early system. ERMA, SAGESemi Automatic Ground EnvironmentThe Semi-Automatic Ground Environment was an automated control system for tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft used by NORAD from the late 1950s into the 1980s...
and SABRE helped legitimize computers in business. - Real-time operating systemReal-time operating systemA real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...
- SABRE was one of the first such systems - Travel technologyTravel technologyTravel technology is a term used to describe applications of Information Technology , or Information and Communications Technology , in travel, tourism and hospitality industry...
- Galileo CRSGalileo CRSGalileo is a computer reservations system owned by Travelport. As of 2002, it had a 26.4% of worldwide CRS airline bookings.In addition to airline reservations, the Galileo CRS is also used to book train travel, cruises, car rental, and hotel rooms...
External links
- Oral history interview with R. Blair Smith. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Smith discusses how a chance meeting with C. R. Smith, president of American Airlines, eventually led to the development of the SABRE system. - Sabre Holdings
- Virtually There public site for viewing reservations made through Sabre.
- Some History features a history of ACP/TPF the Operating System used on SABRE