IT Systems in the Airline Industry
 

Hi all,

I was wondering of any of you guys could help me with some research I am undertaking....

I am looking into Information Technology systems in the airline industry, their history and their effects etc. Does anybody know who were the first airlines (US or European) to start effectively introducing IT technologies into their businesses? For example which airline and when started using e-tickets or online check-in or even simply computerised reservations systems?

I realise this a VERY broad and open-ended question, but I'd be grateful for any input or help you could provide. I will happily provide anybody that helps with a drink at the upcoming big London DO! :p

Thanks in advance,
Lewis

Books on the history of an airline often seem to cover each major step in IT systems introduction, just like they do for aircraft fleet introductions, so those can be a good source of information.

Back in the big mainframe days the old Sperry Univac company seemed to be to the fore on the hardware side with airlines, later being overtaken by IBM. And many of the initial systems were programmed by the airline's own IT staff (and thus incompatible with each other).

Reservations were usually first (in passing some of the "manual" systems towards their end are fascinating examples of non-computerised systems design and work study in their own right). I believe Indian Airlines (the Indian domestic operator) were still using a mainframe with 80-column punched card input and once-a-day overnight batch update into the 1990s.

A system called Boadicea was the pioneer for BOAC, and an equivalent system called Beacon for BEA, long before they went into British Airways

Here's an interesting story about the invention of yield management at AA in the 80's. In the 80's, Crandall, AA and Sabre revolutionized the airline industry.

For more info about Sabre, you can read the PR fluff on their website.

There you go: http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Compute...vations_system

Thank you all for your responses. Really really much appreciated :)

You might want to talk to Alaska Airlines' IT folks - they have a lot of "homegrown" technology and were innovators in online booking, etc. in web-based products for the consumer. Unfortunately, they seem to have outgrown their homegrown platforms and now have to move to a standard product from a 3d party vendor.