What Kind of Funny Business is SHARES up to Now?
Jul 4, 2013, 3:19 am
#16
Original Poster
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Jul 4, 2013, 7:00 am
#17
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: May 2001
Posts: 10,965
I am curious....
I thought there was a process where the reservation systems load the schedule from the OAG "tape". I guess these fake flights are just manually added to the system?
What inventory classes are there and what are the capacity/authorized values set to?
I take it that there is a way so it is not published to OA? Obviously it displays on the website
Thanks.
I thought there was a process where the reservation systems load the schedule from the OAG "tape". I guess these fake flights are just manually added to the system?
What inventory classes are there and what are the capacity/authorized values set to?
I take it that there is a way so it is not published to OA? Obviously it displays on the website
Thanks.
Jul 4, 2013, 7:08 am
#18
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: IAH
Programs: UA 1K/*G
Posts: 2,397
in my AAgent days (before the internet and e-tickets) when passengers asked for a "confirmation number" we would tell them it's "any flight number, past or present, followed by the date of that flight and your last name". That remains true today, but now that the airlines have trained the passengers to think in terms of a "confirmation number", agents now give out the PNR#.
Jul 4, 2013, 7:35 am
#19
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: NCL
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Great story - who says romance is dead?
Jul 4, 2013, 1:05 pm
#21
Join Date: Aug 2011
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I once had a stay at a Hyatt and was awarded 1,000 miles each day for about two months following my stay. Three free trips worth of miles! Luckily my credit card was not charged at the same time.
Jul 4, 2013, 8:44 pm
#22
Join Date: Nov 1999
Location: Tucson, AZ USA
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The date and departure city were option and defaulted to today and the city the Sabre was in.
And since Gate Agents primarily work one flight at a time, we could dedicate or set to the flight. Once done, a flight# of zero would be translated to the dedicated flight number.
So if I needed to find your PNR, it was simply: *0-BAKER
And given that I worked before e-tickets, I likely had your ticket already. Reading the name from it was easier than someone trying to tell me their random PNR#
Jul 4, 2013, 8:48 pm
#23
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: May 2001
Posts: 10,965
You could use any flight/date that had ever been booked to the PNR ... the flight didn't have to be a current segment in the PNR.
The date and departure city were option and defaulted to today and the city the Sabre was in.
And since Gate Agents primarily work one flight at a time, we could dedicate or set to the flight. Once done, a flight# of zero would be translated to the dedicated flight number.
So if I needed to find your PNR, it was simply: *0-BAKER
And given that I worked before e-tickets, I likely had your ticket already. Reading the name from it was easier than someone trying to tell me their random PNR#
The date and departure city were option and defaulted to today and the city the Sabre was in.
And since Gate Agents primarily work one flight at a time, we could dedicate or set to the flight. Once done, a flight# of zero would be translated to the dedicated flight number.
So if I needed to find your PNR, it was simply: *0-BAKER
And given that I worked before e-tickets, I likely had your ticket already. Reading the name from it was easier than someone trying to tell me their random PNR#
Jul 4, 2013, 8:53 pm
#24
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: IAH
Programs: UA 1K/*G
Posts: 2,397
He's not talking about shares.
Jul 4, 2013, 9:25 pm
#26
Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: DEN/OGG
Programs: UA GS
Posts: 1,482
Jul 4, 2013, 10:24 pm
#29
Join Date: Nov 1999
Location: Tucson, AZ USA
Programs: DL-Platinum / AS-PlatPro / Hyatt - Glob / Hilton-Diamond
Posts: 1,573
I am curious....
I thought there was a process where the reservation systems load the schedule from the OAG "tape". I guess these fake flights are just manually added to the system?
What inventory classes are there and what are the capacity/authorized values set to?
I take it that there is a way so it is not published to OA? Obviously it displays on the website
Thanks.
I thought there was a process where the reservation systems load the schedule from the OAG "tape". I guess these fake flights are just manually added to the system?
What inventory classes are there and what are the capacity/authorized values set to?
I take it that there is a way so it is not published to OA? Obviously it displays on the website
Thanks.
It's completely backwards from that. Airlines are the system of record and they advise OAG what their skeds are. It's easy when "writing the tape" to send to OAG (and other CRS) to exclude flights in certain number ranges.
The fake flights had standard fare buckets and availability.
There were about a dozen flights and they "operated daily" so that gave a lot of flights to use for training.
When using a fake flight to extend a PNR's life on the mainframe, or for "email" for a large group of employees, the best practice is to "meal list" the flight versus booking a seat.
"Meal listing" is something pass riders would do to show their intent to try and "non-rev" on the flight. It doesn't remove a seat from inventory. But when it came time to plan the anticipated load for a flight (for meal, fuel and weight-balance planning) it would count the pass rider as another potential passenger. You can "meal list" an indefinite number of folks to a flight.
And yea, I'm talking about SABRE, not SHARES.
But the backbone of most (all ??) CRS systems is the same.
In my days as an AAgent, I remember standing over DL Agents and seeing a lot of similarity.
Just a year-n-half ago, I went to the "Capt Denny DO" in PDX. Of the many things we did, one was let a CO Agent show us some SHARES screens. I could actually decipher most of the info on them. Scary given that my days as an AAgent ended 20 years ago !!
Last edited by steve64; Jul 4, 2013 at 10:37 pm
Jul 4, 2013, 10:56 pm
#30
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Grand County, Colorado
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Posts: 2,013
UrbaneGent is probably spot on.
My own professional experience is as an AAgent on Sabre 20 years ago. A bit outdated, but so are the CRS systems for all airlines
In my days, a PNR would go to micro-fiche 3 days after the date of the last segment. I would hope that in today's world we're still not talking about micro-fiche, but the concept is the same. Bottom line, the PNR isn't available for on-line access 3 days after completion.
AA maintained, in the production environment, several "fake" flights.
The flight numbers were typically in the 55xx range. The cities they "stopped at" were typically HDQ (headquaters), GSW (Greater Southwest International ... a Ft Worth airport whose location today is located very close to DFW ... to the point that Amon Carter Blvd is the old runway ... and is now used as the location of the AA Flight Training Academy), SRO (Southern Res Office, located across the street from GSW) and a few other "cities". Some of these fake flights also "operated" to/from DFW or LAX.
The original intent of these fake flights between fake cities was for training.
Over the years, they developed other purposes.
Long before "internet" and "email" were household words, these fake flights were used for email type communications between AAgents.
IE: DFW Gate Agents would use (hypothetically .. I don't remember the specifics) flight number 5594 on Jan01 from HDQ to LAX
I could display my "email" with the entry: *5594/01JANHDQ-STEVE64
The above entry was if I didn't know my PNR/confirmation number. If you did know the PNR#, the entry was simply *ABC123 (where ABC123 was the PNR #)
Off topic, but in my AAgent days (before the internet and e-tickets) when passengers asked for a "confirmation number" we would tell them it's "any flight number, past or present, followed by the date of that flight and your last name". That remains true today, but now that the airlines have trained the passengers to think in terms of a "confirmation number", agents now give out the PNR#.
Another use of fake flights is just as UrbaneGent said.
If I'm researching a complaint you had on a flight today, I might add a segment to your PNR for flight 55xx on Dec31 from DFW to GSW. Your PNR now remains active in the mainframe (Sabre/Shares/whatever) computer for immediate access until Dec31+3 days.
My own professional experience is as an AAgent on Sabre 20 years ago. A bit outdated, but so are the CRS systems for all airlines
In my days, a PNR would go to micro-fiche 3 days after the date of the last segment. I would hope that in today's world we're still not talking about micro-fiche, but the concept is the same. Bottom line, the PNR isn't available for on-line access 3 days after completion.
AA maintained, in the production environment, several "fake" flights.
The flight numbers were typically in the 55xx range. The cities they "stopped at" were typically HDQ (headquaters), GSW (Greater Southwest International ... a Ft Worth airport whose location today is located very close to DFW ... to the point that Amon Carter Blvd is the old runway ... and is now used as the location of the AA Flight Training Academy), SRO (Southern Res Office, located across the street from GSW) and a few other "cities". Some of these fake flights also "operated" to/from DFW or LAX.
The original intent of these fake flights between fake cities was for training.
Over the years, they developed other purposes.
Long before "internet" and "email" were household words, these fake flights were used for email type communications between AAgents.
IE: DFW Gate Agents would use (hypothetically .. I don't remember the specifics) flight number 5594 on Jan01 from HDQ to LAX
I could display my "email" with the entry: *5594/01JANHDQ-STEVE64
The above entry was if I didn't know my PNR/confirmation number. If you did know the PNR#, the entry was simply *ABC123 (where ABC123 was the PNR #)
Off topic, but in my AAgent days (before the internet and e-tickets) when passengers asked for a "confirmation number" we would tell them it's "any flight number, past or present, followed by the date of that flight and your last name". That remains true today, but now that the airlines have trained the passengers to think in terms of a "confirmation number", agents now give out the PNR#.
Another use of fake flights is just as UrbaneGent said.
If I'm researching a complaint you had on a flight today, I might add a segment to your PNR for flight 55xx on Dec31 from DFW to GSW. Your PNR now remains active in the mainframe (Sabre/Shares/whatever) computer for immediate access until Dec31+3 days.
For dummy segments, we used FSG-QCL to keep PNRs alive.