Worldspan

Worldspan is an American company that was founded on 7 February 1990 by the airlines Northwest Airlines, Delta Air Lines and the former Trans World Airlines with headquarters in Atlanta.

It was based on an agreement between the airlines their previous computer reservation systems DATAS II of Delta Air Lines and PARS from Trans World Airlines to a system to unite. In 1993, the operations center in Atlanta was fully operational. The local mainframe has a size of two football fields and processes the requests in real time.

Meanwhile, the company has more than two thousand employees, has branches in South America and Canada. In Frankfurt am Main is the German subsidiary. Worldspan, one of the four major global reservation systems ( in addition to Amadeus, Sabre and Galileo), was sold on 30 June 2003 at an American investment company. On 21 August 2007, Travelport Inc., which also includes the Worldspan competitor Galileo heard Worldspan adopted and begun to merge the two reservation systems.

Online travel agencies like Expedia or Orbitz to use the global distribution system for booking flights, hotels or other services.

Way of working in the travel agency

To connect to the computer system, the user needed a secure line, for example via a leased line or an encrypted Internet connection. Since leased lines are associated with significant costs and expenses, the trend is increasingly to encrypted communications over the Internet. Each agency is a three-digit alphanumeric code ( called SID) assigned that contains a pool of addresses for devices, such as computers or printers for ATB2 or e- tickets. About an emulator registered participants can use commands ( format) to request information, such as flight information, prices or the weather in the target area.

For each passenger a Passenger Name Record is created with, which is stored in the system.

Example: Result of the request for a flight from Frankfurt to New York on 15 December 2006.