Consumer Electronics

FUNCTIONS

Most reservation systems use terminals with keyboards and screens. When a passenger wishes to make a booking, telephones the airline or walks into its office, he talks to an agent operating such a terminal. The agent does not use a timetable but obtains information about possible flights on his screen. The passenger might say, for example, that he wants to travel to Bombay on December 27 at about 3 P.M. The agent keys in this fact in a coded form, and on the screen appear the four best flights with seats to fill the requirement. If for some reasons none of these is suitable, it can be instructed to scan outwards from this time and produce the next four flights, and so on. The screen tells the agent fares and all the other details he ...