Programmed Airline Reservations System

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Programmed Airline Reservations System (PARS)
Developer(s)IBM
Operating systemIBM Airline Control Program (ACP),
Transaction Processing Facility (TPF)
TypeAirline reservation application
LicenseProprietary software

Programmed Airline Reservations System (PARS) is an

computer reservations system, executing under the control of IBM Airline Control Program (ACP) (and later its successor, Transaction Processing Facility (TPF)). Its international version was known as IPARS.[1]

By the 1960s, with the

ACP (Airlines Control Program) to TPF (Transaction Processing Facility).[1]

In the early days of automated reservations systems in the 1960s and 1970s the combination of ACP and PARS provided unprecedented scale and performance from an on-line real-time system, and for a considerable period ranked among the largest networks and systems of the era. In the early 1970s major US banks were developing major on-line teleprocessing applications systems and were in urgent need of ACP's high performance capabilities. ACP was made available by IBM to the banking industry in the mid-1970s. This system was used by the great majority of large airlines in the US and internationally; and its smaller 1970's version was used by many smaller regional airlines. PARS (and IPARS) was extremely successful, and it massively improved and revolutionized the efficiency of airlines passenger operations and their profitability.[citation needed]

Along with many other major and regional US airlines, the PARS system was later used by TWA and Northwest Airlines.[2] In this context PARS was also used as a marketing name by TWA when selling their system to travel agencies. Swiss International Air Lines and Brussels Airlines discontinued using PARS beginning of 2016. IranAir, the Iranian National Airline, discontinued using IBM-ACP/IPARS at the beginning of 2000 due to Year 2000 (Y2K) problem.

CPARS (Compact Programmed Airlines Reservations) was used by smaller airlines (e.g. Icelandair). Among other limitations (compared to PARS) was a shorter booking horizon of 90 days.[citation needed]

References

  1. ^
  2. ^ Weiner, Eric, "Diagrams of the Pan Am's and NWA's 1988 route system", The New York Times, Sunday, June 11, 1989

Further reading