Backstage flight reservations
In a recent article , the topic of messaging between companies providing air travel from the point of view of a ticket search engine was touched upon by itself.
Here I will try to talk about the processing of these messages, as well as the peculiarities of working at Amadeus on the Cote d'Azur.
The topic is quite extensive, so I first outline only a few keywords, and together we will see what will be of interest.
From a certain point, it became clear that for the successful development of air travel it is necessary to create a more or less universal way of communication between the parties concerned. Airlines must negotiate with airports, agencies must sell tickets, and customers must pay and not complain.
The development of this understanding was the creation of Lufthansa, Airfrance and Iberia by the company Amadeus, with headquarters in Madrid, a data center in Erding and scattered development centers.
The universe of distribution systems is expanding, and has quite understandable consequences. For example, a data center in a couple of years will reach the limit of available capacity, although it already uses three electricity suppliers. The plans of the transcontinental expansion.
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Created as a GDS , Amadeus currently includes, in addition to the reservation system: schedule management, flight inventory, airport management (check-in, boarding), profit calculation, etc. There are also attempts to work with hotels and rental cars.
Industry activities are regulated by the International Air Transport Association . The association was conceived to control the prices of international shipments. But since 2003, negotiations are underway to create an uncontrolled market. At present, the tasks of the association are as follows:
Amadeus serves more than 104400 agent sales points and more than 36,600 sales offices of more than 460 airlines. 26 car rental companies with 36,000 rental locations.
Amadeus works in a transaction-based business model. That is, customers pay for used functionality units. For example, every time a ticket is reserved, Amadeus gets some kind of fixed pie. Such a fee may be charged for printing a document, exchanging a ticket, registering a passenger, etc. Of course, customers pay separately for developing new functionality.
The company's products are divided into three roles:
Details can be found on the official website .
Access to products is carried out by sending messages automatically or from client terminals. The terminal can be a text console or a web site. When searching or ordering tickets through Internet search engines, requests from servers come to us in approximately the same form as if the request were made manually from an agency terminal or airport. The message can be in the form of a TTY, EDIFACT, or XML request to a web service.
In response, the system can send e-mail with PDF documents, print tickets on printers at airports, send SMS and simply display HTML pages.
When reserving a ticket, a PNR is created. This entry contains basic information about the passenger: name, special requirements, flight number, hotel, car, train, that's all. All entries are sequentially numbered.
PNR example:
At checkmytrip.com, you can request your PNR by entering the name and number of your reservation (6 characters).
Flight life looks like this:
All these messages are stored and available for search and forwarding. In which case, special services may request blocking access to the archive of a particular flight for investigation.
In addition to service messages, a personal messaging service is provided between agency employees. There was a case of a judicial inquiry into the history of correspondence with the aim of investigating sexual harassment.
The message flow can reach several thousand per second, and we guarantee the integrity of the sequence, priority, delivery and storage (if required). Personal data is encrypted as needed, credit card numbers are not visible in the logs.
Airlines want to be fenced off from each other, so that in the event of an incident with the storage of some, others do not suffer. On the other hand, they need to have access to the archive of partners and send messages to someone.
Big business, of course, is not very agile. If something works, it is better not to touch. Therefore, the protocols and concepts that seemed adequate at the dawn of the industry, with varying success survived to the present. But quite a lot of people are working on this, trying to provide the modern level of services and the necessary security.
Initially, the core of the system was a ready-made software and hardware solution from IBM. However, written in assembler in bearded time still works correctly, although it requires significant resources for support: the solution is expensive, specialists are rare. Now the development center is engaged in new products, and modern tools are used.
The main programming language for heavily loaded services is C ++. For graphical interfaces, there are Java, web-services with various server solutions. Python is widely used to create regression testing scripts. On servers Linux works.
Before the code gets into production, the test runs on several levels of test systems, which are copies of a working system of varying degrees of reliability. Saved real traffic is sent to these copies, so the systems work as if in the past, with a known shift in time. One of the levels is a training system designed to train customer personnel.
All systems have different degrees of criticality. Support is provided by people who produce system updates at various levels, as well as developers. In teams there is a schedule of weekly duty, in which a mobile phone is issued. Voluntary movement restrictions occur on these duties: the response time to the problem is included in the contract, and if something happens, they can call in the middle of the night at the weekend, and there is some short time to connect to the chat with a discussion of the current problem. An example of such a problem: AirFrance can not sell tickets, or in general everything is broken .
During the download of a new (critical) application, the developers room sometimes resembles a flight control center (in a sense it is). We monitor the traffic of messages in real time, and if that is going to roll back the update or substitute a crutch. Sometimes there are incidents with the database, if the scheme is updated. The department that manages the installation is not always aware of what they are installing, so it can be different. There are still configuration updates, such as the emergence of a new client, with the subsequent configuration of routing and everything.
The development center in which your recalcitrant servant works is located on the Cote d'Azur, in Sophia Antipolis Park, a local silicon valley. IT companies were offered special conditions in this region (preferential electricity, for example), which was used by many well-known companies: Intel, ARM, Inria, AirFrance, Amadeus, and others. By the way, there are open vacancies.
Amadeus has a huge number of visitors, so the official language inside is English. Although in the dining room and for coffee, the French prefer to speak French. But one person who does not speak French is enough, and at a meeting of dozens of people, everyone switches to English without problems.
From the window you can see the southern Alps, villages on the hillsides and the Ligurian Sea. Hares and hogs run through the forests. I saw piglets grazing on the lawn from the bus window. Winter is coming, the mountains will put on snow caps and the ski season will come. Once a year there is a snowball on the roads around the city, which causes a cataclysm, because nobody is ready for ice. Even the trains.
Here I will try to talk about the processing of these messages, as well as the peculiarities of working at Amadeus on the Cote d'Azur.
The topic is quite extensive, so I first outline only a few keywords, and together we will see what will be of interest.
Story
From a certain point, it became clear that for the successful development of air travel it is necessary to create a more or less universal way of communication between the parties concerned. Airlines must negotiate with airports, agencies must sell tickets, and customers must pay and not complain.
The development of this understanding was the creation of Lufthansa, Airfrance and Iberia by the company Amadeus, with headquarters in Madrid, a data center in Erding and scattered development centers.
The universe of distribution systems is expanding, and has quite understandable consequences. For example, a data center in a couple of years will reach the limit of available capacity, although it already uses three electricity suppliers. The plans of the transcontinental expansion.
')
Created as a GDS , Amadeus currently includes, in addition to the reservation system: schedule management, flight inventory, airport management (check-in, boarding), profit calculation, etc. There are also attempts to work with hotels and rental cars.
Industry activities are regulated by the International Air Transport Association . The association was conceived to control the prices of international shipments. But since 2003, negotiations are underway to create an uncontrolled market. At present, the tasks of the association are as follows:
- simplification of billing between airlines and agencies;
- assignment of codes to companies and airports: 2 symbols for a company (for example, 1A), 3 symbols for an airport (LED);
- providing the possibility of checking prices with other airlines;
- identifying industry regulations such as the transport of dangerous goods;
- standardization, such as EDIFACT .
Amadeus serves more than 104400 agent sales points and more than 36,600 sales offices of more than 460 airlines. 26 car rental companies with 36,000 rental locations.
Process
Amadeus works in a transaction-based business model. That is, customers pay for used functionality units. For example, every time a ticket is reserved, Amadeus gets some kind of fixed pie. Such a fee may be charged for printing a document, exchanging a ticket, registering a passenger, etc. Of course, customers pay separately for developing new functionality.
The company's products are divided into three roles:
- Altéa Reservation:
- check availability;
- reservation;
- pricing;
- extract ordinary and electronic tickets;
- Altéa Inventory:
- flight schedule management, publication;
- passenger card management;
- Altéa Departure Control:
- check-in at the airport;
- issuing boarding passes;
- baggage handling;
- boarding control;
- weight control and balancing of the aircraft.
Details can be found on the official website .
Access to products is carried out by sending messages automatically or from client terminals. The terminal can be a text console or a web site. When searching or ordering tickets through Internet search engines, requests from servers come to us in approximately the same form as if the request were made manually from an agency terminal or airport. The message can be in the form of a TTY, EDIFACT, or XML request to a web service.
In response, the system can send e-mail with PDF documents, print tickets on printers at airports, send SMS and simply display HTML pages.
When reserving a ticket, a PNR is created. This entry contains basic information about the passenger: name, special requirements, flight number, hotel, car, train, that's all. All entries are sequentially numbered.
PNR example:
RP / MUC1A0701 /
RF THOMAS TEST
1.SRC / TEST
2 LH4143 Y 27OCT 5 NCEFRA HK1 0645 1 0745 0925 737 E 0 R
NON-SMOKING FLIGHT
SEE RTSVC
3 LH4138 Y 03NOV 5 FRANCE HK1 1600 1 1640 1805 737 E 0 R
NON-SMOKING FLIGHT
SEE RTSVC
4 AP 809-0239424
5 TK TL26OCT / MUC1A0701
6 FP CASH
At checkmytrip.com, you can request your PNR by entering the name and number of your reservation (6 characters).
Flight life looks like this:
- -7/10 days: flight creation;
- -24 hours: capacity calculation;
- -3 hours: the beginning of the evaluation load;
- -2.5 hours: an EZFW message is sent ;
- -1.5 hours: load rating update (DG / SL);
- -1 hour: sending instructions for downloading;
- -50 minutes: enter fuel data;
- -45 minutes: sending NOTOC and preliminary loading report;
- -10 minutes: checking the apron;
- -3 minutes: send the final report on the download;
- 0: take off;
- +10 minutes: release control, whatever that means, sending LDM / CPM / SLS.
All these messages are stored and available for search and forwarding. In which case, special services may request blocking access to the archive of a particular flight for investigation.
In addition to service messages, a personal messaging service is provided between agency employees. There was a case of a judicial inquiry into the history of correspondence with the aim of investigating sexual harassment.
The message flow can reach several thousand per second, and we guarantee the integrity of the sequence, priority, delivery and storage (if required). Personal data is encrypted as needed, credit card numbers are not visible in the logs.
Airlines want to be fenced off from each other, so that in the event of an incident with the storage of some, others do not suffer. On the other hand, they need to have access to the archive of partners and send messages to someone.
Development
Big business, of course, is not very agile. If something works, it is better not to touch. Therefore, the protocols and concepts that seemed adequate at the dawn of the industry, with varying success survived to the present. But quite a lot of people are working on this, trying to provide the modern level of services and the necessary security.
Initially, the core of the system was a ready-made software and hardware solution from IBM. However, written in assembler in bearded time still works correctly, although it requires significant resources for support: the solution is expensive, specialists are rare. Now the development center is engaged in new products, and modern tools are used.
The main programming language for heavily loaded services is C ++. For graphical interfaces, there are Java, web-services with various server solutions. Python is widely used to create regression testing scripts. On servers Linux works.
Before the code gets into production, the test runs on several levels of test systems, which are copies of a working system of varying degrees of reliability. Saved real traffic is sent to these copies, so the systems work as if in the past, with a known shift in time. One of the levels is a training system designed to train customer personnel.
All systems have different degrees of criticality. Support is provided by people who produce system updates at various levels, as well as developers. In teams there is a schedule of weekly duty, in which a mobile phone is issued. Voluntary movement restrictions occur on these duties: the response time to the problem is included in the contract, and if something happens, they can call in the middle of the night at the weekend, and there is some short time to connect to the chat with a discussion of the current problem. An example of such a problem: AirFrance can not sell tickets, or in general everything is broken .
During the download of a new (critical) application, the developers room sometimes resembles a flight control center (in a sense it is). We monitor the traffic of messages in real time, and if that is going to roll back the update or substitute a crutch. Sometimes there are incidents with the database, if the scheme is updated. The department that manages the installation is not always aware of what they are installing, so it can be different. There are still configuration updates, such as the emergence of a new client, with the subsequent configuration of routing and everything.
Tractor
The development center in which your recalcitrant servant works is located on the Cote d'Azur, in Sophia Antipolis Park, a local silicon valley. IT companies were offered special conditions in this region (preferential electricity, for example), which was used by many well-known companies: Intel, ARM, Inria, AirFrance, Amadeus, and others. By the way, there are open vacancies.
Amadeus has a huge number of visitors, so the official language inside is English. Although in the dining room and for coffee, the French prefer to speak French. But one person who does not speak French is enough, and at a meeting of dozens of people, everyone switches to English without problems.
From the window you can see the southern Alps, villages on the hillsides and the Ligurian Sea. Hares and hogs run through the forests. I saw piglets grazing on the lawn from the bus window. Winter is coming, the mountains will put on snow caps and the ski season will come. Once a year there is a snowball on the roads around the city, which causes a cataclysm, because nobody is ready for ice. Even the trains.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/194394/
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