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Glossary for the airline industry

From A-Z, this glossary covers definitions and explanations for common airline industry terminology.

Amenities

One type of Routehappy Content, Amenities data describes features of the onboard experience, including seat pitch/type, Wi-Fi, power, and entertainment, in standardized data that can be compared with other offers. See also UTA and UPA.

ancillary services

Services and products associated with a fare, product, or offer; includes items such as commission-based products, checked bags, and assigned seating. 

API

Application Programming Interface

applet

A small application that performs one specific task, typically running under the control of a larger application, such as a web browser.

arbitraries

The fares (or rates) that may be combined with an international fare (or rate) published to a gateway to create a through-fare. Arbitraries may not be sold separately for travel and are usually published between points within the same country. Also referred to as add-ons or proportionals.

arbitrary bucket

The text that defines fare class combinability. Arbitrary buckets may be fare class specific, generic (such as A***** and B*****), or default (******). The default bucket is often referred to as the negative or six-star bucket.

arbitrary zone

Applicable to international tariffs only, a zone is a component of an add-on record that defines the geographic area of the published fare with which the add-on will construct.

ARC

Airlines Reporting Corporation.

area

IATA divides the world into three areas, also referred to as Traffic Conferences (TC): Area 1: Western Hemisphere Area 2: Europe, Africa, Middle East Area 3: Asia, Pacific

ASK

Available seat kilometers; an industry measure of capacity, calculated by multiplying the total number of seats by the distance of the flight.

ASM

Available seat miles; an industry measure of capacity, calculated by multiplying the total number of seats by the distance of the flight.

assembled data feed

An ATPCO subscription that provides merged pricing and restrictions data to support airline pricing, revenue management, and intelligence processes. This structured dataset calculates total price values and simplifies data aggregation (and analysis) by combining the applicable fare rules with the price points.

assortment optimization

A dynamic pricing method where the system selects one or more prices from a finite menu of possible price points. Each price point may be associated with various rules or restrictions that determine how or when that price can be selected. The menu of price points may be updated periodically, but there is only a limited and discrete set of possible prices that can be selected at any given time. The selection of a price from the menu could be made infrequently or, at the limit, on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

ATC

Air Traffic Conference.

atomic product

Any item that can be offered to a customer (such as air and/or other types of transportation, transportation portions, any goods, and amenities, etc.). For example, a Product can be the actual transportation service (right to travel), a hard product (such as seats and meals), or a soft product (such as flexibility and priority boarding). Also called product.

ATPCO

Airline Tariff Publishing Company. A corporation owned by various airlines formed to serve as agent for those owners (and for other airlines or vendors) to file and publish tariffs and related products.

ATPCO Proprietary Standards

Proprietary technical standards established by consensus to provide consistent results for pricing and retailing automation across the travel ecosystem. These include the following documents:

  • Data Dictionary, comprising file layouts, field descriptions, validation edits, and abbreviated descriptions of processing (interface standard)
  • Industry reference codes used in processing (appendices)
  • Full descriptions of data processing (matching and application) to produce a consistent pricing or retailing result (processing standard)
  • Data maintenance (load, store, data management)

 

ATPCO taxonomy

ATPCO standard Optional Services taxonomy codes organized into hierarchical levels that can be used to define and classify a product within a set of defined parameters.  The Taxonomy enables product identification, product sorting, and product comparison. Note that the Airline Catalogue and Supplier Catalogue support Group, Subgroup, and Descriptions 1 and 2 levels.

Automated Refunds

ATPCO Automated Rules Category 33 that automates the processing of rules and restrictions governing refunds for tickets.

Automated Reissues

ATPCO Automated Rules Category 31 that automates the processing of rules and restrictions governing exchanges for tickets.