Airline Reservation
Most Passenger Service Agents work at airport terminals. As a rule, assignments are rotated, with agents either serving behind the ticket counter or at the boarding gate. At the ticket counter, agents make and confirm reservations using the same equipment and procedures as those used by Reservations Agents. In addition, they issue tickets, by computer or by hand, collect payments, and make change. They must record all tickets sold and money exchanged and, at the end of the shift, prepare a daily cash report. Passenger Service Agents also route and tag passengers' luggage for shipment on the plane. When working at the boarding gate, agents check and collect tickets, issue boarding passes, and sometimes assign seats. They make sure that flight attendants know about (and have the equipment to handle) special passengers' needs and requests; then they help these passengers on or off the plane. They may announce arrivals and departures, reschedule passengers when flights are canceled over the public address system, or process routine claims. Agents at small airports may be required to load and unload baggage and to conduct air freight business.
Sabre (Semi-Automated Booking and Reservation Environment) was the world's first online airline reservations system. Developed through the joint efforts of (Click link for more info and facts about IBM) IBM and (Click link for more info and facts about American Airlines) American Airlines, it first went online in the fall of 1962, running on an (Click link for more info and facts about IBM 7090) IBM 7090 computer. After going through a series of system upgrades, including a relocation from Westchester County, NY to Tulsa, OK, the system remains operational today (2004) and was the prototype for virtually every mainframe-based online system that followed. Sabre was based on (Click link for more info and facts about real-time computing) real-time computing advances made by the (The airforce of the United States of America; defends the United States through control and exploitation of air and space) US Air Force in the development of their (Any of various plants of the genus Salvia; a cosmopolitan herb) SAGE radar-coordination and target tracking system.
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