Inventory control procedures
3.22
These provisions, which may alternatively be subsumed within the revenue management and settlement clauses, or which may be included in a separate agreement, may specify how the two airlines’ reservations booking classes are to be mapped (either in detail, or in principle, for example, by stating that average yields in each pair of matched booking classes should be similar).
The provisions may also make statements about potential “block space” arrangements between the parties, and, for both freesale and block space arrangements, specify how access to inventory on the operating carrier’s flight will be provided to the marketing carrier. The paragraphs below explain these terms in more detail.
3.27
The effect of this arrangement is to set up a “virtual flight” controlled by the marketing carrier, with a guaranteed availability of seats for the marketing carrier.
When a passenger tries to book with the marketing carrier, the reservations system only needs to check whether seats are available on the “virtual flight”, and hence no real-time communication is required with the operating carrier. For a block space agreement, there is therefore also no need to set up a mapping between the airlines’ booking classes.