Vital Role in World Airline Industry
Telecommunications play a vital part in the world airline industry where there is a need for speedy contact over long distances, and where the sheer size of the number of people and freight being carried today would overwhelm systems lacking the most modem technology.
Most of the world’s airlines have highly advanced systems, although some of them have tended to be outpaced by the explosive growth enjoyed by the industry over the past decade, particularly in areas such as the Middle East, parts of Africa, and the Far East. Estimates made at the beginning of the 1970s of the number of messages which would be passed by 1980 proved in most cases to be far too low, with the result that there was a scramble during the late 1970s for new equipment.
But while the equipment is available, the highly skilled manpower needed to operate it and to service it remains scarce for the airlines which have to compete with the many other users of advanced telecommunications. Most of the bigger airlines now have their own training schools, while the smaller ones send their trainees to schools such as that operated by International Aeradio at Bath. There is still a residual glamour about working for an airline for some recruits, and the prospect of cheap staff travel also attracts people.
Airline communications break down into four main sections: radio, teletype, telephone and data processing. Radio is used for passing messages between ground and the airliners, although in remote parts of the world it may also be used for messages between various bases. Each operator will have a selective call band over which it can pass company messages to its crews in flight wherever they are.
Routine low-speed internal company messages generally come over the company teletype system, but in most airlines they have reached such large numbers that they are distributed by computer.
SITA, the international airlines communications consortium, and a similar organization in the United States, play a major part in this vast message-passing operation. Saudia, the national airline of Saudi Arabia, a medium-sized operator, passes, for instance, 30,000 routine low-speed messages every 24 hours, rising to 40,000 in 24 hours at the peak travel season.
It is in the area of data communications that telecommunications have had, and will continue to have, the greatest impact on the airline industry, however. To take the case of Saudia again, the airline is to install its own in-house computer in 1982, but in the meantime "piggybacks” on the British Airways computer at West London air terminal 3,000 miles away for its reservations, and on the Alitalia computer in Rome for its engineering inventory.
The link with the BA computer BABS in London is achieved by way of land lines in both Saudi Arabia and Britain and in between by satellite, one over the Indian Ocean, the other over the Atlantic. Reservations clerks in Jiddah can interrogate BABS by way of their keyboards and have the answer back on their video screens in the amazingly short time of two seconds.
When Saudia installs its own computer, it will cope not only with reservations and the engineering inventory at present carried in Rome, but such extra tasks as payroll, finance, flight-crew scheduling, and flight operations rosters.
Modem telecommunications help Saudia to answer up to 7000 calls a day at its Jiddah office alone, 90 per cent of them being replied to within 20 seconds against an airline industry average of 80 per cent.
Computer and telecommunications sharing is common in the airline industry. British Airways’ BABS, in fact, holds the schedules for 70 airlines, in addition to its own, and also provides the airline with facilities for payroll calculations, pensions, accounting, statistics, cost control, component control, flight planning and in-flight data analysis.
The system uses a vast network of communications links around the world consisting of more than 50 computers linked to 3,500 visual display units and 1,000 teleprinters in 650 cities. The network extends from Oslo and Helsinki in the north to Cape Town and Christchurch in the south, and east to west from Tokyo and Auckland to Los Angeles. BA has worked out that BABS represented 800 man-years to establish.
The system is equipped with four million characters of high-speed memory and more than 4,200 million characters of backing storage. BABS holds details of every flight for a year ahead and full booking details for some 15 million passengers a year.
The airline's offices, and those of many others, have access to the BABS system through a worldwide communications network of satellite, cable and microwave links operating at speeds of up to 9,600 bits per second.
Offices in such faraway places as Australia and South Africa receive replies to booking requests in two or three seconds. The computers in London handle such inquiries at the rate of 60 per second at peak times, and in total the system handles more than 1,250,000 messages every day. BA offices around the world can also make hotel reservations for passengers through BABS and can ask it for package-tour bookings and fares quotations. Later this year, each office with a computer terminal will be able to use the computer in London for the construction of fares, in the past a laborious and time-consuming task with enormous possibilities for error and therefore, loss of revenue for the airlines.
Modern telecommunications are expensive to develop and install, but once in and operating they have great potential for saving money as well as time. British Airways has estimated that its BABS system has reduced the costs per passenger for reservations from 12p in 1973 to 9.4p today. When the effect of inflation is considered, the latter figure drops still further to 5.9p.
What is the other attraction mentioned for working for an airline apart from Cheap staff travel?
What are the four main sections of airline communications?
Radio is used for passing messages between grounds and ?
Teletype is used for passing low speed internal messages?
How many routine low-speed messages does Saudia pass every 24 hours?
- Off-peak travel season:
- Peak travel season:
Before 1982, when Saudia was to install its own in-house computer, who helped it to deal with its reservation and who helped it for its engineering inventory?
Reservations: BA computer, where?
Engineering inventory: Alitalia computer, where?
What is BABS?
It can be inferred from the passage that Saudia is now using its own computer system for, apart from reservations and engineering inventory, some other purposes.
They are , , and .
How many calls per day can the Jiddah office of Saudia answer?
How fast can most of these calls be replied to?
| **** | Number of calls answered per day | Percentage of calls replied to within 20 seconds |
| JIddah, Saudi | ||
| Airline industry average | ******** |