Best GDS Practices

I'd love to share some GDS practices to reduce ADM's and increase Agency revenues.

ADM's are Agency Debit Memos issued by the airline for wrong practices on the Global Distribution System(GDS)... Most commonly used GDS are Sabre, Amadeus, Galileo and Worldspan.

Dont's 

• Duplicate Bookings: Avoid creating multiple PNR's of passenger(s) for the same itinerary across various GDS.

• Redundant Segments: These are segments with HX, UC, NO, LL, WL, HL status. These segments should be cancelled prior the scheduled flight departure. Otherwise it will result to ADMs. Goodnews  is that Sabre red workspace has developed HX Manager and ADM detector which tells you of any violation like churning on a PNR. This tool actually removes HX segments and notifies you via email. Galileo has a HX segment notifier as well. You can set it up on the bottom right of your Galileo Travel port where you have the icon, 'O'

• Churning: Avoid repeated cancellations of itinerary on a single PNR. If airline cancels your booking, please create another PNR.

•  Fictitious Bookings: Imagine that you man an airline flight schedule inventory and you thought your flight is fully booked only to discover it was fake bookings not real passengers? You'll be mad right? Please avoid test bookings with fake names like Test/Book, Fanta/Coke etc. If not, you will pay for GDS wastage!

•  Invalid ticket numbers: Please don't advise a wrong ticket number to a passenger on a PNR. This case is Paramount when you create another booking in order to reissue a ticket number.

• Minimum Connection Time: Pay attention to minimum connecting Times(MCT). This is important so that your passengers don't miss their flights!

• Married Segment Violation: This happens when you display for example; LOS-MUC on Qatar Airways but you couldn't find any saleable seats. Then you display LOS-DOH and sell and then display DOH-MUC and sell. Of course it will sell but you will pay heavily for violating married segment. This is not the case when you want a stopover! You can display LOS-DOH on 1st July and display DOH-MUC on 4th July, no issues! But don't display LOS-DOH on ist July and sell and then display DOH-MUC on 2nd July!...This is not allowed as it's a violation to married segment rule.

•  Circumventing Itinerary: please don't book inbound (return) journey before outbound (departure) journey in a quest to get a cheaper fare! Thereafter you refund one leg of the flight and use the other...This is very wrong! Airlines are now vigilant to penalize you!!!

Kindly contact me for all your cheap flights anywhere in the world!!!!

Nwaneri Uchenna
Travel Consultant
+2348106374239