View source for Sabre (travel reservation system)

{{Short description|Travel reservation system}}
'''Sabre Global Distribution System''' is a [[computer reservation system|travel reservation system]] owned by [[Sabre Corporation]],<ref name=SabrCorp.NYT19>{{cite news|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/business/airlines-computer-glitch-sabre.html|title=How One Computer System Tangled Up Several Airlines|author=Zach Wichter|date=April 29, 2019|access-date=June 7, 2019|archive-date=February 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225105904/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/business/airlines-computer-glitch-sabre.html|url-status=live}}</ref> which allows [[travel agent]]s and companies to search, price, book, and ticket travel services provided by airlines, hotels, car rental companies, rail providers and tour operators. Originally developed by [[American Airlines]] under CEO [[C. R. Smith]]<ref name="Boyd 1990">{{cite web | last=Boyd | first=Andy | title=No. 3117: C.R. Smith and SABRE | website=University of Houston | date=1990-04-05 | url=https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi3117.htm | access-date=2023-01-22 | archive-date=2023-01-22 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122212316/https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi3117.htm | url-status=live }}</ref> with the assistance of [[IBM]] in 1960, the booking service became available for use by external travel agents in 1976 and became independent of the airline in March 2000.

==Overview==
The system's parent company is organized into three business units:
*Sabre Travel Network: global distribution system
*Sabre Airline Solutions: airline technology
*Sabre Hospitality Solutions: hotel technology solutions

Sabre is headquartered in [[Southlake, Texas]],<ref name=SabrCorp.NYT19/> and has many employees in various locations around the world.

==History==
The name of the [[computer reservation system]] is an abbreviation for "Semi-Automated Business Research Environment", and was originally styled in all-capital letters as SABRE.<ref name=SabrCorp.NYT19/> It was developed to automate the way [[American Airlines]] booked reservations.

===Manual airline reservations: Sell and report===

In the 1950s, American Airlines was facing a serious challenge in its ability to quickly handle airline reservations in an era that witnessed high growth in passenger volumes in the airline industry. Before the introduction of SABRE, the airline's system for booking flights was almost entirely manual, like all other airlines at the time.

During the 1930s, most airlines in that period used a ''request and reply'' system in which seat inventory was controlled from the departure city. A sales agent would call in a proposed reservation to a departure management agent or booking agent stationed in the departure city.<ref name="Vinod_Page_14">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=14 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA14}}</ref> In this manual system, a team of eight operators would sort through a rotating file with cards for all upcoming scheduled flights from the departure city. When a seat was booked, the operator would locate the corresponding flight card, mark the booked seat, and manually write out the flight ticket. The entire end-to-end task of looking for a flight, marking a seat as reserved, and writing up the flight ticket took approximately 90 minutes on average. The system also had limited room to scale. It was limited to eight operators because that was the maximum that could fit around the rotating file.<ref name="Vinod_Page_15">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA15}}</ref>  

In 1939, American Airlines switched its reservation system from ''request and reply'' to ''sell and report''. Agents in the airline's Boston office discovered that it was much faster and more efficient to simply allow all sales agents to get away with freely selling seats and then later reporting to the departure city what they had done. At a certain threshold, when the flight was nearly full, a "stop sale" message was sent to all locations and then sales agents would return to the ''request and reply'' system to fill the remaining seats on the flight. But this was still a manual system. It also meant, of course, that sometimes a booking agent would have to inform a sales agent that the flight was already full (if the remaining seats had sold out too quickly before all sales agents received the "stop sale" message) and then the sales agent would have to try to rebook the passenger on another flight.<ref name="Vinod_Page_15" /> 

By 1952, American had already started to introduce the new [[Reservisor#Magnetronic Reservisor|Magnetronic Reservisor]], an electromechanical computer, to automate its ''sell and report'' reservation process.<ref name="Vinod_Page_17">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=17 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA17}}</ref> This computer consisted of a single [[magnetic drum]], in which each memory location held the number of seats left on a particular flight. Using this system, a large number of operators could access information simultaneously, so a booking agent could tell a sales agent immediately via phone if a seat was available. But the downside was that a human agent was still needed at each end of the phone line, and actually recording and issuing the ticket still required considerable manual effort by the booking agent. Something much more highly automated was needed if American Airlines was going to enter the [[jet age]], booking many times more seats on larger [[jet airliner]]s.<ref name=McK100>{{cite book
   |author=James McKenney
   |display-authors=etal
   |title=Waves of Change: Business Evolution Through Information Technology
   |publisher=Harvard Business Press  |year=1995
   |isbn=0-87584-564-9}}</ref>{{rp|p.100}}

===1953 IBM-American meeting===

During the testing phase of the Reservisor, a high-ranking [[IBM]] salesman, Blair Smith, was flying on an American Airlines flight from [[Los Angeles]] back to IBM in [[New York City]] in 1953.<ref>Different sources disagree on many of the dates. Some place the project starting in 1953, some 1957, some place the original system in Manhattan, others Briarcliff. For instance [http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9906/29/1960.idg/ this CNN story] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200926002159/http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9906/29/1960.idg/ |date=2020-09-26 }} places the start date in 1960 and the cost at $150 million (about ${{inflation|US|150|1960}} million today). The Serling book uses November 5, 1959, as the date of the announcement of the joint development and 1962 as the date of the first SABRE reservation taken at the Hartford Reservations office.</ref>  He found himself sitting next to American Airlines president [[C. R. Smith]].<ref name="Vinod_Page_20">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA20}}</ref><ref>[http://purl.umn.edu/107637 Oral history interview with R. Blair Smith] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120714081128/http://purl.umn.edu/107637 |date=2012-07-14 }}. [[Charles Babbage Institute]], University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.  Smith discusses how a chance meeting with C. R. Smith, president of American Airlines, eventually led to the development of the SABRE system.</ref>  Noting that they shared [[Smith (surname)|a common family name]], they began talking.<ref>The official corporate history of American Airlines, ''Eagle'', by Robert Serling, published in 1985 by St. Martin's/Marek, recounts the story of the meeting on page 347, and indicates it was between C. R. Smith and IBM president [[Thomas J. Watson]].</ref> According to Blair Smith, after they discussed the idea of a computer that could keep track of not just seat availability but an [[Passenger name record|passenger's entire reservation]], C.R. Smith told him that when he was done with his training at IBM, he should visit American's reservation center at [[LaGuardia Airport]], then write a letter to American recommending what to do. During his training session in New York, Blair Smith updated [[Thomas J. Watson Jr.]] on his encounter with C.R. Smith. In response, Watson stressed the importance of touring the reservation center as requested, preparing a recommendation letter, and sharing a copy with Watson himself.<ref name="Vinod_Page_21">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=21 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA21}}</ref> 

IBM was working with the [[United States Air Force]] on their [[Semi-Automatic Ground Environment]] (SAGE) project. SAGE used a series of large computers to coordinate the message flow from [[radar]] sites to [[interceptor aircraft|interceptor]]s, dramatically reducing the time needed to direct an attack on an incoming bomber. The system used [[teleprinter]] machines located around the world to feed information into the system, which then sent orders back to teleprinters located at the fighter bases. It was one of the first [[online]] systems.<ref name=McK100/>

Smith and Watson observed that the SAGE system's basic architecture was suitable for use in American Airlines' booking services. Teleprinters would be placed at American Airlines' ticketing offices to send in requests and receive responses directly, without the need for anyone on the other end of the phone. The number of available seats on the aircraft could be tracked automatically, and if a seat was available the ticket agent could be notified. Booking simply took one more command, updating the availability and, if desired, could be followed by printing a ticket.{{Citation needed|date=February 2011}}

Thirty days after the two Smiths' fateful encounter, IBM sent a research proposal to American Airlines, suggesting that they join forces to study the problem. A team was set up consisting of IBM engineers led by John Siegfried and a large number of American Airlines' staff led by Malcolm Perry, taken from booking, reservations, and ticket sales.{{citation needed|date=February 2020}}

===Development of SABRE===

A formal development arrangement was signed in 1957. The first experimental system went online in 1960.{{citation needed|date=February 2020}}

While IBM and American worked on their ambitious joint research project, [[Sperry Corporation|Sperry Rand]] beat IBM to market with a computer reservations system in 1958: the UNIVAC Air Lines Reservations System.<ref name="Vinod_Page_26">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=26 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA26}}</ref> The UNIVAC system, built for [[Eastern Air Lines]], could only track seat inventory in real time but not the entire passenger reservation. The agent still had to prepare a separate passenger ticket, both manually written and as a manually keypunched card, for later reconciliation with a computer punched card generated when that seat was reserved and withdrawn from inventory.<ref name="McAvoy">{{cite conference |title=The Univac Air Lines Reservations System: A Special-Purpose Application of a General-Purpose Computer |book-title=Papers and discussions presented at the December 3–5, 1958, eastern joint computer conference: Modern computers: objectives, designs, applications |pages=152–156 |doi=10.1145/1458043.1458075 |date=December 3, 1958 |doi-access=free }}</ref> 

IBM entered into talks with other airlines while working with American, and signed contracts by 1960 to develop similar projects for [[Pan Am]] and [[Delta Air Lines]]. IBM created the internal code name SABER for its joint project to develop three slightly different [[airline reservations system]]s. American then sought a different name for its system, which became the ''Semi-Automated Business Research Environment'', or SABRE. IBM made a serious error by implementing the three systems on three incompatible mainframe computers: DELTAMATIC ran on the [[IBM 7070]], PANAMAC ran on the [[IBM 7080]], and SABRE ran on the [[IBM 7090]]. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to implement all three on the IBM 7090.<ref name="Vinod_Page_22">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=22 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA22}}</ref> 

In the early 1960s, [[software development]] was still in its infancy.  Transforming a small experiment into an reliable, high-performance system was much harder than IBM or American had anticipated in 1953. The IBM programmers working on SABRE at [[Briarcliff Manor, New York]] could see the prisoners in the exercise yard at the nearby [[Sing Sing]] state prison, and by 1962 they were wryly joking that the difference between us and them is that the prisoners know when they will be getting out. After significant cost overruns and delays, SABRE was finally launched in 1964, as the world's first fully operational computer reservations system.<ref name="Vinod_Page_22" /> It was also the world's first [[online transaction processing]] system, and at the time, "the world's largest private real time commercial [[Electronic data processing|data processing system]]".<ref name="Vinod_Page_23">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=23 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA23}}</ref> A year later, in 1965, IBM also finished and launched DELTAMATIC and PANAMAC.<ref name="Vinod_Page_22" />  

The original SABRE system ran on two IBM 7090 computers in a "state-of-the-art data center" in Briarcliff Manor. One was for [[Real-time computing|real-time processing]] and the other was there as a backup and to handle [[Batch processing|batch jobs]]. American Airlines agents interacted with SABRE through [[computer terminal]]s manufactured by [[Raytheon]]. SABRE could handle 7,500 reservations per hour. After it became fully operational, the average time to make an reservation with American Airlines dropped from 90 minutes to a few seconds.<ref name="Vinod_Page_23" />

===Migration to PARS===
IBM generalized its knowledge of how to automate airline reservations into [[Programmed Airline Reservation System|PARS]] (Programmed Airline Reservation System). PARS ran on [[IBM System/360 Model 40|models 40]] [[IBM System/360 Model 75|through 75]] of the newer IBM [[System/360]] mainframe family, though [[IBM System/360 Model 65|Model 65]] was the most popular one for airlines.<ref name="Vinod_Page_23" /> The operating system component of PARS evolved into [[IBM Airline Control Program|ACP]] (''Airlines Control Program''), and later in 1979 became [[Transaction Processing Facility|TPF]] (''Transaction Processing Facility'').<ref name="Vinod_Page_24">{{cite book |last1=Vinod |first1=Ben |title=Mastering the Travel Intermediaries: Origins and Future of Global Distribution Systems, Travel Management Companies, and Online Travel Agencies |date=2024 |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |location=Cham |isbn=9783031515248 |page=24 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2kQEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA24}}</ref>  

By 1971, PARS was the industry standard. In 1971, [[United Airlines]] gave up on its earlier experiments with UNIVAC and deployed [[Galileo GDS|Apollo]], a PARS-based system. From 1971 to 1973, American migrated SABRE to a PARS-based system running on System/360 mainframes.<ref name="Vinod_Page_23" /> This decision meant that by 1971, nine of the top ten [[Major airlines of the United States|U.S. major airlines]] were using PARS.<ref name="Vinod_Page_24" />   

As part of the migration, the SABRE data center was moved from New York to a new underground location in [[Tulsa, Oklahoma]]. [[Max Hopper]] joined American Airlines in 1972 as director of SABRE, and pioneered its broader deployment beyond American Airlines itself.<ref>John Desmond. "[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0SMG/is_n2_v9/ai_7349011/ Max Hopper knows Sabre's 'software guts': American pushing limits of software at 2,000+ TPS – transactions per second] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120711010225/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0SMG/is_n2_v9/ai_7349011/ |date=2012-07-11 }}". ''Software Magazine''. February 1989.</ref> SABRE was expanded to allow direct access by [[travel agent]]s in 1976.

===Independence from American Airlines===

By the mid-1980s SABRE was the dominant system in the United States, processing 45% of all airline reservations. 50,000 travel agents in the nation used SABRE.{{r|martin19860623}} SABRE offered airline reservations through the [[CompuServe|CompuServe Information Service]], and General Electric's [[GEnie]] under the Eaasy SABRE brand.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=950DE0D6163AF930A15751C1A96F948260|title=More Trips Start at a Home Computer|author=Philip S. Gutis|work=New York Times|date=1989-12-23|access-date=2017-02-18|archive-date=2007-12-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071210105738/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2D7163EF931A25752C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all|title=Booking With a Computer|author=Peter H. Lewis|work=New York Times|date=1992-01-12|access-date=2017-02-18|archive-date=2016-03-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160307212652/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2D7163EF931A25752C0A964958260|url-status=live}}</ref> This service was extended to [[America Online]] (AOL) in the 1990s.

American and Sabre separated on March 15, 2000.<ref name=SabrCorp.NYT19/> Sabre had been a publicly traded corporation, [[Sabre Holdings]], stock symbol TSG on the [[New York Stock Exchange]] until taken private in March 2007. The corporation introduced the new logo and changed from the all-caps acronym "SABRE" to the mixed-case "Sabre Holdings". The [[Travelocity]] website, introduced in 1996, was owned by Sabre Holdings.<ref name=PaySpin.NYT2006>{{cite news
   |newspaper=[[The New York Times]]
   |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/business/12deal.html
   |title=2 Firms Pay $4.3 Billion for Sabre
   |author=Andrew Ross Sorkin
   |date=December 12, 2006
   |access-date=June 11, 2019
   |archive-date=June 10, 2021
   |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210610150510/http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/business/12deal.html
   |url-status=live
   }}</ref> Travelocity was acquired by [[Expedia]] in January 2015.<ref>{{Cite news
      |url=https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/expedia-buys-travelocity-for-280-million-in-cash/?_r=1
      |title=Expedia Buys Travelocity for $280 million in cash
      |author=Michael J. De La Merced
      |work=[[The New York Times]]
      |date=2015-01-23
      |access-date=2017-03-05
      |archive-date=2021-05-11
      |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210511185819/https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/expedia-buys-travelocity-for-280-million-in-cash/?_r=1
      |url-status=live
      }}</ref> Sabre Holdings' three remaining business units, Sabre Travel Network, Sabre Airline Solutions and Sabre Hospitality, today collectively operate as a global travel technology company.

==Controversy==
A 1982 study<ref>"November Line of Sale Analysis", memo to R. E. Murray from S. D. Nason, American Airlines, Dec. 3, 1981.</ref> by American Airlines found that travel agents selected the flight appearing on the first line more than half the time. Ninety-two percent of the time, the selected flight was on the first screen.  This provided a huge incentive for American to manipulate its ranking formula, or even corrupt the search algorithm outright, to favor American flights over its competitors in the results of flight search results, and the airline did not resist the temptation.

At first this was limited to juggling the relative importance of factors such as the length of the flight, how close the actual departure time was to the desired time, and whether the flight had a connection, but with each success American became bolder.  In late 1981, [[New York Air]] added a flight from [[LaGuardia Airport|La Guardia]] to [[Detroit]], challenging American in an important market.  Before long, the new flights suddenly started appearing at the bottom of the screen.<ref>"Motion of the Justice Department for an Extension of Time", in ''Re Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking – Airline Computer Reservations System'', Docket 41686, Civil Aeronautics Board, Oct. 5, 1983</ref>  Its reservations dried up, and it was forced to cut back from eight Detroit flights a day to none.

On one occasion, Sabre deliberately withheld [[Continental Airlines|Continental]]'s discount fares on 49 routes where American competed.<ref>Memo from J. L. Ott to L. A. Iovinelli ''et al.'', "Subject: Continental Fares", American Airlines, Dec. 1, 1981.</ref>  A Sabre staffer had been directed to work on a program that would automatically suppress any discount fares loaded into the system.

Congress investigated these practices, and in 1983 [[Bob Crandall]], president of American, vocally defended the airline's preferential treatment of its own offerings in the system. "The preferential display of our flights, and the corresponding increase in our market share, is the competitive ''raison d'être'' for having created the system in the first place," he told them. The U.S. government disagreed, and in 1984 it outlawed the biasing practices for the search results<ref>{{cite book |last1=Truxal |first1=Steven |title=Competition and Regulation in the Airline Industry: Puppets in Chaos |chapter=Development of practical and strategic alliances |location=United Kingdom |publisher=Routledge |date=January 4, 2013 |page=49 }}</ref> at SABRE, and United and TWA's own systems.{{r|martin19860623}}

Allegations of bias continued. In 1985 the [[United States Department of Justice]] accused American and United's systems of a second screen favoring the airline that owned the system; American and United agreed to stop the practice. In 1986, Delta complained to the [[United States Department of Transportation]] that American provided to SABRE flight schedules with shorter flight times than in reality, to cause the system to display American flights first.<ref name="martin19860623">{{Cite magazine |last=Martin |first=James |date=1986-06-23 |title=Delta Alleges SABRE Biased |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mop2UUCt4kIC&pg=PA4 |access-date=2025-05-23 |magazine=Computerworld |page=4 |volume=XX |issue=25}}</ref> 

By 1987, ''[[Flight International]]'' said, because of Department of Transportation regulations, SABRE and other such systems in the US "are about as close to neutrality as a system could reasonably be expected to get". No longer able to use them against rivals, airlines now sold access to reservation systems for profit.{{r|fi19871010}} The fairness rules were eliminated or allowed to expire in 2010. By then, none of the major distribution systems was majority owned by the airlines.<ref>The original notice of rule making is available from the U.S. Department of Transportation at {{cite web
   |url=http://www.dot.gov/affairs/CRSrule.htm |access-date=May 4, 2007 |url-status=dead
   |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070406033413/http://www.dot.gov/affairs/CRSrule.htm 
   |archive-date=April 6, 2007 |title=Computer Reservations System (CRS) Regulations (Part 255); Statements of General Policy (Part 399)}}, and a PDF document of the final rule is at {{cite web|title=Computer Reservations System (CRS) Regulations |url=http://www.travelweekly.com/specialreports/GDSrule.pdf |access-date=May 4, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060702174342/http://www.travelweekly.com/specialreports/GDSrule.pdf |archive-date=July 2, 2006 |via=Travel Weekly |publisher=[[U.S. Department of Transportation]]}}.</ref>

{{asof|1987}} European airlines' reservations systems were still skewed toward their owners. In 1987 Sabre's success of selling to European travel agents was inhibited by the refusal of big European carriers led by [[British Airways]] to grant the system ticketing authority for their flights even though Sabre had obtained [[IATA]] Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) clearance for the [[United Kingdom|UK]] in 1986. American brought High Court action which alleged that after the arrival of Sabre on its doorstep British Airways immediately offered financial incentives to travel agents who continued to use [[Travicom]] and would tie any override commissions to it.<ref name="fi19871010">{{Cite magazine |date=October 10, 1987 |title=Sabre crusades for neutral CRS in Europe |url=http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1987/1987%20-%201976.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180509080431/https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1987/1987%20-%201976.html |archive-date=2018-05-09 |access-date=2011-11-03 |magazine=Flight International |publisher=Flight Global |pages=6–7}}</ref> Travicom was created by [[Videcom international|Videcom]], British Airways and [[British Caledonian]] and launched in 1976 as the world's first multi-access reservations system based on Videcom technology which eventually became part of [[Galileo (computer system)|Galileo]] UK. It connected 49 subscribing international airlines (including British Airways, British Caledonian, [[TWA]], [[Pan American World Airways]], [[Qantas]], [[Singapore Airlines]], [[Air France]], [[Lufthansa]], [[Scandinavian Airlines System|SAS]], [[Air Canada]], [[KLM]], [[Alitalia]], [[Cathay Pacific]] and [[Japan Airlines|JAL]]) to thousands of travel agents in the UK. It allowed agents and airlines to communicate via a common distribution language and network, handling 97% of UK airline business trade bookings by 1987.

British Airways eventually bought out the stakes in Travicom held by Videcom and British Caledonian, to become the sole owner. Although Sabre's vice-president in London, David Schwarte, made representations to the U.S. Department of Transportation and the British Monopolies Commission, British Airways defended the use of Travicom as a truly non-discriminatory system in flight selection because an agent had access to some 50 carriers worldwide, including Sabre, for flight information.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1988/1988%20-%200486.html |title=Flight Global |publisher=Flight Global |date=February 27, 1988 |access-date=2011-11-03 |archive-date=2016-03-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305140155/https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1988/1988%20-%200486.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Travelocity]]
* [[List of global distribution systems]]
* [[Passenger name record]]
* [[Code sharing]]
* [[Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting]] (ERMA)&nbsp;– another pioneering early system. ERMA, [[Semi Automatic Ground Environment|SAGE]] and SABRE helped legitimize computers in business.
* [[Real-time operating system]]&nbsp;– SABRE was one of the first such systems
* [[Perry O. Crawford Jr.]]
* [[Travel technology]]
* [[Galileo CRS]]
* [[Navitaire]]
* [[Travelport]]
* [[Amadeus CRS|Amadeus]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}
* Robert V. Head, [http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MAHC.2002.1114868 "Getting Sabre off the Ground"], IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 24, no. 4, pp.&nbsp;32–39, Oct.-Dec. 2002, {{doi|10.1109/MAHC.2002.1114868}}

==Further reading==
<div style="font-size:95%;">
* Robert V. Head, ''Real-Time Business Systems'', Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1964. "This book embodies many of the lessons learned about new technology application management while working on the ERMA and Sabre systems".
* D.G. Copeland, R.O. Mason, and J.L. McKenney, "Sabre: The Development of Information-Based Competence and Execution of Information-Based Competition," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 17, no. 3, Fall 1995, pp.&nbsp;30–57.
* R.D. Norby, "The American Airlines Sabre System," in James D. Gallagher, Management Information Systems and the Computer, Am. Management Assoc. Research Study, 1961, pp.&nbsp;150–176.
* IBM General Information Manual, ''9090 Airlines Reservation System'', 1961.
</div>

==External links==
*[http://purl.umn.edu/107637 Oral history interview with R. Blair Smith].  [[Charles Babbage Institute]], University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.  Smith discusses how a chance meeting with C. R. Smith, president of American Airlines, eventually led to the development of the SABRE system.
*[https://www.wired.com/2012/07/sabre/ The Mad Men's Best Friend Was SABRE] a brief history of American Airlines' revolutionary booking system SABRE on Wired.com
*[https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/sabre/ Sabre] at IBM100
*[http://www.sabre-holdings.com/ Sabre Holdings]
*[http://www.virtuallythere.com/ Virtually There] public site for viewing reservations made through Sabre.
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20041204030934/http://www.blackbeard.com/tpf/tpfhist.htm Some History] features a history of ACP/TPF the Operating System used on SABRE

{{IBM}}
{{American Airlines}}
{{Major travel technology companies}}
{{Authority control}}

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[[Category:Travel technology]]
[[Category:Assembly language software]]
[[Category:American Airlines]]
[[Category:Computer reservation systems]]