Airline participation
Airlines can offer their flights and services through Smartpoint Cloud at different participation levels.
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Full
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Booking
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Basic
The participation level determines the degree of access you have to an airline’s flight inventory in Smartpoint Cloud.
Full participation
Airlines that have full participation in Smartpoint Cloud offer the best level of access. Full participation carriers can make real-time changes. They can offer other services, such as special service requests and advance seat assignments.
Smartpoint Cloud’s availability responses come from the direct carrier link and automatically populate the availability screen with last seat availability for over 300 participating airlines.
In the availability display, full participation airlines are identified by a “C” in the link indicator column.
Indicator: C
Some full participation airlines display real-time, actual inventory. These full participation carriers add an asterisk (*) after the link indicator.
Booking participation
Airlines that have booking participation in Smartpoint Cloud offer booking capabilities without providing access to current availability.
When you request availability, Smartpoint Cloud sends a message to the airline’s system requesting seats on a flight. The airline’s system then returns a message to Smartpoint Cloud, either accepting or rejecting the request.
Booking participation level carriers can also handle other airline services, such as wheelchair requests.
In the availability display, booking participation level carriers are identified by a “B” in the link indicator column.
Indicator: B
Basic booking
Basic booking level supports those carriers who operate in a ticketless environment. These carriers typically do not participate in Airline Reporting Corporation (ARC) or Bank Settlement Plan (BSP) nor do they issue any travel documents. These carriers are sometimes referred to as “ticketless carriers” and issue no electronic tickets.
Basic booking carriers do not display a link indicator on the availability display.
Airline link indicators
To see the number of seats available, you can convert availability from alpha to numeric. Links are indicated by “B” or “C” at the end of the line in the flight availability display.
Refer to the following flight availability.
To convert the alpha availability when the link indicator is B, make the carrier-specific entry A* followed by the carrier code (for example, A*G3) or the last seat availability entry AL followed by the line number (for example, AL1).
In this example, convert the alpha availability for Scoot Tigerair (TR) to a numeric display by entering either A*TR or AL1.
Change of gauge
Single flight numbers that have a “change of gauge” (switch to different aircraft) partway through their journey indicate in the air segment display where this change of plane occurs.
Sell the flight by clicking on a green booking class link (in this example, “Y” is chosen) . Redisplay the booking by doing *R and you will see the “PLANE CHANGE” advisory:
Guarantee
Smartpoint returns the segment guarantee if the sell entry has returned seats. Airlines that display with a “B” or “C” will return the sell with an “O” indicating a guaranteed sell.
