Objective: To introduce selling from availability (selling round-trip, connections, and point-to-point).

Selling From Availability: In order to sell a seat on any given flight, one must first pull up availability. Using the basic availability format learned in lesson 1 (1 date city pair time), you will be able to choose which flight you want to sell from the availability screen. Remember, a maximum of 6 lines is displayed on one screen, so if you don’t see a flight you want on the first screen that comes up, simply enter 1* to see more flights.

Booking Classes: Remember that each class of service has a code letter that corresponds to it (First: F Business: J, C, or A Coach: Y). All other letters correspond to non-refundable coach seats (excursion fares with restrictions) **See lesson 1, page 8, column C. When selling a seat, always begin by selling fully refundable coach (Y class), unless the client requests first class or business class. Once you have sold your seat(s) in Y class, you can then request a less expensive booking class (this will be discussed in lesson 5).

Format: The basic format to sell a seat is:

01Y1

pronounced “sell one Y one”

 

The first symbol “0” is the “sell key” found at the right end of the number keys.
The second symbol “1” indicates how many seats you wish to sell.
The third symbol “Y” is the booking class you are requesting.
The fourth symbol “1” is the line number of the availability display that corresponds to the flight you are requesting.

Any combination of numbers/letters may be used in this basic format, but it must always begin with “0” (do not confuse this with the letter “O” on your keyboard).
Examples:

02Y5 sell 2 seats, fully-refundable coach, from line 5
04F2 sell 4 first-class seats from line 2

Once you have entered your sell format, SABRE will respond by showing you what you have sold. For example, you want to sell two coach seats on Northwest Airlines midday flight from Baltimore to Detroit. Assume that the flight you want is showing on line 3 of the availability display. To sell these two seats, you enter 02Y3 (sell, two, coach, line 3).

 

Once you have entered 02Y3, SABRE responds with:

1 DL1563 22JUL T BWIDTW SS2 1:00P 2:30P

 

1	This is the “segment number”. Each flight in an itinerary is called a segment. Here, you have sold the first segment of the flight itinerary.
DL1563Y	This is Delta Flight number / coach class
22JUL	Date of travel
T	Day of the week (refer to lesson 1 for codes)
BWIDTW	Departing from Baltimore, arriving in Detroit
SS2	SS is one of many status codes. When SABRE responds with “SS” it means that the seat requested is available to be sold. If the booking class you requested is not available, the status code would be UC2 (unable to confirm). 2 indicates the number of seats you have requested.
1:00P	departure time from BWI (note: P is used for PM, A is used for AM)
2:00P	arrival time at DTW

 

Note: Departure and arrival times are always given in the airport’s local time.

Selling a round-trip flight: At this point you have booked a one-way itinerary from BWI to DTW. If you want to sell 2 seats on a return flight, you must again call up availability. There is a shortcut to do this:

1R29JUL

 

1	Availabilty key
R	Indicates a request for a return with the same city pair (here, DTW to BWI)
Date	If you leave out the date (e.g. 1R) then you will see return availabilty on the same day.

Once the return availability comes up, you may now select a flight and sell 2 seats just as you did for segment one. In this case, the flight back to Baltimore will be segment 2.

 

Display itinerary: At any time, you may request a display of your itinerary (what you have sold so far). The format to do this is:

*I

pronounced “display itinerary”

 

Once you have sold the same number of seats on an “outbound” flight and a return flight, you now have as complete itinerary. When you enter *I, SABRE responds with:

1	DL1536	Y	22JUL	T	BWIDTW	SS2	1:00P	2:30P
2	DL2418	Y	29JUL	T	DTWBWI	SS2	3:20P	4:58P

 

Look at the departure and arrival times for each segment. Why does the outbound flight appear to be 1.5 hours in duration while the return flight appears to be 3.5 hours in duration? Remember that arrival and departure times are given in local time. **Refer again to LESSON 1, PAGE 8, LINE 1.

You now know the formats necessary to sell a round-trip flight. In the above example, the flights we chose were non-stop. Often, you may need to select a connection for your client. **Once again, refer to lesson 1, page 8. This availability display shows flights from BWI (Baltimore) to STL(St.Louis). Examine the column that shows arrival and departure cities and notice that lines 2 and 4 arrive in Pittsburgh and Cincinnatti, respectively. Lines 3 and 5 have a blank space and then STL. These are connections. A connection is easily spotted on an availabilty display due to these blank spaces in the departure city column.

Selling a connection: Use the same basic format when selling connecting flights. You may sell each flight individually, (e.g. 01Y4 and then 01Y5) or you may combine the two formats (e.g. 01Y4Y5......sell one seat, Y class, line 4 and Y class, line 5). An even better timesaver is the following format:

01Y4*

By simply using the display key, SABRE automatically sells the connection. Using lesson 1, page 8 again, if you wanted to sell two seats on the US connection on lines two and three, you would simply enter: 02Y2* and SABRE would respond with two itinerary lines.

Selling point-to-point flights: Use the same basic sell format. In this case, however, you may not use the 1R format to request flights back to the originating city. 1R may only be used when selling the return segment of a round-trip itinerary. An example of a point-to-point itinerary would be: 16 Feb - Los Angeles to Denver , 18 Feb - Denver to Chicago, 21 Feb - Chicago to Los Angeles.

Homework: Complete the homework for Lesson 3 (selling from CPA).