Commercial Agreements Management
Franchise
Franchise agreement presents a type of a partnership agreement between carriers. During the implementation of the agreement, one of the carriers (a franchisee) provides an aircraft and, in some cases, crews (cockpit and cabin) for the second carrier (a franchisor) to perform a flight. A franchisor carries out commercial registration and realization of a flight under its code and number.
All participants of air traffic management should be informed about the actual aircraft owner. Information about the agreement is published in external systems.
In addition, the Codeshare agreement within the framework of a commercial component may be concluded on a flight performed according to the Franchise agreement.
The Franchise agreement is applied to a flight schedule. The Franchise agreement does not affect the process of the seat inventory management. The function of managing franchise agreements for airlines which act as franchisors is implemented in the System. An IATA or ICAO code of a franchisee as well as its name is specified if necessary.
Codeshare agreement presents a type of a partnership agreement on performing regular flights. Under the terms of the agreement, commercial capacity of an aircraft performing a flight is realized by two or more partners of the agreement.
Within the framework of the Codeshare agreement, one of the partners is an operating carrier that is, actually performing a flight on its own aircraft or an aircraft which was leased under the Franchise agreement. The other partners are marketing carriers that is, physically not performing a flight but carrying out its realization under their codes, numbers and rates.
Several technical methods are used for realization of flights through automated booking systems under codeshare agreements:
- Blockspace
- Free sale
- Cap Free sale.
These methods differ in the following parameters:
- Owner of a inventory (a marketing or operating carrier)
- Source of sending information about a inventory into DCS system.
Codeshare is applied to a flight schedule on a route leg.
Free sale on flights according to Code share agreements presents a method of the implementation of the commercial capacity sale on a flight. The method provides the distribution of seats to a flight of the marketing carrier from the inventory system of the operating carrier. The seat inventory operative management is implemented by the operating carrier. A number of seats distributed by the request of the marketing carrier is limited by the cabin sale capacity which is assigned by the operating carrier. A data-exchange channel (schedule notifications, seat availability, booking) is set between the systems of the operating carrier and marketing carrier. The proper communication is provided by the system settings which are specified in a Codeshare agreement.
The schedule management in the manual mode and the possibility to modify a sale status in a booking class is available for the marketing carrier (“Open”, “Closed”, “On request”). A status set manually is a priority status.
Cap Free sale on flights according to Code share agreements presents a method of the implementation of the commercial capacity sale on a flight. The method combines features of the Blockspace and Freesale methods. The interaction of the systems are organized similarly to the Freesale method.
Features of this method are:
- Limitation of a number of seats for distributing on requests from the inventory system of the marketing carrier is set in the inventory system of the operating carrier
- A possibility for the marketing carrier to manage the seat inventory in its own inventory system.
Selling seats on flights of the marketing carrier is carried out in the “not more” amount of the agreed limit. On reaching the limit threshold or after independent selling the inventory, the operating carrier of the flight blocks the selling to the marketing partner by sending corresponding notifications on seat availability and refusing TTY notifications on booking.
During the interaction by the CapFreesale method, each of the carriers carries out the seat inventory operative management in its own inventory system.