Programmed Airline Reservations System (PARS) is an

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

proprietary large scale airline reservation application, a

computer reservations system Computer reservation systems, or central reservation systems (CRS), are computerized systems used to store and retrieve information and conduct transactions related to air travel, hotels, car rental, or other activities. Originally designed and ope ...

, executing under the control of IBM Airline Control Program (ACP) (and later its successor, Transaction Processing Facility (TPF)). Its international version was known as ''IPARS''.Hobson S.J. "ALCS — A high-performance high-availability DB/DC monitor", 1989. By the 1960s, with the

American Airlines American Airlines, Inc. is a major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and is the Largest airlines in the world, largest airline in the ...

SABRE A sabre or saber ( ) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the Early Modern warfare, early modern and Napoleonic period, Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such a ...

reservations system up and running, IBM offered its expertise to other airlines, and soon developed Deltamatic for

Delta Air Lines Delta Air Lines, Inc. is a Major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, operating nine hubs, with Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport being its ...

on the IBM 7074, and PANAMAC for

Pan American World Airways Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and more commonly known as Pan Am, was an airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States for ...

using an IBM 7080. By 1967/8 IBM generalized its airline reservations work into the PARS system, which ran on the larger members of the IBM

System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...

family and which could support the largest airlines' needs at that time (e.g. United Airlines ran about 3000 reservations terminals online in the 1972 timeframe). In the early 1970s IBM modified its PARS reservations system so it could accommodate the smaller regional airlines on smaller members of the 370 systems family. The high performance PARS operating system evolved from ACP (''Airlines Control Program'') to TPF (''Transaction Processing Facility''). In the early days of automated reservations systems in the 1960s and 1970s the combination of ACP and PARS provided unprecedented scale and performance from an on-line real-time system, and for a considerable period ranked among the largest networks and systems of the era. In the early 1970s major US banks were developing major on-line teleprocessing applications systems and were in urgent need of ACP's high performance capabilities. ACP was made available by IBM to the banking industry in the mid-1970s. This system was used by the great majority of large airlines in the US and internationally; and its smaller 1970's version was used by many smaller regional airlines. PARS (and IPARS) was extremely successful, and it massively improved and revolutionized the efficiency of airlines passenger operations and their profitability. Along with many other major and regional US airlines, the PARS system was later used by TWA and

Northwest Airlines Northwest Airlines (often abbreviated as NWA) was a major airline in the United States that operated from 1926 until it Delta Air Lines–Northwest Airlines merger, merged with Delta Air Lines in 2010. The merger made Delta the largest airline ...

.Weiner, Eric
"Diagrams of the Pan Am's and NWA's 1988 route system"
The New York Times, Sunday, June 11, 1989 In this context PARS was also used as a marketing name by TWA when selling their system to travel agencies. Swiss International Air Lines and Brussels Airlines discontinued using PARS beginning of 2016. IranAir, the Iranian National Airline, discontinued using IBM-ACP/IPARS at the beginning of 2000 due to Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. CPARS (Compact Programmed Airlines Reservations) was used by smaller airlines (e.g. Icelandair). Among other limitations (compared to PARS) was a shorter booking horizon of 90 days.

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