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Development of a Mobile Airline Reservation

Application

Conference Paper January 2012

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DEVELOPMENT OF A MOBILE AIRLINE RESERVATION APPLICATION

Alo O.O.*, Adeyanju I.A, Muritala A.A., Olabiyisi S.O. and Omidiora E.O.

Department of Computer Science and Engineering,

Ladoke Akintola University of Technology,
P.M.B. 4000, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

Mobile applications are becoming inevitable in people's day-to-day activities. It has become

part of daily living for several people, something one cannot do without in all facets of

economic growth of any country. This is evident in the convenience and ease of service

delivery customers are provided with. Some examples of successful implementation of

mobile communications in businesses are: in banking (mobile banking), education

(eLearning) , payment of utility bills (e-Billing) etc. To promptly examine the potential

benefits of Mobile Airline Reservation System (MARS), this work looks into existing process

of seat reservation in the Nigerian Aviation Industry and explains potential benefits of the

widespread adoption of MARS. This paper discusses the software architectural model of

MARS and concludes that its effective implementation with real time mobile access across

the country can save time, cost, and other risks.

Keywords: MARS, SABRE, Mobile application, m-tickets and Authentication.

*Corresponding Author (Email: oluwaseunoderinde@yahoo.com)

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1. Introduction

Travel is by its very nature mobile, and going mobile is currently considered by many

travel specialists as a central part of travel agents strategy for growth, even a do-or-die

decision for travel industry (Abacus, 2008). In recent times, a number of handheld mobile

communications devices have taken prominence with a significant impact on global business

operations. This is evident in the convenience and ease of service delivery customers are

provided in examples of successful implementation of mobile communications in businesses.

For instance, mobile banking applications provide useful information to bank customers such

as: access to users account, current bank balance, an un-cleared balances, payment of utility

bills and effecting transfers between accounts (Oloyede and Adeyemo, 2006).

In addition, it is observed in certain industries, handheld mobile communications may bring

similar better closer partnerships between a company and its customers. One of such

industries, particularly in the West African sub region of the world is Nigeria Airline

Industry. In order to develop an edge over competitors, airline operators in general need to

create a sustainable competitive advantage based on increased operational effectiveness and

adequate strategic positioning. If integrated properly into the value chain, a mobile

technology business model can increase an airlines operating efficiency and customer

satisfaction by facilitating business processes, providing customers with value added services

and by creating synergies between an airlines core competencies and mobile technology

(Ekelhart and Manhoot, 2008).

Furthermore, implementing a business model using the mobile communication technology

can increase the level of personalization of a companys business relations, which in turn

creates new possibilities of customer segmentation. Such business model is generally

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deployed in form of mobile web applications which integrate existing internet technology

with the competitive edge of mobile technology making it possible to have access to

information anytime, anywhere. A web application is that which has been specifically

designed to be executed in a web-based environment (www.wirelesscenter.net, 2011).

With MARS, passengers can be tracked on purchasing preferences and with this, special

flight packages for existing passengers can be promoted. Passengers reservations patterns

can also be used to determine the marketable flight and then try to provide more flights and

services to fulfill the high demand. Besides, MARS is also capable of increasing passenger

loyalty and satisfaction by providing good reservation and services. Traditional paper

reservation records have many drawbacks like incomplete, torn, worn, misplaced, or loss of

records. It also requires a lot of storage space in addition to requiring extensive administrative

time from user. Also, most airline reservation system applications within the Nigerian

Aviation Industry are produced by foreign companies and are very expensive to maintain.

With the implementation of MARS, cost and time required is minimal since expertise will be

available locally in case of any software failures. However, there will be increase at the rate

in which people reserve seats because there will be no more queue at the airline checking

desk. All that will be required is to get bar-coded message to the port of entry for

confirmation and get on the plane. Thus, it gives satisfaction and better convenience to

passengers.

The flight ticket reservation method has better organization of information for better retrieval

with MARS. All other relevant data can be managed and well-organized using the system.

Data will be stored in the database accordingly. Thus, users can make a clear view on any

data as they wish without any problem. (Hens, 2006).

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2. Background

The history of airline reservations systems began in the late 1950s when American Airlines

required a system that would allow real-time access to flight details in all of its offices, and

the integration and automation of its booking and ticketing processes. As a result, SABRE

(Semi Automated Business Research Environment) was developed and launched in 1964.

SABRE breakthrough was its ability to keep inventory correct in real time, accessible to

agents around the world. Prior to this, manual systems required centralized reservation

centers, groups of people in a room with the physical cards that represented inventory, in this

case, seats on air planes (Wikipedia,2010).

Mobile applications are applications that are designed to run on mobile phones and other

devices that have mobile capability. They are designed in such a way that any phone that has

the application features can use them without affecting normal workings of the phone itself.

With the level of technology in the world today, software applications to browse the

internet, reserve hotel rooms, hire car, reserve seat on an airplane etc., can be installed on

mobile phone thereby bringing maximum utilization of time and all other human resources to

their acceptable level of life.

3. Methodology

3.1 Architectural Design

The technological approach for implementing the mobile airline reservation is based on an

architecture, which provides the necessary framework for the services, components and

interfaces. At the back-end, the service includes authentication, authorization and other
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services. The hardware and software component that was used provides a logical relationship

between applications, end-user services, and underlining back-end services. The database, the

mobile phone, and the designed application form the technological infrastructure for

accessing, storing and managing information.

Figure 1: Architectural design for MARS

From the diagram in Figure 1, when the user request for flight information for booking, the

information will be called from the web servers, and after the choosing of the necessary flight

the request will be forwarded to the web server and from there sent to the Payment Plan

servers to check for the authenticity of the payment. If the payment is authentic, the request
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is sent back to the web server and server forwarded it to the database of the Airline for

successful reservation. After this, the user booking for flight would be alerted that the

reservation processing is completed successfully through the phone. However, if the payment

is not authentic then there will be no reservation.

3.2 MARS Implementation

The MARS applications was developed using Xcode for software design on iPhones and

Java was used for the development on Blackberry phones. C#.NET is used for the front-end

and SQL server used for the back-end. Security, which is the most paramount factor, is

ensured in such a way that only the authorized user is allowed to have access to usage of this

application on its mobile phone. Figure 2 shows the steps involved in booking a flight with

the developed MARS application as screenshots.

Step 1 shows the logging-in page of the designed software. This is the point of authentication.

The authenticated user is approved in Step 2 while Step 3 shows the booking page for the

designed software where the user selects a particular flight that suites her schedule. Step 4

shows the payment page where the user will have to enter the payment card number and a

confirmation page will be sent if authentic. If not, a message will be sent to indicate a wrong

entry and the booking will not be successfully completed. Step 5 shows how the receipt for

the airplane seat reservation is generated , which will be used at the point-of-entry in the

airport when travelling. Step 6 shows that the seat reservation process has been duly

completed. The user is then allowed to save and print out the confirmation page which will

be used at the point-of-entry of the airplane. Figure 3 also shows the algorithm used for the

application design work-flow.

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Step 1 Step 2

Step 3 Step 4

Step 5 Step 6

Figure 2: Booking procedures in MARS

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1. Start

2. If Old User then go 3 else go to 4

3. If Authentication (email, Password) is successful, go to 6 else go to 2

4. Register (supply and password)

5. Update account Information

6. Confirmation/Welcome

7. Bookings (make bookings)

8. Choose Flight (choose flight based on bookings supplied)

9. Show flight Summary

10. If Make Payment (card-No, Pin-number) is Successful, then go to 11 else go to 9

11. Home Page (displays flight Information, booking Number and Ticket Number

12. Stop

Figure 3: Algorithm for design of MARS application

4. CONCLUSION

The purpose of this work is to build a mobile application, which a customer could use to

interact with the airlines reservation through m-tickets (mobile tickets) booking in the

Nigerian Aviation Industry. Based on the input specification, hardware requirement, software

requirement; Microsoft visual Studio.Net {c#}, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and algorithm

design, the application is very flexible and dynamic in nature. Mobile Airline Reservation

System is the best way of airline reservation because of its ease of use and availability when

needed. With these benefits, the introduction of the Mobile system in Nigerians aviation

system will boost the economy and aids its process of technological advancement. The

intention is to do an extensive evaluation of the application through initial pilot studies with

simulated users. The outcome of the evaluation will then be used to adapt the application for

commercial use by interested airlines within the Nigeria and beyond.

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5. REFERENCES

1. Abacus (2008): Going mobile will soon be a do-or-die decision for travel industry.

Travel Smart- Asia Watch 45, www.abacus.com.sg

2. Ekelhart H.A., Manhoot G.B. (2008): XML Security a Comparative Literature

Review, Journal of System and Software, Vol.81, No.10, pp715-724.

3. Hens R., (2006): Design of a multimedia gateway for mobile devices, SPIE The

International Society for Optical Engineering, Proc. SPIE -Int. Soc. Opt. Eng. (USA)

5684, 1st ed., SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, pp. 137-145.

4. Oloyede, H.O and Adeyemo, A.B (2006), Design and implementation of WAP

application of Airline reservation system, Proceedings of the International

Conference on New Trends in Mathematical and Computer sciences with

Applications to Real World Problem.

5. www.wikipedia.com, 2010

6. www.wirelesscenter.net, 2011

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