Worldspan Unveils Airline Source® e-certified

Worldspan Unveils Airline Source® e-certified, Industry First Solution For Reducing Message Volume and Costs in Online Channel

ATLANTA, July 4, 2002—Worldspan, the leader in global reservation systems and e-commerce for the travel industry, today announced the introduction of Worldspan Airline Source e-certified. This exclusive new data caching technology allows airlines to deliver timely, accurate data about seat availability for Worldspan e-commerce customers and to significantly reduce message volume and associated costs generated by repeat availability requests delivered mainly through the online channel. Worldspan is the first and only global distribution system (GDS) to provide airlines with a solution for managing availability requests in high traffic e-commerce environments.

Worldspan Airline Source, Worldspan’s highest level of airline connectivity, offers users integrated real-time seat availability for participating carriers with each availability request. Users receive up-to-the-minute availability, representing the best possible inventory accuracy.

Airline Source e-certified strengthens the integrity of Worldspan’s airline seat availability by providing fresh e-certified data if interactive communication with the airline is unavailable for any reason. By using e-certified availability rather than conventional stored data, Worldspan is able to provide more robust and reliable trip information—including unpublished service classes not offered in other stored data—which is more likely to result in a successful sale.

In addition, by using Airline Source e-certified data, rather than interactively querying the airline, Worldspan is able to reduce message volume for e-certified participating airlines.

“Airline Source® e-certified, another first-to-market solution from Worldspan, enables participating carriers to address the exponential growth in demand for availability data in the online channel by reducing message volume while maintaining data accuracy and integrity,” commented Sue Powers, senior vice president – Worldwide Product Solutions for Worldspan. “The launch of this unique patent-pending technology underscores once again Worldspan’s leadership position in e-commerce and technical innovation. By further enhancing the cost-effectiveness of the Worldspan system, Airline Source e-certified will add value for every Worldspan customer.”

With the burgeoning popularity of online booking sites, airline inventory systems can’t always keep pace with the enormous volume of availability requests and repeat requests sent by e-commerce-enabled travel agents. Airline Source e-certified gives participating carriers a valuable new tool to respond to these queries with the most recent available trip information from Airline Source. With Airline Source e-certified, participating airlines gain greater control over the volume of messages from online sites, thus reducing processing costs, and improve customer sell rates by delivering more up-to-the-minute availability information.

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Worldspan® Unveils Airline Source e-certified—page 2

Airline Source e-certified cached data also reflects airline point-of-sale and origin and destination controls to ensure that airline yield management objectives are maintained.

Offered at no cost to all Airline Source participating carriers, Airline Source e-certified is one of many new Worldspan initiatives designed to improve product integrity and reduce high message volume in the online channel.

“Worldspan is continuously evaluating new options to reduce message size, eliminate redundancies, and lessen the load on airline inventory systems,” Powers said.
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DID YOU KNOW?
 444 airlines are bookable through Worldspan
 Worldspan serves the travel industry in 81 countries
 Worldspan has an average of 27 million Passenger Number Records (PNRs) on its system
 Nearly 4,000 messages are processed every second at peak times
 Worldspan’s peak traffic month saw it process 5.14 billion messages
 The average response time for an international request is 1.2 seconds
 Worldspan’s system availability record is 99.99 per cent YTD

ABOUT WORLDSPAN
Worldspan provides global electronic distribution of travel information, Internet products and connectivity, and electronic commerce capabilities for travel agencies, travel service providers and corporations worldwide. The company’s three lines of business are travel supplier services, e-commerce, and global distribution systems for the worldwide travel industry. The Worldspan reservations system provides nearly 20,000 travel agencies and other users worldwide with travel data and booking capabilities for hundreds of the world’s leading travel supplier services. Worldspan is the market leader in e-commerce for the travel industry, processing more than 50 percent of all online travel agency bookings. The company maintains world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Worldspan is owned by affiliates of Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE: DAL), Northwest Airlines (NASDAQ: NWAC) and American Airlines. Additional information is available at www.worldspan.com.

For further information, please contact:

Fiona Elkins, Public Relations Specialist, Worldspan London Tel: +44 0 20 87 45 90 59, Email: [email protected]

Anisa Sheikh-Board or Blair Drummond, Four Communications Tel:+44 20 7 763 5989 / 5990; email: [email protected] or [email protected]