Essentials of designing a Web-Check System

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Version Author Description

1.0 Sreeparna Ghosh Initial Version
Web Check-in

Table of Contents

Introduction - Web-Check-in...........................................................................................3
Relevance of Web Check-in in today’s business.............................................................3
Essentials of Implementing a Web check in system .......................................................4
Who are the part of Web check-in ecosystem..............................................................4
Essential Features of a Web Check in system:.............................................................4
Functional Architecture:..............................................................................................5
Business Rules.............................................................................................................5
Process Architecture:...................................................................................................7
Technical Architecture:................................................................................................7
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................11
Reference.......................................................................................................................11

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Introduction - Web-Check-in

Today’s world is very busy. To save time and utilize it in more profitable way, people
prefer Air transport compared to any other carrier. Air service providers also continuously
improvise their service quality for comfort of the passengers. Despite of all the measures,
passengers have to be present in the departure airport 2 hours before and have to wait in
the queue for receiving the boarding pass – which is not simplified to adapt the needs of
customers in terms of their valuable time and money.
The emerging concept of web check in promises reasonable solutions!

If the passenger has a valid e- ticket or PNR number, he/she can collect the boarding pass
sitting at home or from office!! Does it sound simple?

Relevance of Web Check-in in today’s business

The relevance of a web check in system can be derived by the cost benefits achieved by
the airlines and the over all enhanced services that may be availed by the customers of the
airlines ecosystem.

The cost benefits to the airlines may be illustrated across the following business
processes (*1):

• Benefits involved in the Distribution – Reservation, Ticketing & Delivery

o Reduction in the Ticket Printing Costs
o Ticket Distribution and Fulfillment Costs
• Benefits involved in Ground Handling – Check-in, Boarding & Airport Services
o Reduced usage of Boarding Card Printers
o Customer Service enhancements:
a. Standard, electronic record of ticket
b. Electronic Interline endorsement
o Ticketing and Customer Service counters/Real Estate at Airports
Reduction in the number of ticketing locations at the airports due to
increased usage of self service check-in by the passengers.
o Manpower Reduction in the following areas:
a. Managing Check-in
b. Managing Ticketing and Customer service counters
c. Managing Post-flight reconciliation and Ticket coupon sorting

• Revenue Accounting - General

o Availability of faster & accurate sales data
o Seamless integration with industry systems for interline billing and
settlement

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Essentials of Implementing a Web check in system

Each of the airlines and the airports are building their own Web Check-in application to
suit their own requirement and own rules.
In stead of building individual solution, we can build a single solution which will cater to
the entire web check in ecosystem to meet their requirements.

Who are the part of Web check-in ecosystem

 Airlines
 Airports
 Group of airlines
 Reservation Systems
 Passengers

Essential Features of a Web Check in system:

The following schematic from a research report released by IATA illustrates the end user
requirements of a web check in system.

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Functional Architecture:

The functional architecture described in this paper is based upon the vital end user
expectations of a web check in system. The same is described below:

Major Functionalities Optional Functionalities

Search engine for

retrieving Change of
passenger details assigned seat to
the desired
location

Confirmation for
check in for
selected flights and
selected
Web Check-in
passengers

Modification of
frequent flyer
Print or email
number data
boarding pass

Step 1: The customer can search the relevant data in the reservation system with the help
of few essential inputs, like – passenger’s last name, e- ticket/ PNR number, departure
date, departing airport and the concerned airlines.

Step2: The successful search result* (based on business rules and validations) displays
passenger details along with the accompanied group (if any). The connecting flights for
the passenger are also displayed, which are open for check in.
From the list, user can confirm check in for selective/ entire group of passengers and their
flights.

Step3: (Optional) The customer/end user can even alter the seating arrangement, if the
flight is not free seating, or modify frequent flyer data.

Step 4: Finally, generate the boarding pass, which he can either send through email or be
able to take the print out.

Business Rules

Every service provider has their own set of rules and regulations. There are certain
limitations imposed by the provider for security reason, like group size, check-in limit
time and others, which are considered as the business thumb rule for the successful
search. These rules differ for different organizations.

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Illustration:
Suppose that the check in time limit determined by the service provider is between 24
hours to 1 hour before the departure of the flight. If a passenger tries to check in more
than 24 hours or less than 1 hour before, then he will not be allowed to do check-in.

Lets take another case; a passenger is trying in do check in for a group of 15 people,
whereas the service provider allows maximum of 10 persons in a group for web check-in.
In this situation passenger is not permitted to do web check-in and has to go for manual
check-in.
If a passenger has some facts like handicapped which needs manual check-in as per the
service provider then the passenger is restricted to do check in through web.

Whether Whether
group size Whether through
of the facts of check in
passenger passenger allowed
Whether allowed allowed (tcok) Whether
check-in Whether
return
time limit accompanying
check in
allowed infant allowed
allowed
(ciLimit) (rcok)

Business Rules

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Process Architecture:

Web Check-in

Want to No
Connects into Confirms check in for change seat? Print
airline or airport selective passengers Want to boarding
End User

portal and in the desired change

No pass or send
requests for web flights(legs in airline frequent flyer it via email
check-in terms) number?

Yes Yes
Generate
Boarding pass
Web check-in system

Accepts user input of: Displays the Displays confirmed Requests the Displays the
Calls the Update the new
1. E-ticket/ PNR/ passenger check-in details along reservation boarding pass
reservation seat to the
Frequent Flyer Number details along with seat number & system to with the bar
system to passenger
2. Flight name & number with all the frequent flyer number boarding pass code
confirm check in
3. Departing date connecting
4. Last name of flights
passenger
Reservation System

Set the check-in

Retrieves relevant Assign Seat to Retrieves all the boarding
status for the Update Passenger
data based on user each pass data along with the
selected passengers Details
input parameters passenger. bar code information
for their chosen legs.

Technical Architecture:

Web check in Web check in Web check in

Application Application Application
for A1* for A2* for A3*

Input Query Output result

Reservation System Reservation System Reservation System

X Y Z

*A1,A2,A3 may represent various airlines/airports/group of airports

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Reservation system can be any of the reservation system available in the industry like
Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and others. With this architecture described above, the Web
check-in application for an entity like an airline/airport will be able to interact with the
reservation system used by them.

The basic functionality of Web Check-in application for different service providers is
the same, even though each entity holds different business rules. Hence, to fit in a number
of entities (airport, airlines or a group of airlines), dynamism needs to be incorporated.

Web Check-in application can be built on 3-tier MVC architecture.

Presentation Layer

 Data Access Layer (Model) Business Layer

 Business Layer (Controller)
 Presentation Layer (View) Data Access Layer

MVC Architecture

In order to provide the dynamism to cater all types of air service providers, it’s a good
idea to maintain a configuration file with customer’s specifications. The configuration
file can be maintained in XML format, where the customer’s choices for presentation
layers as well as the business rules can be stored. The concerned reservation system
details should also be stored there. Therefore each customer can fill up their own
specifications in the configuration file template and the application will be customized to
serve the customer’s need.

Since the Boarding pass differs for each customer, if each customer feeds their own
boarding pass template to the application, application will generate boarding pass
according to customer’s requirement.

Based on the above illustration, the customer specific configuration file and boarding
pass format are sufficient to use the same web check-in application for wide range of
entities (airlines/airports) depending on their own necessity.

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Various Technical Layers of the web check-in application

The Presentation layer contains the user interface section. The user interface style sheet
will have the feature to be customizable. Therefore relevant style sheet guide defined for
a particular entity needs to be mentioned in the configuration file which may include the
color, font, size, logo, icons, images and even the text and contents.

<presentationLayer>
<!-- The languages supported by the Customer -->
<!-- The default will be English even if no Languages nodes are defined/set up -->
<languages>
<!-- Zero or more repetitions:-->
<language />
</languages>
<!-- The file name storing the styling scheme i.e. color, fonts, size etc for the customer -->
<!-- The theme file name (with path) -->
<theme />
<!-- The logo file name (with path) -->
<logo />
<!-- The BoardingPassTemplate file name (with path) -->
<boardingPassTemplate />
<!-- The folder where images are stored. -->
<imageFolder />
…………………… similarly other configurable properties can be mentioned
</presentationLayer>

Sample configuration file section for presentation layer

The Business layer is the place to implement the business rules. As discussed before, for
the sake of building a customizable application, the business rules of individual entity are
specified in the respective configuration file. Parameterized generic methods need to be
created in the business layer classes which will implement the rule defined in the entity
specific configuration file.

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<businessLayer>
<!-- If this node is not set up, it implies that no facts are excluded -->
- <f <factsExclusions>
- <!-- Zero or more repetitions: -->
<factsExclusion>
……
<factsExclusion>
<</factsExclusions>
…………………………………………………………. other rules
<<destinationAirport>
<name />
<<!-- cilimit value should be negetive integer,if no value is mentioned then it is set as 0 -->
<cilimit />
<<!-- groupsize value should be positive integer,if no value is mentioned then it is set as 0 --
>
<groupsize />
<<!-- tcok value can be Y or N, if no value is mentioned then it is set as Y -->
<tcok />
<<!-- tcok value can be Y or N, if no value is mentioned then it is set as Y -->
<rcok />
…. ……………………………………
</destinationAirport>
<</businessLayer>

Sample configuration file section for defining business rules

A number of separate layers can be constructed according to the precise

responsibilities, such as Validation layer, Error handling layer, Logging component layer.
Thus the burden on business layer can be diminished. These layers should be designed as
per the requirement.

The Data access layer may be able to handle the leading reservation systems related
interface. The customer specific reservation system details should be read from the
customer configuration file and so on the business specific reservation data may be
manipulated to match the format of the respective reservation system.

Another important point to note here is the incorporation of different languages.

Internationalization (I18N) needs to be supported by the application to furnish
customers from across the globe. But, a customer may be interested in few languages to
support whereas another customer may intend to provide different set of languages based
on the region. In order to serve all sorts of customers, customer’s preference of languages
can be stored in the configuration file, which is already mentioned above. All the text,
messages and culture specific items may be saved for each language for each customer as
a resource bundle.

Advantages of this approach:

 One single application serves multiple customers.

 Application is customizable for individual customer.
 Different languages are supported for end users benefit.

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Drawbacks of this approach:

 If any existing reservation system changes the data format or WSDL, then the
data access layer of the application needs modification.
 If new reservation system comes into market or customer supported reservation
system is not provided by the application, then modification of the data access
layer is required.
 If customer is not technically strong enough to provide their requirements in the
configuration file template, a user friendly Admin section is required to help the
customer.

Conclusion

With the resolutions set by IATA (International Air Transport Association), it is clearly
evident that more and more airlines/airports are implementing web check-in systems. The
trend of web check-in implementation is only growing in the exponential direction. This
paper has tried to explore the essentials of implementing a generic web check-in system.
In the multi billion dollar airline industry, the benefits that the web check-in provides to
the airlines/airports/customers looks mammoth sized and may be a routine of a
tomorrow’s customer’s air travel!

Reference

(*1) www.iata.org

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