GDS capabilities, OD control and dynamic pricing

Airline revenue management has changed over the last years influenced by the advent of Internet distribution and global distribution system (GDS) functions like origin and destination control and seamless availability. The increased ability to price discriminate is seen as the main driver behind those changes. We analyse current GDS functionality under this aspect and describe how it can be used to implement dynamic pricing, similar to the possibilities of the Internet. We discuss shortcomings of current GDS distribution and propose solutions to improve the current capabilities. We present some ideas on how to overcome the booking class limitation, which is still the major drawback compared to direct Internet distribution.