Official Airline Guides Partners with Sony Software to Provide Travel Information Services for the Magic Link Communicator
OAK BROOK, Ill. — September 28, 1994 — Official Airline Guides (OAG) and Sony have joined forces to make travel information available for the Sony Magic Link. OAG's strategic relationship with Sony will provide business travelers on the go with up-to-the-minute travel information through OAG lightLine(TM).
While online services provide customers access to real time flight and fare data, OAG FlightLine provides a higher level of intelligence. Acting on the customer's behalf, FlightLine selects more than 20 alternative itineraries in a single step. From a personal communicator, an intelligent software agent communicates with OAG, searches the OAG database and finds the best flight and fare options to meet the individual customer's personal preferences. Flight options are then presented in a simple, one-screen matrix format reducing the customer's booking decision to a single glance.
This entire process takes less than two minutes with Flig'tLine. OAG estimates that it would take at least 20 minutes to retrieve the equivalent information using conventional travel service products.
"Our relationship with Sony allows us to further broaden our reach and continue to provide an increasing number of business travelers with current travel information while on the road," said Mel Trudeau, senior vice president of OAG. "We plan to broaden the range of travel information available on the Magic Cap platform in direct response to our customers' needs. Features we expect to add in the near future include automatic flight status checking, as well as the ability to make reservations."
FlightLine provides travelers instant access to unbiased flight information for all U.S. cities, and includes information on flights for airline carriers not included in CRS systems. FlightLine makes comunications seamless and hassle free to the customer. The customer doesn't need to know the network phone number; FlightLine automatically handles all of the communications for them.
OAG is one of four Reed Travel Group (RTG) divisions, including ABC International, HTM International and Utell International, and their goal is to meet the global needs of all travelers and travel professionals. Together they serve all the major travel-related markets around the world including air transportation, rail, cruise, hotel, meeting, cargo and a variety of other sectors. In addition, RTG supplies schedule data to all of the computerized reservation systems used by airlines and travel agencies around the world. OAG products are sold through RTG offices in 34 countries around the world. OAG is headquartered in Oak Brook, Ill.
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Peter Duckler or Pamela Flores, @LB Communications, Inc., 312-649-0371