Patent ID: 7983939

Claim:
A method for automatically mapping a cabin and travel class structure of an airline disrupted flight into the cabin and travel class structures of at least one replacement flight, the method comprising: performing the steps of the method via at least one programmed computer processor, comprising: determining a disruption period; retrieving the cabin and travel class structure of the airline disrupted flight for the disruption period; retrieving cabin and travel class structure data of at least one replacement flight, said data comprising, for the disruption period, different cabin and travel class structures each applicable during a disruption sub-period within the disruption period; for each disruption sub-period, initializing the mapping by first establishing a direct match between the cabin and travel class structure of the disrupted flight and the cabin and class structures of the at least one replacement flight; validating the direct match against the cabin and travel class structures of the at least one replacement flights, the validating step including the further step of detecting discrepancies; retrieving from a repository of rules class matching tables (CMTs) that apply to the disrupted flight for the disruption period and specifying correspondences between the cabin and travel class structure of the airline disrupted flight and the cabin and the travel class structures of the at least one replacement flight; retrieving validity periods for the class matching tables in which several validity periods partly covers the disruption sub-period; splitting the disruption sub-period is further sub-periods each corresponding to one single validity period of the class matching tables; for each discrepancy: retrieving rules of the class matching table corresponding to the further sub-period; applying the retrieved rules and determining a rule-driven mapping cabin and travel class pair assigned to the at least one replacement flight for the further sub-period in lieu of the discrepancy; creating a mapping between the cabin and travel class structure of the airline disrupted flight and the cabin and class structure of the at least one replacement flight using the direct match each time no discrepancy is detected and the rule-driven mapping cabin and travel class structure each time a discrepancy is detected.