Patent ID: 7062480

Claim:
A system for caching and utilizing flight availability data for specific subscribers, the system comprising: a server for receiving and processing availability requests from the subscribers; a cache database for temporarily storing flight availability data for the subscribers; a cache query utility for adding flight availability data from an airline server to the cache database, querying the cache database, returning flight availability data from the cache database that was stored in response to an availability request if a communication failure occurs with the airline server, and deleting flight availability data from the cache database after a shelf-life has expired; an airline cache control for configuring a minimum seat count for the flight availability data stored in the cache database for the airline server, wherein the minimum seat count specifies how many seats must be available on each flight in order to use the flight availability data stored in the cache database, the server communicating with the airline server to retrieve flight availability data if the minimum seat count is not satisfied.