Patent ID: 7565303

Claim:
A pre-paid airline ticketing system comprising: a storage device configured to store a record representing a pre-paid, fixed-price option purchased by a customer, the record including: (i) a plurality of geographic flight parameters and a plurality of non-geographic flight parameters, at least one of the geographic flight parameters being unspecified and at least one of the non-geographic flight parameters being participating airlines available for selection by the customer for booking a flight; and (ii) an identifier associated with and uniquely identifying the record for the customer to use to exercise the pre-paid, fixed price option; and a processor in communication with said storage device and configured to: verify an identifier submitted by a customer to exercise the pre-paid, fixed-price option; retrieve the record including the identifier submitted by the customer; communicate actual flight information, via a network, to the customer to present actual flights offered by the participating airlines available for selection by the customer based on the geographic and non-geographic flight parameters stored in the record; receive, from the customer, flight selection information corresponding to one of the presented actual flights; and book the flight selected by the customer from among the presented actual flights by exercising the pre-paid, fixed-price option.