AU2001100026A4 - Method and system for auctioning a service upgrade - Google Patents

Description

PAOPER\SSBad ,son iov pe.doc-24/050I -1- METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR AUCTIONING A SERVICE UPGRADE FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a computer-based system and a wireless means to make and receive offers for upgraded seating according to certain rules of offer and acceptance.

BACKGROUND

Operators of passenger vessels, and their agents, offer a number of methods to fill the available capacity of those vessels. In particular airlines operate sophisticated yield management systems with the objective of filling seats in a manner which optimizes the profit, or "yield" for each journey, meaning that adjacent same-class seats may be sold for very different prices and yields. The method of dividing a class into many sub-classes, and selling those sub-classes for many different prices, and perhaps through different channels, is well established in the airline industry, and to some extent in the ship cruising industry where "last minute" bargains fit this model of operation.

It is also known to utilise a channel known as "reverse auctions", as pioneered by Priceline.com. In this case registered users of Priceline.com make offers for services including airline travel and hotel accommodation. These offers are received subject to particular conditions, the main being that the offer is conditional on the service being available but in the case that the service is available then the offeree is committed to use that service. A feature of the Priceline.com model is that the service providers remain anonymous until a service offer is confirmed, thereby protecting to a large extent their brand image and pricing profile in the marketplace.

Further it is known for airlines to issue upgrade certificates which may be utilised under a range of conditions, usually such conditions concerning class of travel for which an P:\OPER\SSB\adamson innov sN.doc-24/05/01 -2upgrade is allowed and the timing of such requests. For example, an upgrade may only be allowed to Business Class for a journey greater than 3,000 miles if a full priced economy ticket has been purchased. As another example it may be that a certain classes of traveller, eg Gold Club status travellers, they may telephone to exercise an upgrade certificate up to 72 hours before travel, whereas an "ordinary" status traveller may only call to exercise an upgrade certificate 12 hours before travel. The known method of using such certificates is by telephoning the airline or presenting the certificate at check-in prior to travel.

It is known to hold a ticket for a particular class of travel and to make an offer for a higher class of travel. This system is not known to be operational but is described in US patent US 6,112,185: Automated service upgrade offer acceptance system Aug. 29, 2000. In this case the ticket holder receives advice via the method of US 6,112,185 prior to arriving at the airport.

What is not know is a means and method to allow for upgrades via mobile telephones immediately prior to boarding the vessel, namely at, for example, the boarding lounge in the case of an airline. The words "boarding lounge" is here used figuratively to mean a point close to the actual point of embarkation which may be the platform of a railway station, a passenger waiting room of a cruise vessel at the pier, or a boarding gate lounge or frequent flyer lounge of an airline.

It has been witnessed that although airlines seek to optimise and manage their yield, there are often vacant seats in classes higher than Economy Class even though people were denied boarding in Economy Class. This is also true for train travel where it has been witnessed that Economy Class has been sold out yet many vacant seats remain in higher classes of travel.

It would be advantageous if operators were able to determine, at a time as close to departure as possible, the availability of vacant higher class seats. Up to this time, it has not been advantageous to implement such a system because the means of implementation has been inefficient. Such inefficient means slowed the boarding process, and the PAOPER\SSB\adson mov spe.dc-24/05/0 I -3operational and financial penalties incurred from slow or delayed boarding were greater than the gains to be made by being able to fill the higher class seats. That is, the potential increased yield from filling the available seats was not sufficient to overcome the operating and financial penalties of delays caused by an inefficient boarding process.

The widespread adoption of wireless mobile phones, and associated computer-based systems and their integrated communication capabilities, has created the current opportunity for the present invention. The invention relies on mobile telephony and the ready communication between computer systems of various forms to advantageously offer a last minute upgrade offer and acceptance capability for passengers and their carriers.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of this invention to provide a means and method for the upgrading of passenger class at a time proximal to boarding a vessel and via wireless communications devices.

The present invention provides a method of providing a service upgrade to one or more passengers, each of said one or more passengers having a ticket or who has or have checked in for travel and has or have access to wireless communication means, the method including the steps of: receiving at an auction system notification of interest of said one or more passengers in purchasing said service upgrade; and automatically conducting an auction of said service upgrade among said one or more passengers by receiving bids for said service upgrade therefrom via said wireless communication means.

In accordance with the preferred method, a passenger pre-registers with the system, and later notifies the system of an impending flight proximal to "check-in" and directly or via the voyage operator's check-in system. Later, the voyage operator, immediately prior to a P:OPER\SSB\adwmso innov spe.do-24A05/0I -4boarding event, may notify registered passengers by mobile wireless means that they may bid for certain classes of upgrades under certain conditions. If passengers accept to bid, via mobile wireless devices, then their bids are processed according to auction type and conditions, and they may or may not be successful. Those who are successful receive wireless notification and upon verification receive an identifier to present to the voyage operator in order to claim their upgrade entitlement. Payment means may be by credit card, credit card associated loyalty program points, frequent flyer points, and others.

Payment is made through the system with which the passenger is registered, rather than directly between the passenger and the airline.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG 1 is a block diagram showing the illustrating the main processes and data stores of the invention and its links with an airline system.

FIG 2 is a block diagram of the flight activation process of FIG 1.

FIG 3 is a block diagram of the auction process of FIG 1.

FIG 4 illustrates methods of flight activation.

FIG 5 comprises a flow chart illustrating the auction passenger selection process.

FIG 6 is a schematic diagram of the auction completion and verification process.

FIG 7 is a schematic diagram of the payment processing process.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention is directed to the provision of a system and method for the making and receiving of offers for the upgrading of a previously assigned seat on a voyage. The noted determination is particularly directed towards the provision of such upgrades at a time within a few hours prior to boarding the vessel and through the means of a wireless mobile telephone system. While the invention will be described with respect to an airline boarding system, it should be understood that the invention could be used to advantage with any type of reserved seat transit system including bus, train, ship and ferry.

PNOPER\SSB\iad,-o imov spe.doc-24/OS/I For illustrative purposes the invention is described through a series of steps, which are detailed in this embodiment. In addition the transport operator's system, in exemplary form an airline management system, must also have some small changes by providing gateways to and from the boarding gate upgrade system as indicated in FIG 1.

For the teaching of the invention the method of operation has been illustratively divided into the following processes: u customer registration at website o voyage registration o passenger selection filtering u auction initiation L auction completion L user verification L payment and seat allocation u end cycle clean-up.

Customer Reistration at Website An initial step is for a potential user to register with the boarding gate upgrade system FIG 1. This method is embodied in the Customer Registration Process 100. The system comprises a web-based interface 105 to a customer-record database. In a typical implementation of such a registration process, which is sufficient for illustrating the present invention, a Customer Record includes name, address, phone numbers, email address and details of airlines and frequent-flyer programs. Further, the present invention requires details of methods of payment for any later upgrades, meaning that the registrant should indicate a preference for credit card payment, or points payment from a frequentflyer account, or points payment from a credit card account.

P:AOPERMSSH\ad-on spoMdoc-24/O5/O1 -6- A key data item to be recorded during the registration process is the mobile telephone number of the customer, since without this element the system cannot carry out its primary purpose.

The registrant, at this registration time or on a later occurrence, would register preferred airlines, and payment methods in order of priority. Such methods include billing to credit cards, telephone accounts, frequent flyer points, and also points held in credit card reward systems, among others.

Thus key data held in the customer master database 120, after the registration process is complete, is the customer name and contact details including mobile telephone, plus preferred airlines, plus payment information and preferences.

Indicative contents of these records are illustrated as follows: <Customer Master {name; address; mobile number; airlines; payments; etc}> <airlines (airlinel, freqflyerl))> 1 to nl instances where nl number of airlines <payments (payment providerl, priority orderl)}> 1 to n2 instances where n2 number of types ofpayments offered by the system, (If priority order nil then customer declined that payment method.) After a customer is registered, they may alter their registration details at any subsequent time. In any event it will be necessary for a customer to maintain their registration details in good currency within the system, for example to account for changes in address or mobile telephone number or payment preferences.

As to the method thus described, user interface is illustratively a web browser 110 with an interface to a central system 150 maintaining a customer database 120. Other embodiments such as a telephone interface to a call centre, at which point human P:\OPER\SSB\.aa innov spe.dm-24/i50iI -7operators interact with the customer to initiate, complete and maintain their registration on the system, are possible.

Thus it is seen that at the completion of the registration step, the customer, being the potential voyager, may have a complete and up-to-date registration record containing contact details, travel preferences and payment preferences. At this point the system is dormant in the sense that such details are not acted upon by the system until a voyage is signalled to be imminent. Such a signal can be the act of "check-in".

Voyage Registration The activation of the system for a particular voyage is the next key teaching of the present invention. This is described as the Flight Activation Process and shown in FIG 2. Two options are described the first is a customer-initiated activation process 202, and the second an airline-initiated activation process 201.

The fundamental purpose of this step is to link a registered user of the boarding gate upgrade system (as described in the previous step) with a particular flight on which they have checked-in or are about to check-in.

The Customer Activation process 202 shown in FIG 4 can be initiated by a telephone call to the upgrade system. For this purpose, the system is connected to voice activation and response component 210.

The Customer would execute the following indicative steps: 1. CALL a given number for the boarding gate upgrade system flight activation.

2. IF calling number recognition is available the system will confirm the caller's identity, OTHERWISE it will ask for the number to be entered, and then confirm.

3. The system will then PROMPT for the airline, according to the customers priority order set during the registration process, and assign a number to each preference eg P;\OPER\SSad -sn i,,ov spe.do-24/05/0I -8- "If you have checked-in to a Qantas flight press 1, a United Airlines flight press 2, a Cathay flight press 3 etc".

4. The customer SELECTs the airline by pressing the appropriate key.

The system then PROMPTs for the flight number eg "Please enter the flight number".

6. "Please CONFIRM by pressing 8 that you are flying (preferred class of travel) otherwise press 1 for Economy, 2 for Business, 3 for First class".

7. The customer RESPONDs to confirm the booked class of travel.

8. After entering the flight number the system reads back the details for confirmation eg "You have checked-in to Cathay Flight 106, if this is correct push 1, otherwise push 2".

9. The system will then CHECK the PAYMENT preference eg "If you are successful in an upgrade offer your nominated payment preference is to bill your credit card number 9999 9999 9999. Is this still your preference? Press 1 if yes, otherwise 2" 10. At which point various standard options are available from the system to alter details. Another feasible embodiment is using a voice response system, as an alternative or in combination with the key response system.

At the completion of this process the system will know the checked-in details for the voyage which the passenger is scheduled to undertake. This means that the system will have created and completed a flight-related record 210 with at least the airline, flight number, class of booking and confirmed method of payment, signifying that the passenger has checked-in or is about to check-in for that voyage.

An alternative embodiment of the Airline-activation process 202 is for the airline check-in system to communicate directly with the boarding gate upgrade system at or shortly after the time of check-in. In this case the Airline system would pass a passenger identification record (PAXID Record) to the boarding gate upgrade system, and the system would send confirmation back to the airline system.

P:\OPER\SSB\admwn innov spo.doc-24/05/01 -9- In a typical embodiment of an Airline-activation 201 the airline check-in agent would confirm that the customer is registered with the boarding gate upgrade system. Then the airline clerk would initiate a transaction with the boarding gate upgrade system via the airline check-in system 220. The effect would be to transfer flight details from the airline system, including flight database details, to the boarding gate upgrade system, creating a record in the "active flight database" 210. The active flight database being the list of boarding gate upgrade members who are active meaning that they are checked into a flight and within the control of the system.

An indicative transaction record within the active flight database is illustrated: <Pax ID Record {name; freqflyer; mobilephonenumber; airlineid; flightnumber; etc}> The boarding gate upgrade system would receive such a transaction record via an application interface 230, and if needed, over a communications network interface from the airline system shown in FIG 2. It would confirm 410 in response that the passenger is a member and that member details, such as the frequent flyer number, are correct.

If the details are correct then the passenger has been successfully entered into the active flight database. From this point, the boarding gate upgrade system is anticipating further communication concerning the possibility of upgraded offers and conditions. These latter communications would be as close to boarding time as possible, and effected by communications using a wireless communications network.

To be noted are alternate embodiments which can be used to link the generation of the indicative Pax IDRecord to varied forms of passenger check-in services (shown in FIG 4) e.g. by electronic check-in 420 or by swiping an electronic card 430 at a check-in kiosk.

These types of embodiments are implemented by adding such functionality as to generate a transaction record to transmit to the boarding gate upgrade system. For example, a check-in kiosk would have incorporated a module to send a confirmation record to the present system and thus from that transmission an active flight database record would be PAOPER\SSB\adamrn iflv spe.doc-24/0I501 created for the passenger. These embodiments would be implemented in cooperation with the airlines and the airline systems and the alternative check-in systems. This aspect can be readily understood by one skilled in the art.

A third illustrative embodiment is for the passenger to enter the flight details by entering the web interface for the boarding gate upgrade system and accessing the Flight Registration Process shown in FIG 2 within the Internet interface. This would require the passenger to enter the airline and flight number, and to confirm the payment method priority. The timing of such a passenger initiated transaction should be close to check-in and before boarding calls are normally made, and could be done at a private or public kiosk, or by the passenger connecting their own computer to the system through the Internet.

All members of the boarding gate upgrade system would register in one of these ways at or after check-in and prior to boarding the aircraft. The boarding gate upgrade system, during this time, maintains an active flight database 210 of passengers for each voyage.

This database logically has the primary key of the flight number, and then details for each check-in passenger who has activated their flight check-in with the boarding gate upgrade system.

An illustrative database record within the boarding gate upgrade system is shown: <Flight Activation Record {flightnumber; Paxpointer; time_datestamp; priority_key}> (The timedate_stamp and the prioritykey may be used during the auction process, to be further described below.) The boarding gate upgrade system, upon each flight activation not coming from an airline system, would confirm 410 with the airline (system) that the details are correct. That means that the system would construct the equivalent of the Pax ID Record and send it to PA\OPERMSSB\M n in-, p doc-24/5/O01 -11the specific airline to confirm that the airline's records for that flight match the records held by the Upgrade System i.e. that the passenger is checked-in for the correct flight.

Preferably this would happen in "real time" concurrent with the passenger being connected with the system.

Passenger Selection Filtering according to Criteria A feature of the preferred embodiment is the ability for airlines to be selective about the offer of upgraded seats, according to preferences set in the instant system. Because all such selection criteria may not necessarily be kept within the boarding gate upgrade system, the system accommodates an Airline Passenger Selection Process shown in FIG whereby the airline can set over-riding parameters. This is discussed below.

The boarding gate upgrade system would contain an Airline Master Record, illustrated as: <Airline_Master_Record {airline_idl; freqflyercond 1, payment condl 1 to n4 where n4 equals the number of airlines registered in the system; freqflyercond is a set of frequent flyer conditions; payment cond is a set of payment conditions.

For example, it may be that an airline requires passenger eligibility of at least 100,000 frequent flyer miles and only accepts payment against those miles and not by credit card payment. This could be set in the airline master record upon advice from each airline about its desired policies, on a flight-by-flight or a global basis. Alternatively this could be implemented or actioned at the time of auction initiation FIG 5, and that is described below. See the record AcceptancePAX_List and its description for an illustration of the data which supports this process.

For example, an embodiment of such an Airline Passenger Selection Process could include a parameter that disallowed customers from registering for flights except via the airline P:AOPER\SSB\jadason innov spedoc-24/05/0I 12check-in process 510. That is, an airline may set a condition in the boarding gate upgrade system that prevented registration for a particular flight by customer-initiation 202. The only registration for a flight, under these conditions, would be through the airline check-in process. In this way the airline could control passenger's entitlements according to their own criteria e.g. only those passengers who have a certain number of points, or have completed a certain number of flight segments, or who are flying back to their home city etc. These criteria would be set and applied within the airline's management system 500, using its internal links to the airline's information kept about a passenger e.g. frequent flyer details.

Illustratively, at this point in the process the customer is registered for a voyage and eligibility conditions have been met, and the system is waiting for activation against possible upgraded seat availability.

The eligible passengers have been selected according to airline rules, or boarding gate upgrade system rules, or a combination of both, as illustrated in FIG The initiation of the upgrade auction process 310 will come from the airline at the appropriate time, at or close to the boarding gate, and communicating through the wireless telephone system to intending passengers.

Auction Initiation An example of the auction initiation process is as follows. At this point the passengers have completed check-in and have registered with the boarding gate upgrade system, or been registered by the airline with the system, and the airline has checked the flight loading and the expected final passenger allocations.

P:\OPER\SSB\ad-mou imo,' spe.doc-24/05/01 13- Based on the data available the airline may wish to allow upgrades to, for example, a selection of Business Class seats, and will initiate an offer 5 minutes before boarding for 4 available seats, and will also offer one First Class seat.

In a simple example the Auction Process 300 begins when the Airline gate controller system 305 connects through an interface 310 to the boarding gate upgrade system and advises the number of seats, the type of auction, and any conditions or reserved price as indicated in FIG An interface record is illustratively: <Auction_Initiation_Record {airline id; flight_number; seat_class; auction_type; condition_record; <AcceptancePAX_list>}> where airline id is the airline identifier code where flight_number, seat_class are self explanatory where auction_type is a code indicating "dutch" or "reverse" or "normal" <condition_record {condition_type, condition parameters}> where condition type is code indicating "fixed time" or "fixed bids "for example.

and where condition parameters expand the details of the condition_type.

<Acceptance_PAXList {tagA; tagB (PAXIdl) 1 to tagB}> where tagA indicates if there exists an airline-supplied acceptance passenger list where iftagA is "true" then tagB is the number of elements in the list and where PaxIdl are from I to tagB instances of airline selected passengers.

The ConditionRecord is a record which varies according to the auction type, and which may contain such data as the minimum number of frequent flyer points for eligibility, or the minimum bid price, or the maximum duration of the auction. For example the auction type specified by the airline may be a Dutch auction. The minimum bid may be set as $100, and the maximum bids per passenger may be 2.

P:AOPER\SSB~abdson imov spe.doc-24/05/01 14- These conditions can only apply to information held within the boarding gate upgrade system, and which may be checked within the boarding gate upgrade system. For example, if a condition is that payment must be by Visa credit card, and the passenger has nominated their first preference for payment as frequent flyer points, then the boarding gate system would defer or decline an offer based on that condition. This data about the preferred payment method is contained within the instant system. On the other hand, if the airline set a condition that only passengers flying to their home city were eligible then the simple example described above would not be sufficient. This is because it is unlikely that the instant system would record the destination, although it would be possible. A more likely embodiment, in this case, is given below.

An alternate embodiment is for the airline to apply selection criteria 520 as described above, and to supply a list of acceptable passengers who may partake in the auction i.e. the Acceptance PAX-list. That is, at the boarding gate the boarding gate staff would initiate the auction through an interface from the airline system to the instant system.

This interface, whereby the airline advises the class of seats and number of seats and conditions, is filtered by the airlines management system 500. From the information, or command, entered by the airline staff, the filtering system needs to first check with the management system and to filter through, that is select, a group of eligible passengers.

This filtering process is not complex, and can be embodied as a pass of the airlines flight records 320 for that flight, linked to any other passenger information in the airline's system.

For example, if the airline specified that only passengers with more than 100,000 frequent flyer points in their accounts may bid for an upgrade, then the following process could be employed by the airline filtering sub-system. It is known by the airline flight database which passengers are registered with the boarding gate upgrade system for a particular flight. This is described earlier and results in a flag in a passenger's record in what might be called the flight manifest database for a particular flight. For each registered passenger the filtering system checks their frequent flyer status, and if less than 100,000 P:AOPER\SS\Madmon imov' spN.do-245/01 points they are declined an offer. The list of those who are eligible is compiled at 530 as a list of identified passengers, and that list is communicated as the "acceptable passenger list" (Acceptance_PAX_list) to the boarding gate upgrade system. This may occur as an application to application link or as a network communication link for example. Because the number of records is very small, in database terms, this search and compilation will be very fast in execution. It will not contribute to boarding delays.

Illustratively this record would include: <Acceptance_PAX_list {namel, mobilenumber 1 to where n5 equals the number of airline screened passengers.

At this point the boarding gate upgrade system will initiate communication at 550, via the wireless network, with the eligible passengers through an automated multi-line call system. The call will be received by eligible passengers on their mobile devices at 540 (at the boarding gate or proximate to the boarding gate) and will describe the information they need to participate in the auction and any conditions. For example "Qantas advises 4 business class seats are available with a minimum bid of $100 and maximum 2 bids and an maximum auction time of 3 minutes. Please place your offer by pressing the dollar amount followed by hash optionally followed by the number of seats followed by hash".

This embodiment describes a voice response implementation, however other embodiments are equally available including mobile phones capable of displaying messages by a messaging interface 540, such as SMS, or a web interface, such as WAP.

The passengers bid by mobile telephone or other mobile device as illustrated in FIG 3 according to their own desires and strategy and with reference to the conditions of the auction. For example, it may be that only one bid has been allowed per passenger. It may be that the auction time has been set short, to just one minute for example.

P:\OPER\SSB\adaon i-mov spe.doc-24/05/0 -16- The bids placed using the mobile device, by voice recognition technology or by digital key response, or by web text key response 540, are transmitted to the boarding gate upgrade via the wireless carrier network. Thus by definition the boarding gate upgrade system must include a telephone network interface, implemented as voice, voice response, messaging, or web, or all three.

Auction Completion At a defined moment during the auction process an auction end point will be reached. The boarding gate upgrade system determines this Auction Completion as illustrated in FIG 6 endpoint during the prior initiation process illustrated in FIG 5. That is, at the time that the airline transmits to the boarding gate upgrade the initiation transaction, the system calculates the endpoint according to those conditions embodied in the Condition Record e.g. one bid per eligible customer, or auction duration 2 minutes, or first to bid minimum price etc. When that endpoint is recognised by the boarding gate upgrade system during the auction, the auction is closed.

Thus if the condition was one bid per eligible passenger, the auction endpoint is clearly when each eligible passenger has entered one bid. If the condition was an auction duration of 2 minutes then the endpoint is clear. Or a condition may be a combination such as no more than one bid per eligible passenger and an auction duration of 3 minutes.

A component of the auction completion process is the determination of the "winners" at 605, if any, and this would be calculated in parallel with the monitoring of the auction endpoint conditions. If for example the endpoint was one bid per customer, and the lowest acceptable bid was $80, then the system will check each entry to be greater than $80 and maintain an ordered list as the bids arrive. The computing workload is not large since it could be expected that just 50 or so people may bid and the auction may last for 2 minutes.

A knowledgeable artisan can construct a variety of acceptable methods to keep current a list of potential winners, if any.

PAOPER\SSl\adamswn in-ov spo.dmc-24/05f/0 -17- At the time that the auction endpoint is determined, the winners will be known to the system immediately in a practical sense.

User Verification The "winners" then need to be notified, to their mobile devices, by the boarding gate upgrade system. There will be zero or a small number of winners in relative terms, expected to be substantially less than the capacity of the transporting craft.

The winners will be notified by voice response or by message or web that they have been successful, and asked to verify themselves at 610. This latter step 610 is a pre-requisite to payment. The verification may be by various prior-art mobile verification methods. It may be as simple as asking a mobile telephone user to "push 1 to confirm payment method for flight upgrade for flight UA1206". Or it may require input of a pre-defined user code or PIN at 615 that would be stored in the boarding gate upgrade system and managed by customers on the website of the system. Or it may be by fingerprint reader 620 on the mobile phone or other biometric techniques such as voice recognition. There is a range of available technologies as illustrated in FIG 6.

A key criterion for selection of an appropriate and suitable verification method would be speed as well as accuracy. Verification will take place close to actual boarding, by definition, and various methods will allow acceptable verification with necessary speed.

The point of the verification process is to ensure that customers accept responsibility for the prior bidding, and for accepting the offer from the airline, and for the payment, whether by credit card or airline points or other means.

Payment and Seat Allocation Upon receiving a verification record from each "winning" passenger, the boarding gate upgrade system would enact the passenger's nominated preferred payment method at 650 P:OPER\SSBadamson innov spe.doc-24/05/01 -18as illustrated in FIG 7, or the type of payment required by the airline at 705 but preapproved by the customer. These methods, as indicated in FIG 7, could include charge to credit, charge to frequent flyer points 705, charge to credit card points, charge to telephone bill etc. This may involve external links to an authorized and accredited electronic payment system.

A particular feature of the system comes into action at this point, and that is the feature of the pre-assigned method of payment. This is necessary because at this point in the boarding process any delays could diminish the value of the system to the operator. In order to expedite the process, passengers are asked to nominate preferred payment methods when they first register with the system, and later when they register for a particular flight. This is to ensure an automatic process can be activated upon receipt of the verification advice described herein.

The boarding gate upgrade system would respond at 720 to the successful bidders 730 (customers) with a confirmation message or signal or code, and in parallel respond to the airline boarding system at 725 with a parallel validation message and codes. The customer would then present this code to the airline boarding gate staff, and be given the upgraded seat entitlement. This "success" response from the boarding gate upgrade system to the customer and airline would use technologies such as an SMS message, a voice validation code to be noted by the customer, or a WAP screen to be shown to the airline staff, for example. A preferred implementation may also rely on the transmission of the verification message to the airline boarding system, through which passengers will be highlighted, and the airline calls for those passengers and upgrades them with or without final identification.

In parallel with the notification of the successful bidders, the boarding gate upgrade system will also notify the unsuccessful bidders via one of a plurality of means.

At this stage the airline boarding process can be completed, and the airline may call for stand-by or waitlist passengers to fill the seats vacated by the successful bidders for the PA\OPER\SSBHbdmaod imov spe.doc-24/0501 -19upgraded seats. This opportunity is one of the key business benefits of the systems that airlines can back-fill upgraded seats with more paying customers thus increasing yields.

End Cycle Clean-up At the boarding gate, or in response to indications from the boarding gate staff, the airlines will initiate a final completion of the boarding process within their management systems.

It is desirable to extend to the management system a function to send a "completed" message to the boarding gate upgrade system. This is a small messaging application, which would communicate via application to application interface or a communications network.

The boarding gate system, upon such "flight completed" notification, would undertake various end-cycle processes e.g. archive the active flight database records for that flight, archive the auction transactions, and archive the payment records which were created, and archive the communications records between the airline system and the instant system.

The clean-up cycle could also involve updating the member's records for all members that registered for the flight just departed, to keep in their personal files an activity log. This could be accessed and reviewed by members at their leisure.

A number of embodiments of the present invention have been described. Nevertheless, it will be understood that various modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, other embodiments are within the scope of the claims.

The reference to any prior art in this specification is not, and should not be taken as, an acknowledgment or any form of suggestion that prior art forms part of the common general knowledge in Australia.

Claims (4)

1. A method of providing a service upgrade to one or more passengers, each of said one or more passengers having a ticket or who has or have checked in for travel and has or have access to wireless communication means, the method including the steps of: receiving at an auction system notification of interest of said one or more passengers in purchasing said service upgrade; and automatically conducting an auction of said service upgrade among said one or more passengers by receiving bids for said service upgrade therefrom via said wireless communication means.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the auction is conducted within a short period of time prior to a start time of a service to which the tickets relate.

3. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein the auction is conducted for a plurality of service upgrades simultaneously.

4. The method of any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the auction is conducted according to one or more criteria determined by the service provider. The method of claim 4, further including the steps of: determining one or more successful bids based on said one or more criteria; verifying each successful bid with the customer who made the bid; and effecting an automatic payment transaction for each successful bid, whereby payment is effected to the service provide in respect of each customer who made a successful bid. DATED this 24th day of May, 2001 WALTER JOHN ADAMSON By his Patent Attorneys DAVIES COLLISON CAVE