Travel planning system

(54) TRAVEL PLANNING SYSTEM

(75) Inventors: Carl G. DeMarcken, Arlington;

Jeremy Wertheimer, Brookline, both ol MA (US)

(73) Assignee: ITA Software, Inc., Cambridge, MA (US)

( * ) Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days.

(21) Appl. No.: 09/109,327

(22) Filed: Jul. 2, 1998

(51) Int. CI.7 G06F 17/60

(52) U.S. CI 705/6; 705/5; 705/400

(58) Field of Search 701/201, 202;

705/5, 6, 400; 707/10, 104; 709/217, 218,

219

(56) References Cited

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An airline travel planning system is described. The system includes a server computer executing a server process including a search process to search for set of pricing solutions in accordance with at least one destination and at least one origin. The search process represents the set of pricing solutions in the form of a directed acyclic graph. The system also includes a client computer executing a client process on the set of pricing solutions. The client process has a manipulation process that manipulates the set of pricing solutions in response to user preferences. Several processes are described including a process responsive to user preferences and to set of pricing solutions that provides pricing solutions sorted by said user preference, a process that sorts set of pricing solutions to produce a subset of said set of pricing solutions in accordance with user specified preferences, and a process that prunes from the directed acyclic graph nodes that are no longer contained within the subset of set of pricing solutions.

33 Claims, 33 Drawing Sheets