System and method for private charter aircraft auction
First Claim
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1. A system for auctioning private charter aircraft, where a customer enters a trip itinerary request and where aircraft providers submit bids on the trip itinerary, the system comprising:
- an online auction interface to receive the trip itinerary request from the customer;
an aircraft availability mechanism to obtain, from an aircraft availability database comprising aircraft availability information, a set of available aircraft and corresponding aircraft providers to serve the trip itinerary request;
a refinement mechanism to eliminate some of the set of available aircraft based on suitability criteria to produce a smaller set of available aircraft for the trip itinerary request;
an alert mechanism to alert the aircraft providers corresponding to the smaller set without alerting the aircraft providers corresponding to the eliminated available aircraft; and
an online bidding interface to receive a set of bid submissions from a responding set of aircraft providers from among the alerted aircraft providers, the responding set of aircraft providers being those aircraft providers corresponding to the smaller set that voluntarily choose to respond to the alert by accessing the online bidding interface.
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Abstract
In an online private aircraft charter auction, a customer enters a trip itinerary on a customer interface. Available aircraft are determined from a database of available aircraft information. Available aircraft are eliminated to produce a subset of the available aircraft which are suitable candidates for the given trip itinerary. These aircraft providers are alerted to the trip itinerary request and invited to submit a bid on the trip itinerary via a bidding interface.
34 Citations
52 Claims
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1. A system for auctioning private charter aircraft, where a customer enters a trip itinerary request and where aircraft providers submit bids on the trip itinerary, the system comprising:
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an online auction interface to receive the trip itinerary request from the customer;
an aircraft availability mechanism to obtain, from an aircraft availability database comprising aircraft availability information, a set of available aircraft and corresponding aircraft providers to serve the trip itinerary request;
a refinement mechanism to eliminate some of the set of available aircraft based on suitability criteria to produce a smaller set of available aircraft for the trip itinerary request;
an alert mechanism to alert the aircraft providers corresponding to the smaller set without alerting the aircraft providers corresponding to the eliminated available aircraft; and
an online bidding interface to receive a set of bid submissions from a responding set of aircraft providers from among the alerted aircraft providers, the responding set of aircraft providers being those aircraft providers corresponding to the smaller set that voluntarily choose to respond to the alert by accessing the online bidding interface. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
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22. A method for auctioning private charter aircraft using aircraft availability information, where a customer enters a trip itinerary request online and aircraft providers submit bids on the trip itinerary, the method comprising:
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receiving, at an online auction interface, trip itinerary requests from customers;
obtaining, from an aircraft availability database comprising aircraft availability information, a set of available aircraft and corresponding aircraft providers to serve the trip itinerary request;
eliminating some of the set of available aircraft based on suitability criteria to produce a smaller set of available aircraft for the trip itinerary request;
alerting the aircraft providers corresponding to the smaller set without alerting the aircraft providers corresponding to the eliminated available aircraft; and
receiving, at an online bidding interface, a set of bid submissions from a responding set of aircraft providers from among the alerted aircraft providers, the responding set of aircraft providers being those aircraft providers corresponding to the smaller set that voluntarily choose to respond to the alert by accessing the online bidding interface. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44)
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45. An alert apparatus for alerting aircraft providers when they are a suitable candidate to place online bids in response to a customer trip itinerary of a private charter aircraft customer, the alert apparatus comprising:
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a suitability determination mechanism to determine for the customer trip itinerary, from a database containing aircraft availability information regarding the availability of private charter aircraft and based on suitability criteria, a limited set of available aircraft and corresponding aircraft providers; and
an alerting mechanism to alert the corresponding aircraft providers and invite the corresponding aircraft providers to submit bids on the customer trip itinerary. - View Dependent Claims (46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51)
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52. A computer readable medium containing program instructions for auctioning private charter aircraft comprising:
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program instructions for receiving itinerary requests from customers with an online auction interface;
program instructions for obtaining, from an aircraft availability database comprising aircraft availability information, a set of available aircraft and corresponding aircraft providers to serve a trip itinerary request from an aircraft availability mechanism;
program instructions for eliminating some of the set of available aircraft to produce a smaller set of available aircraft for the trip itinerary request from a refinement mechanism;
program instructions for alerting the aircraft providers corresponding to the smaller set without alerting the aircraft providers corresponding to the eliminated available aircraft from an alert mechanism;
program instructions for receiving a set of bid submissions from a responding set of aircraft providers from among the alerted aircraft providers from an online bidding interface, the responding set of aircraft providers being those aircraft providers corresponding to the smaller set that voluntarily choose to respond to the alert by accessing the online bidding interface.
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Specification