On top of myriad concerns already being debated
(BTNonline, Feb. 12), sources said technical challenges to garnering additional passenger data for the planned computer assisted passenger prescreening system not only have gone unstudied, but may be so immense that implementation of CAPPS II before this summer is impossible.
"It's a little bit of a Y2K problem," said Tom DePasquale, president and CEO of corporate self-booking tool provider of Outtask Inc., describing the challenge for global distribution systems to "claim some space" in their passenger name records to make room for data that, for the moment, is not required for a reservationist to end or save a record. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning to mandate the collection of full name, home address, home phone and date of birth.
"For some systems, it's there," said Dianna Hays, director of development for data consolidator Prism Group Inc. and a former Sabre Inc. product developer. "But until the mandate (from DHS) comes down, we don't know whether there is enough space to accommodate all those fields."
"The GDSs would need to make these fields required, similar to passenger name, phone, form of payment, et cetera, and educate the agencies on the new formats," said Steve Reynolds, executive vice president of sales and client services at TRX Inc. "It will take a while to program the GDSs and for agencies to figure it out."
American Civil Liberties Union technology and liberty program director Barry Steinhardt yesterday cited Edward Hasbrouck, a travel agent and traveler advocate, as the source of one estimate that reprogramming systems could cost up to $1 billion. Pressed to back up the number, Steinhardt said, "The truth is, we don't know, but before we ask an entire industry to rebuild itself, we should find out. The industry has not been engaged in a discussion."
Hasbrouck came up with the $1 billion estimate by extrapolating from a $164 million estimate last year by the International Air Transport Association--which it called "extremely conservative"--on the cost of collecting passenger data for international flights at checkin with associated modifications to the airlines' host reservations systems, as part of a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service proposal that Hasbrouck called "parallel to but more limited" than CAPPS II. It related to the Advance Passenger Information System co-developed by INS and the U.S. Customs Service.
"But that IATA estimate does not address what CAPPS II would, which includes modifications at every intermediary layer of the distribution system," Hasbrouck said. "All the application programming interfaces have to be modified, starting with the airline interline messaging protocols, then the airlines' host systems, the GDSs, then the third-party software with their user interfaces, such as corporate booking tools."
Hasbrouck said that even these challenges leave out the facts that many business travelers simply walk up to buy a ticket and do not make reservations; group reservations often are made without using names; travelers can have multiple "home addresses" or, in the case of continuously flying consultants, no address at all; "full names" often exceed the space granted them in the PNRs or contain complicating characters; and more.
"Altogether, collecting and delivering the proposed data in a standardized format cannot take place in less than several years," Hasbrouck claimed.
GDS companies face the added complications of drastic changes to their roles in the industry resulting from a transformation of the business and deregulation by the U.S. Department of Transportation--meaning they may be reluctant to throw a ton of money at their systems as we know them today. Those investing to completely rebuild the technology inside the GDSs include Sabre, which recently said it would "continue to invest" in the next-generation technology platform it announced in 2001
(BTN, Sept. 3, 2001).
"Why should the GDSs invest millions of dollars in systems that maybe no one will be using in the future?" asked Prism's Hays. "The GDSs are waiting for the government to force them to do this, things are very volatile right now, and people are not making any decisions until they're told what to do."
The needs for CAPPS II represent "another reason that we will see the rapid abandonment of the legacy airline-based GDS and GDS systems--because it becomes cheaper and faster to build new than to rebuild," said Richard Eastman, president of travel technology provider The Eastman Group. "But until there is a consensus among the governments as to what information can legally be obtained under privacy laws and mandated under security needs, the present systems are going to have to cope. The ability to cope with the current specifications exist within all of the current GDS and airline systems with which I am familiar. The cost to build these specified structures into the hierarchical structures of these legacy platforms would be very expensive--more than just high."
As for the GDS companies, Hasbrouck said, they "are aware that their role and the abilities they would have, if unrestricted, would not withstand public scrutiny, so their main goal right now is to stay out of the spotlight."
One GDS company spokesperson agreed, calling "loaded" a question about the technical challenges to modifying the PNR data to serve CAPPS II. Another public relations representative called the same question anything but innocuous, reverting to a stock statement that, "We haven't been asked to disclose any customer data." Two of the four GDS firms did not return messages left yesterday about the issue.
Cendant Travel Distribution Division chairman and CEO Sam Katz last November said he wished he could answer a question from Hasbrouck about CAPPS II, but could not because it was no more than "an idea."
DHS did not immediately respond today to a request for additional information, but a statement released on the heels of a critical General Accounting Office report about CAPPS II indicated a less aggressive implementation schedule than the spring testing and summer implementation DHS had discussed: "CAPPS II is scheduled to be implemented after testing and after Congressional requirements are met."