摘要 |
Methods and systems for virtual inflight reservation and a reservation manager for use therein allow passengers to effectively reserve post-flight resources while in-flight, and without having connectivity to a terrestrial communication network. In exemplary operation, before departure, a flight is allocated certain resources and a temporary hold is placed in a terrestrial reservation system on these resources. While in-flight, passengers reserve desired resources within the temporarily held resources. These reservations are“virtual”since they have not yet been processed by the terrestrial reservation system, although the temporary hold guarantees that the post-flight resource will be available when the reservation is later processed by the terrestrial reservation system. After the flight arrives at its destination, the reservations are processed by the terrestrial reservation system.
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