Inventing RM: How it felt to write a revenue management (RM) system without precedents the scene

Abstract

Looking back from the vantage point of 2015 with its rich, vibrant RM community and healthy RM dialog, it is hard to imagine how isolated early practitioners of RM were. There existed many fewer experts, very little background literature, almost no primary research and, significantly, no Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management. The computer tools were primitive. There were no PCs or even portable laptops, and no dedicated RM IT resources within most airline organizations. Computer languages and particularly input/output protocols were not supportive to the early efforts – there was a predominance of very sequential coding languages, loops within loops. Those who set out to write early systems even for major carriers lived in isolation, trying to invent theory on the fly and/or to replicate the best of the simplistic manual heuristics by which RM analysts were trying to come to grips with an increasingly complex environment. The author, who handwrote (that is, on paper) the code to a US major carrier’s first ‘system’ one night on a long flight to Hawaii, will (attempt to) recreate the feel of the era when RM practitioners were ‘flying without instruments’ …