ATPCO has donated its historic collection of
1,588 volumes of bound fare, rule and route books to the Library
of Congress, one of the world’s largest libraries.
The collection will enable future generations to
see how flights were sold, ticketed and distributed from the 1940s
until the dawn of the internet age.
Since 1965 ATPCO, formally known as the Airline
Tariff Publishing Company, has collected and distributed the
world’s fare and fare-related data to the global ecosystem so
travel agents, airlines, GDS and sales
channels can sell airline tickets to the public.
Before the
digital age, such fares, rules and routes were published and
printed at ATPCO and distributed around the world in large bound
books.
This large collection contains tariffs and rules
for cargo, military, passenger and joint passenger travel for
domestic, international and regional travel up to as late as
2004.
This important record of the evolution of air
passenger travel, through the lens of fares and tariffs, will be a
significant addition to the Library’s Science, Technology &
Business Division.
The library is now processing and cataloging the collection
and once that
work is complete, members of the public will be able to request
volumes through the library’s online catalog and view the
materials in the Science & Business Reading Room.
“The entire ATPCO company and I are so proud to
have donated a piece of aviation history to such a respected
institution as the Library of Congress. Knowing that it will live
on for years to come and be available to the public to view is an
exhilarating thing for us ‘Aviation Geeks’,” said ATPCO’s
President and CEO, Alex Zoghlin. “It’s a little crazy to think how much has changed
since the 1990s in the way the whole travel industry does
business. The old way of printing and shipping fare books around
the world that were valid for months at a time seems so archaic by
today’s standard, where a digital fare can be updated hourly
online. We are so happy this part of history is curated by the
Library of Congress.”
Before online booking websites enabled
consumers to compare and purchase tickets directly on the
internet, airlines would give their flight and fare data to ATPCO, which became the go-to clearinghouse in the travel
industry.
This is the first time that the public will have
access to the company’s tariff books. Researchers, aviation and
aeronautics historians, educators and academics, students and
anyone interested in accessing the collection will be able to
access this information to gain further knowledge of the
commercial air travel industry.
“This collection provides an enormous amount of
data that can be used by researchers to examine the airline
industry during the 20th century. This unique collection
complements other materials on aeronautics held at the Library of
Congress, so I’m excited that these volumes have become part of
the library’s permanent collection,” said Natalie Burclaff,
section head of business reference in the Library’s Science,
Technology & Business Division.
