Official Airline Guide
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| Type of business | Private company |
|---|---|
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Founded | 1929, Luton, England |
| Headquarters | Luton, England |
| Area served | Europe, North America, Asia, Australasia and Latin America |
| Key people | Phil Callow, CEO |
| Industry | Aviation, Travel |
| Parent | AXIO Data Group |
| Website | www.oag.com [1] www.flightview.com [2] |
| Current status | Active |
OAG is an air travel intelligence company based in United Kingdom. It provides digital information and applications to the world's airlines, airports, government agencies and travel-related service companies. OAG is best known for its airline schedules database which holds future and historical flight details for more than 900 airlines and over 4,000 airports.
It holds an extensive flight status and day-of-travel database in the aviation market and provides analytical tools to assess air travel trends.
Headquartered in the UK, OAG serves the air travel community from its global network of offices situated in the UK, United States, Singapore, Japan and China.
The OAG business dates back to 1853 when it first published the ABC Alphabetical Railway Guide, later to inspire Agatha Christie’s novel The ABC Murders. The origin of the OAG brand dates back to 1929 when the "Official Aviation Guide Of The Airways" was first published in February 1929 in the United States, listing 35 airlines offering a total of 300 flights. After the Guide was taken over by a rival publication in 1948, the September issue carried the OAG title for the first time. The "ABC World Airways Guide" containing maps and tips for travellers was first published in the UK in 1946. The integration of the ABC and OAG brands occurred following the acquisition of OAG Inc. in 1993 by Reed Elsevier which already owned ABC International. In August 1996 all products from the combined ABC and OAG businesses were rebranded as OAG.
In 1958 advances in computer technology enabled flight schedules to be sorted and presented by city pair, instead of under separate sections for each airline timetable. This Quick Reference Edition initially included North American flights; starting in 1962 a separate International Quick Reference Edition covered the rest of the world. The two Timetable Editions continued in the traditional format for several more years; the last Worldwide Timetable Edition was March 1969.
In 1962 OAG began providing data to the first computer reservations systems and produced its first customised timetable for airlines. That year, it was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet. In 1970 the OAG Pocket Flight Guide was published, enabling business travellers to have a pocket-sized resource of flight timetables to take with them. This is still published today, in four regional versions. OAG participated in the development of the IATA Standard Schedules Information Manual (SSIM) for the interchange of airline schedules data. This was established in 1972 and is still the primary source of protocols and formats for the global airline industry. The OAG Electronic Edition was launched in 1983. This was OAG's first online travel planning tool, containing both flight and fare information and available via more than 20 system operators including Compuserve, Dow Jones and Viewtron. Additional databases (weather, arrival/departure information) were added in 1988. That year, Dun & Bradstreet sold OAG to Maxwell Communications. The company produced the industry’s first PC-based travel planning tool on CD-ROM in 1991, which was so revolutionary that it was supplied with a plug-in CD drive. OAG launched its pioneering analytical tool in 1998, and also its first browser-based travel information product. The Swedish CAA became its first internet timetable customer and the following year Cathay Pacific became the first airline to give its Frequent Flyer Club members online access to OAG Travel Information System through its website. As an early adopter of wireless technology, OAG made its flight information available on the Palm VII wireless organizer in 1999, followed a few months later by its first WAP mobile phone application.
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