Amadeus vs Galileo: GDS Comparison
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A global distribution system, or GDS, is the computerised reservation platform that connects travel agents to airline inventory, hotel beds, car hire, and rail in real time. When an agent books a flight, the request travels through a GDS to the airline's inventory system, the seat is allocated, and a PNR is created. Two of the largest agency GDS platforms are Amadeus, headquartered in Madrid, and Galileo, now part of Travelport. Travelport also owns Worldspan and historically operated the Apollo system used mainly in North America. Despite serving the same fundamental purpose, the two systems have different origins, different geographic strengths, and meaningfully different display conventions that affect how you read the output they produce.
A short history of each system
Amadeus was founded in 1987 by four European airlines — Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa, and Scandinavian Airlines — as a jointly owned neutral GDS. It began operating in the early 1990s and expanded across Europe, then into Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Today Amadeus IT Group is a publicly listed company trading on the Madrid stock exchange. It serves airlines directly through its departure-control and reservations systems as well as travel agencies through the Amadeus terminal. Because of its European roots, Amadeus is particularly dominant among agencies in Western Europe, Scandinavia, the Middle East, and much of Asia-Pacific.
Galileo has two roots. Apollo was United Airlines' reservation system, launched in 1971 and later run by Covia, a United spin-off. Galileo itself was formed in 1987 by a consortium of European airlines, including British Airways, KLM, Alitalia and Swissair. In 1992 Covia acquired Galileo and combined the two businesses as Galileo International. After further changes of ownership, Galileo became part of Travelport, which bought the rival Worldspan system in 2007. Today Galileo and Worldspan are both Travelport systems.
Side-by-side comparison
| Attribute | Amadeus | Galileo (Travelport) |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Amadeus IT Group (publicly listed) | Travelport (private equity backed) |
| Origin | Founded 1987 by Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa and SAS | Founded 1987 by a European airline consortium; merged with United's Apollo (Covia) in 1992 |
| Primary regions | Europe, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Latin America | Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa; North America (with Apollo historically) |
| Command style | Short cryptic entries, e.g. AN (availability), SS (sell), RT (retrieve) | Short cryptic entries with different conventions, e.g. A (availability), *R (display the booking) |
| Time format | 24-hour (e.g. 0240, 1430) | 24-hour in Galileo segment lines (e.g. 1255, 2305); Apollo-style displays use 12-hour with A/P (e.g. 0825A) |
| Segment status | HK, HL, TK, UN — same two-letter codes as Galileo | Same two-letter codes; minor display layout differences |
| Display feel | Every PNR element is numbered in one sequence: names, segments, then other elements | Names are numbered by surname group (1.1, 1.2); segments have their own numbering (1., 2.) |
| Common in | European agencies, Middle East carriers, many Asian markets | North American agencies, some European and Asian markets |
Which system will you encounter?
The GDS your agency uses depends primarily on geography, the agency's historical contracts, and the host airline relationships it has. European full-service agencies opened before the early 2000s are more often on Amadeus; North American agencies more often on Apollo or Galileo. Middle Eastern agencies split between the two, with a number of Gulf carriers having particularly close integrations with Amadeus.
From a passenger or reader perspective, the GDS distinction rarely matters for the content of the booking — the same airlines, fares, and seat inventory are available through both systems. What changes is the format of the output. When a traveller forwards you a raw PNR or itinerary printout from their agent, you may receive either format. Some clues: a header line starting with RP/ and one numbering sequence for every element means Amadeus. Names numbered 1.1, 1.2 and a separate vendor locator line suggest Travelport (Galileo). Times ending in A or P suggest an Apollo-style Travelport display. Carrier-issued itineraries formatted by the airline's own system may differ from either.
Reading output from either system
Both Amadeus and Galileo pack all the essential segment information — carrier, flight number, booking class, route, status, and times — into a single line. The fields are in a similar order in both systems, but the conventions for times and day offsets differ enough to cause confusion if you assume one system's format while reading the other's.
Both systems normally show local times in 24-hour format (0240 for 02:40, 1430 for 14:30), so the time fields themselves usually look the same. Apollo-style Travelport displays are the exception: they show 12-hour times with an A or P suffix (0240A, 0900P for 21:00), which is easy to misread if you are used to 24-hour times. Check every overnight segment for a later-day arrival, however your display marks it. The status codes are shared across both systems because they come from a common IATA reservations messaging standard: HK for confirmed, TK for a schedule change, UN when the flight no longer operates. For a full walkthrough of each format, see the dedicated reading guides linked below.
For agents who work across both systems, the most reliable approach is to paste any raw GDS output into a formatting tool rather than reading it raw. Automated formatters can detect the display convention, convert times to a consistent format, and flag day offsets — eliminating the risk of misreading a departure time and booking a passenger for the wrong flight.
FlyTix automatically detects whether a pasted segment display comes from Amadeus or Galileo — you do not need to identify the source system before formatting.
Examples on this page use made-up data. Spotted an error or something that differs in your GDS? Send us a correction.