How to Read a Galileo / Travelport Entry
5 min read
Galileo — now part of Travelport alongside the older Apollo terminal — is one of the world's major global distribution systems. If you have ever switched from an Amadeus workstation to a Galileo terminal, the first thing you notice is that the segment lines look subtly but importantly different: Galileo uses 12-hour AM/PM notation for times rather than 24-hour, it marks overnight arrivals with a plus-day offset directly on the segment, and it wraps airline-supplied record locators in a distinct vendor-locator block. Once you understand those conventions, a Galileo display is straightforward to read.
A complete Galileo segment display
Here is a representative two-segment Galileo display for one passenger travelling from London Heathrow to New York JFK and returning a week later.
1.1SMITH/JOHN MR
1. BA 112 Y 20AUG LHRJFK HK1 0825A 1130A O E
2. BA 113 Y 27AUG JFKLHR HK1 0900P 0830A +1 E
** VENDOR LOCATOR - BA/ABC123 **Decoding the segment line field by field
The first segment, BA 112 on 20 August in booking class Y from LHR to JFK, breaks down as follows:
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Party number | 1.1 | Passenger reference: party 1, traveller 1 |
| Segment no. | 1. | Position of this segment in the itinerary |
| Carrier | BA | Marketing airline IATA code — British Airways |
| Flight no. | 112 | Flight number; quoted as BA112 |
| Booking class | Y | Reservation booking designator — full economy |
| Date | 20AUG | Departure date — 20 August |
| City pair | LHRJFK | Board point LHR (London Heathrow) → off point JFK (New York) |
| Status | HK1 | HK = confirmed; 1 = one seat held |
| Departs | 0825A | 08:25 AM local time at origin |
| Arrives | 1130A | 11:30 AM local time at destination |
| Connection indicator | O | Non-stop or connection indicator (varies by display version) |
| Ticket type | E | E = electronic ticket (e-ticket) |
Reading Galileo 12-hour AM/PM times
Unlike Amadeus, which displays departure and arrival in 24-hour format (for example 0240 for 02:40 in the morning), Galileo appends an A or P suffix to every time. The letter A stands for AM — the time falls in the morning between 00:01 and 12:00 noon. The letter P stands for PM — the time falls in the afternoon or evening between 12:01 and midnight. Converting is straightforward: strip the suffix, and for PM times add twelve hours to any value below 12. So 0825A is 08:25 in the morning, 1130A is 11:30 in the morning, and 0900P is 09:00 PM which becomes 21:00 in 24-hour notation. Midnight itself is displayed as 1200A and noon as 1200P.
The practical consequence is that a Galileo booking confirmation reads quite differently from an Amadeus one even for the same flight. If you are cross-checking a PNR from a different system or quoting times verbally to a passenger, always convert the Galileo times before comparing — a discrepancy that looks like a booking error is often just the AM/PM-to-24-hour difference.
The +1 day-offset marker
Look at segment 2: BA 113 departs JFK at 0900P (21:00) on 27 August and arrives LHR at 0830A +1. The +1 immediately after the arrival time means the aircraft lands on the day following departure — that is, 28 August. This is an overnight transatlantic return flight, which is exactly what you would expect. Galileo places the day offset directly after the arrival time so that the segment line is self-contained; you do not need to calculate the elapsed time yourself.
Day offsets higher than +1 do appear on very long-haul ultra-low-frequency routes, though they are rare. A +2 would mean the aircraft arrives two days after departure. No offset marker — as on segment 1 — means arrival is on the same calendar date as departure in local time at the destination.
Party numbering
The name line at the top reads 1.1SMITH/JOHN MR. The first digit before the full stop is the party number: this is passenger group 1. The digit after the full stop identifies the individual within that group: traveller 1. If there were two passengers travelling together, you would see 1.1 and 1.2 on consecutive name lines. A separate second party, perhaps a business companion on the same PNR, would be numbered 2.1. This two-part numbering lets the system associate each segment confirmation individually with a specific passenger, which is important when, for example, one traveller is waitlisted and another is confirmed on the same flight.
Vendor locators
The line ** VENDOR LOCATOR - BA/ABC123 ** appears below the segments. A vendor locator is the airline's own booking reference for this itinerary — the code that the airline's own system (in this case British Airways) assigned when Galileo transmitted the booking. It is distinct from the Galileo record locator, which is the GDS-side reference. When you call British Airways directly, or when you check in at an airport kiosk, the airline will look up the reservation using its own reference, so it is the vendor locator you give to the passenger for self-service check-in. Galileo wraps it in double asterisks and the VENDOR LOCATOR label so it stands out visually in a busy terminal display.
A PNR can carry vendor locators from multiple airlines if the itinerary contains segments operated by different carriers. Each airline's locator appears on its own line in the same double-asterisk format, identified by its IATA code before the slash.
FlyTix automatically converts Galileo AM/PM times to 24-hour format and labels arrival-day offsets clearly, so you can share a clean itinerary without manually translating the display.