Definition
An airline schedule vendor is a commercial provider that collects, formats, and distributes airline flight schedule data — including planned departure and arrival times, routes, aircraft types, and operating carriers — to systems and users that need that information, such as the FAA's traffic flow management tools, airport operators, and travel distribution platforms.
Plain English
A company that gathers airline timetable information and supplies it to the people and computer systems that need to know when and where flights are scheduled to operate.
Context Anchor
Seen in FAA acronym and abbreviation lists, and sometimes in aviation data-system or operations planning material; it is not a normal cockpit callout.
Derivation
Vendor' comes from the Latin 'vendere,' meaning 'to sell.' Here it simply means a supplier or provider of data — in this case, the supplier of airline schedule information.
Why Pilots Care
If a pilot sees ASV in FAA material, it identifies a source of airline schedule data, not a clearance, weather condition, navigation aid, or aircraft system.
Intuition Check
Do not read vendor here as someone selling tickets or goods at the airport. In this context, a vendor is a company or service that provides schedule data.
Example Sentence 1
Traffic flow planners rely on data from an airline schedule vendor to anticipate the volume of flights expected at major airports each day.
Example Sentence 2
Dispatch confirmed the departure time against the ASV before releasing the flight.