American Airlines To Develop New IT System To Replace Sabre

AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines, said Wednesday that it plans to scrap its computer system for a next-generation version centered around passenger data and built by Hewlett Packard Co.

The new technology will be rolled out over the next four years and will largely replace Sabre, the 50-year-old computer platform at the heart of American’s operations.

That early computer reservation system, created by Texas-based American and New York-based IBM Corp. in the 1950s, was largely adopted ? or copied ? by the rest of the airline industry and eventually spun off into a separate company.

“This is big news,” said Henry Harteveldt, travel analyst with Forrester Research Inc. “What American is doing is the equivalent of a brain transplant, heart transplant and a lot of plastic surgery, all simultaneously.”

But changing information technology at airlines rarely goes smoothly, given the size and complexity of their operations, noted aviation consultant Robert Mann.

Passengers have suffered myriad problems this decade, from kiosk meltdowns to lost reservations, as airlines tried to upgrade or install new technology.

Adding to the challenge for American: it plans to create a brand-new system with HP rather than install technology from the dozen or so vendors that cater to the airline industry.

Air Canada earlier this month announced that it was suspending work on Polaris, a new reservation system developed by ITA Software that was running about two years behind schedule.

“The track record on large-scale airline systems developed by so-called ‘next-gen’ vendors has been pretty dismal,” Mann said. “It’s been late and not-so-great.”

American officials are convinced they will change how airlines are run by employing state-of-the-art hardware and software.

The nation’s second-largest carrier, like its peers, has separate databases for reservations, frequent-flier programs, fares and operations, Harteveldt said.

But American plans to create a single database for all of its operations, built around passenger information rather than ticket transactions. Doing so will minimize systems crashes. The carrier will be able to use travel patterns as it tailors its marketing to individual customers, or to quickly identify service break-downs that they identify.

To control costs and minimize the shock to its system, American plans to tackle the overhaul in piecemeal fashion, installing one “module” at a time over a four-year stretch, Monte Ford, American’s chief information officer told reporters during a conference call Wednesday.

Many of the breakthroughs of the news system — faster processing speeds, greater flexibility and reliability — would not be noticeable to customers.

But the new platform would allow American to use social networking tools to help workers coping with massive delays at an airport share information with each other, and with passengers, Ford said.

Ford wouldn’t discuss how much American is spending on its new computer system, but analysts think its expenditures could easily run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We’ll certainly be looking at how capital expenditures change to get some insight into this,” Harteveldt said. “But American would not be investing in this if it were not providing tangible benefits to the rest of the company.”

Airlines Flight to Mumbai Delay Passenger Complains

Passengers of the newly launched air service for Mumbai by Kingfisher airlines have complained of inordinate delays, sources at the Ojhar airstrip said on Wednesday.

The flight (from Nashik), which was inaugurated by Maharashtra PWD minister Chaggan Bhujbal on November 17 is getting delayed by more than two hours for the last two days, which causing a lot of inconvinience to Mumbai-bound passengers, they said.

The air service between Mumbai and Nashik through Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Ojhar airstrip, 21 kms from here is not commercially viable as such services started earlier by four air service operators were closed down following poor response from passengers, they added.

Morever, passengers have to travel from Ojhar to Nashik all the way to catch the flight and complete other procedures at the Mumbai airport before heading to their destinations, which is easy to reach through other modes of transport in less time, they added.

British Airways Passenger Data Show Drift From Premium To Economy Class

The drift away from premium to economy class air travel has been reconfirmed by British Airways, which has registered another month of falling sales from first- and business-class passengers.

The airline saw premium-class traffic in August fall by 11.9 per cent year-on- year although “non-premium” economy-class custom edged up 1.3 per cent.

Total passengers carried during the busy month dipped 1.7 per cent year-on- year to 3.16m.

Passenger traffic on Asia-Pacific routes was down 13 per cent but there was a small increase on routes to the Americas. Passengers carried on short-to-medium-haul routes in the UK and Europe fell 2 per cent.

The monthly breakdown confirmed trends established this year as BA continued to grapple with a downturn in demand among business travellers.

The airline is also battling against competition from no-frills budget airlines on its less lucrative short-haul routes in Europe.

BA, which last month closed a £350m issue of convertible bonds to strengthen its balance sheet, saw some recovery in demand for cargo services, with cargo load kilometres down 5.4 per cent against a year-to-date decline of 9.2 per cent. The overall load factor on flights was 75.9 per cent, up from 75.1 per cent in July.

BA’s figures came as rival Ryanair announced it had carried 6.88m passengers across its low-cost network of European routes in August.

The expansion in passengers carried, up 19 per cent on August last year, was achieved as Ryanair maintained its load factor for the month at 90 per cent year on year.

Shares in BA closed up 2½p at 184p, while those in Ryanair finished 6.6 cents higher yesterday at €3.13.

*EasyJet is considering plans to close its East Midlands base and reduce its flying schedule at Luton by 20 per cent, placing as many as 230 jobs at risk, in order to redeploy assets to growth markets.

In July, Easyjet said that it would be one of the few airlines to remain profitable in the current year, although earnings would drop sharply, and reiterated its desire to build on that success by increasing capacity by 7.5 per cent a year over the medium term.

The low-cost airline has waged a long battle with Abertis, the Spanish operator of Luton, and Luton borough council, which owns the airport, over charges that it claims have risen 25 per cent in the past three years and are unsustainable.

Talks over the charges broke down in the past few weeks, prompting EasyJet’s management to look for ways to cut costs ahead of the winter months.

Luton borough council declined to comment but said it had done all it could “to work with EasyJet and other airlines to retain and grow their operations during this difficult time brought about by the worldwide recession”.

EasyJet also released statistics showing passenger numbers rose 4.7 per cent year-on-year in August and load factors from 91.3 per cent to 91.8 per cent. EasyJet shares closed up 0.3p at 315.8p.

44 percent Say Price Is Key Factor When Booking Flight

Price is the only consideration for the majority of travellers when booking a flight the latest poll by Arabian Business has found.

A total of 44.5 percent of people who took part in the online poll said that when booking a flight the only thing that mattered was how cheap it was.

They agreed with flydubai’s CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith, who predicted last week that the region’s budget airlines would see big growth in the coming years.

American Airlines Flight Number 49 Emergency Landing at Keflavik Airport, Iceland

Chemical fumes aboard an American Airlines Flight 49, with 145 people on board, forced an emergency landing Tuesday in Iceland.

Five crew members became ill as a result of chemical fumes in the cabin.

The plane which was traveling from Paris to Dallas-Ft. Worth managed to land safely just after 1345 GMT (9:45 a.m. EDT).

Keflavik Airport spokesman Fridthor Eydal said that they were investigating the cause of the fumes.

“They were apparently having some sort of problems with some sort of fumes in the cabin,” said spokesman Tim Smith for American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp.

He confirmed that either the maintenance people in Iceland would ascertain the cause of the problem or another plane would be sent from London.