Change of flight
Change of flight
The events of September the 11th changed the world. For some the personal cost was tragic. For the business community the ramifications of an attack on the United States of America and its culture are far reaching. Amongst the industries still feeling the affects from that day in September is the airline business.
Australia’s airline industry has undergone huge transitions in the past year and a half and the way information is being managed in the ever moving airline industry is changing too. Image & Data Manager takes a look at the shifting face of information management in Australia’s airlines.
Rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the Ansett failure is REX, or Regional Express. Rex is a re-birth of Hazleton and Kendall Airlines, which were bought out by Ansett prior to the collapse. REX fits into the niche market of serving 35 regional cities, and competes with the regional Qantas service. Its 28 aircraft are competing with Qantas on price and, like Virgin Blue, REX is using technology to achieve the low prices that bring in the customers.
With many REX passengers coming from rural towns and cities the airline felt it needed to help its customers. The RightNow Technologies eService Centre collaboration technology means that a customer will not have to log-off and make a telephone call to rectify the problem they are having with the Web Site. A live collaboration application enables customers to use online chat with the REX call centre workers to solve problems they have with booking their tickets online.
”From research we’ve undertaken, we know that doing business online is significantly more cost effective and much more convenient for customers,” Hans van Pelt, REX’s general manager for IT said.
REX has a Microsoft .NET based Web Site that is hosted at Web Central. The hosted solution was chosen to ensure load management, Mr van Pelt said in a recent interview. Interestingly, the RightNow solution is a Java based applet that helps customers use a .NET Web Site.
The RightNow application manages knowledge on the Web site by calculating the frequency information is required by a customer.
With new leaner challenges in the local market, a difficult international flights market and the depressed state of the Australian dollar, Qantas has also had to modify the way it handles information to stay competitive.
In November Qantas backed away from the incumbent QUBE reservation systems that it has been operating for 30 years to the newer (15 years old) Amadeus system, which has been developed by leading European airlines, including Air France, Lufthansa, SAS and Iberia.
Qantas estimates that moving to Amadeus will cut the cost of application support and development. The move is part of its Triton project, a strategy to move over reservation, inventory and departure control to Amadeus.
Up to 1.5 million passenger records and 1.98 million e-tickets were migrated from the QUBE application to Amadeus.
Further changes to the way the airline manages information could be on the cards if the proposed alliance between Qantas and Air New Zealand takes place. Air New Zealand is well known for having a small IT department, while Qantas has 900 permanent staff and 300 contractors.