Qantas first to use Amadeus' Altéa Plan

Qantas has become the first airline in the world to process its yield, pricing and inventory via Amadeus' Altéa Plan.

Altéa Plan is the inventory management element of Amadeus’ portfolio of new generation Customer Management Systems for airlines, which also includes Altéa Sell, a community platform for multi-channel sales and reservations, and Altéa Fly for departure control.

The entire inventory for Qantas and 16 other airlines hosted on its inventory system was successfully moved to Altéa Plan, paving the way for major improvements in Qantas’ business technology processes.

Moving Qantas’ 600,000 flights and 1.8 million passenger bookings to the new system came after two years of meticulous planning and system development, followed by a 4-month migration process, coordinated by 150 IT experts in three countries – Australia, France and Germany. The day after the implementation was completed, Qantas carried out its largest schedule change ever. The process, which would have taken days on Qantas’ previous system, took just four hours.

Fiona Balfour, Chief Information Officer and Executive General Manager Qantas Business Services, described the move as “a remarkable step forward that provided ‘the new heart’ for the airline’s inventory management systems.”

Amadeus, Qantas and British Airways built Altéa Plan from the ground up. Going back to the drawing board to develop an inventory system for a new era of aviation that had not been attempted since the seventies.

Altéa Plan determines which seat is sold to whom and at what rate, by managing distribution of the airlines’ schedules, flight availability and advanced seating to the Amadeus GDS, as well as the airline’s other distribution systems. “A key feature of Altéa Plan is its ability to maximise the sales opportunities for all our international and domestic flights, by being able to more intelligently analyse the customer data flow,” says Balfour.

The successful move to Altéa Plan is the second phase in a project to provide Qantas and other airlines with an unprecedented, fully-integrated Customer Management System. “Altéa gives Qantas the delivery mechanism to offer a personalised, distinctive service to our customers,” adds Balfour.

In 2002, Qantas became the fourth largest of over 140 airlines around the globe using Altéa Sell as their internal sales systems. The airline is also using Amadeus’ online booking engine, e-Travel Planitgo to power qantas.com, which has processed over 6 million online bookings for Qantas, since 2000. In the final phase, Qantas will adopt the new generation departure control system, Altéa Fly.

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