 "'IT Systems Facilitate Success Of Airline Code Sharing Partnerships'")
In a first of its kind alliance in the Indian aviation industry, Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines have joined hands to cross-leverage mutual capacities in a host of operational areas.
This alliance between the forerunners of Indian aviation will include code-shares on domestic and international flights, Interline/Special Prorate agreements, joint fuel management, common ground handling, cross selling of flight inventories, cross utilisation of crew and technical resources and reciprocity in Jet Privilege and King Club frequent flyer programmes.
As Kingfisher and Jet vie to capture consumer flyer miles, it must not be forgotten that there are a number of areas where IT can play a pivotal role to carry this and other such alliances forward in the desired direction. Code sharing is a prime example of this. Code sharing helps airlines to pool and share their resources, thus driving down costs. It expands the airline’s destination network and complements marketing efforts.
Speaking to Biztech 2.0, R N Moorthy, GM – IT, Jet Airways, said, “IT systems have a major role to play in the success of code sharing partnerships between airlines. The passenger experience is made seamless by the ability of the systems used by airlines to exchange information in the areas of ticketing, passenger boarding etc. Information is also exchanged between the frequent flyer systems of the airlines to ensure benefits are mutually passed to their customers.”
Commenting on the nature of IT systems that can be used as a hosted model between airlines, he said, “IT is considered as a common resource in the airline industry and most companies use common reservation systems, departure control systems etc. SABRE, AMADEUS Systems are examples of applications, which are often used by airlines as a hosted model”.
Flight planning systems help airlines to optimise usage of fuel and are again commonly deployed by most IT-savvy airlines. In India the infrastructural problems negate the advantage of the optimised flight plan as airplanes are often made to circle the airport before landing (especially at Mumbai and Delhi).
The information exchange between airlines occurs through messages, which are standardised across the industry. The messaging standards are set by IATA and followed by airline solution providers.