Airline Information Technology

Development rational and processes The decision to try to develop what amounts to a real-time operating system for an airline is a potential business killer and correspondingly questionable. My fundamental arguments for doing it are: The SafetyJet business model is not a good fit for any established system that we're aware of. The one we liked best, built around a core reservation system that provided the foundation for Southwest Airlines' success and is now powering several other airlines to pre-eminence in their markets, seemed to require more than 100 ancillary systems and is dependent on MPE/3000 -- a product that HP has recently end-of-lifed. The vendor assures us that continuity will not be a problem and we accepted that, but it is my belief that good software reflects both the business it serves and the mentality of its developers. As companies using other major... (more)

EDS and Microsoft Announce Alliance for Airline SOA Products

EDS announced the signing of a comprehensive agreement with Microsoft around EDS airline reservations, flight operations and service oriented architecture products. With the announcement, EDS will use selected Microsoft tools, software and resources in the modernization and operations of its airline service oriented architecture (SOA) products. Microsoft will provide architecture specialists, advanced 24-hour support, a new model for software licensing, additional investment into the products and access to new customer channel management tools to form a truly unique go-to-market ... (more)

JetBlue Embraer ERJ-190 Flight From Chicago to New York JFK

http://twitter.com/fuatkircaali I see Simon Hradecky, the site editor of The Aviation Herald (www.avherald.com) reported this a few hours ago, about our JetBlue emergency landing experience on Saturday, November 21. "A JetBlue Embraer ERJ-190, registration N279JB performing flight B6-904 from Chicago O'Hare, IL to New York JFK, NY (USA) with 64 passengers and 4 crew, was on final visual approach to JFK's runway 31R descending through 2000 feet, when the crew reported they needed to abort the approach due to a slat/flap indication. The airplane climbed back up to 3000 feet and wa... (more)

Virtual case study: How an airline can find efficiency with Unix

(LinuxWorld) -- Editor's note: The following scenario is that of a consultant brought in early in the business planning cycle for a new airline. Unlike the other articles in this series, this example does not reflect the author's real-world consulting experience. Murphy worked for an airline, but nothing on this scale. SafetyJet is a wholly imaginary company constructed solely to illustrate three outstanding Unix characteristics: Smart display explained A typical smart display has a powerful graphics engine and runs Java/OS, Windows, or X clients, often concurrently. The image sh... (more)

The Long Hot Summer of e-Commerce

Smell of change was in the air, but summer holiday season promises further sensational developments: travel and tourism sector has become the number one in e-commerce market. The tourism sector share in the Internet market, has become the most important, exceeding 50% of unique users. Airlines, shipping companies and car hire, have invested considerable resources on the web, as did the tour operators and travel agents linked to these ones. The leading sectors of e-commerce tourism are the flight tickets, which boasts 60% of the total share, and this is mainly due to the growth of ... (more)