Lufthansa Systems Teams with United Airlines to Manage Codeshare Connections
- SchedConnect adds another Star Alliance member to its user base
Raunheim, Germany | March 8, 2016– Lufthansa Systems announced today that global carrier United Airlines will use its SchedConnect IT solution for codeshare management. The two companies recently signed a long-term agreement to this effect. This solution will enable United Airlines to optimize its codeshare management, lower costs and increase revenues.
“We handle nearly 5,000 flights worldwide every day. To help ensure we are able to continue to provide reliable service to our customers, we need dependable software that meets our demands. Lufthansa Systems impressed us with the broad functionality and high quality of SchedConnect,” said Sam Patel, United’s managing director flight profitability and schedule analysis.
SchedConnect is currently the most technologically advanced system of its kind. The solution ensures a high degree of automation by processing schedule data from around 25 customers and their codeshare partners to calculate the optimal codeshare connections for the customers’ current schedules on a daily basis. If a minimum connecting time is violated due to a schedule change or if a partner flight is canceled, SchedConnect assigns the marketing flight number to another suitable connecting flight operated by the partner. Changes are sent through the reservation systems to travel agents and customers as well as to the operations and passenger-related systems of the airlines involved.
“We are delighted to have signed United Airlines as a new customer to join the growing SchedConnect community. Now all of the airlines in our clients’ trans-Atlantic joint venture (Lufthansa – together with Austrian Airlines, SWISS and Brussels Airlines – Air Canada and United Airlines) are using our codeshare management solution, which further optimizes the management of codeshare flights between all of these members,” said Alexander Ottes, Director Sales and Account Management North America at Lufthansa Systems.
To arrange codeshare connections, SchedConnect uses a database which currently holds around 39 million flights for 140 different airlines. In January 2016 alone, 34 million schedule changes were managed with the help of SchedConnect.
Inflight connectivity is about getting data to and from a passenger’s laptop, or getting their voice to the right ear, wherever that might be. The technology behind it may not be interesting to passengers, but it is technological developments, such as TriaGnoSys’ new GSM roaming solution, that drive increased efficiencies, reduce costs and thereby enable airlines to offer more connectivity to more people.”