Sister carriers Air France and KLM
claimed last Friday to have launched the first airline mobile application that
allows travelers to re-book flexible tickets for a different flight. Air
France-KLM said the facility is available only to passengers on tickets that
can be modified without charge but will be extended by the end of 2010 to
tickets that are modifiable for an additional fee. Air France-KLM also said it
will be possible to buy tickets through the apps by year-end.
The announcement highlights how
mobile applications are making it increasingly easy for corporate travelers to
make independent changes to travel plans even if they have originally booked through
a managed distribution channel. At the NBTA Europe conference in Lisbon earlier
this month, managing director Paul Tilstone said the volcanic ash crisis threw
up examples of travelers contacting airlines directly to amend bookings but
those changes not being fed into travel management companies’ global
distribution systems. As a result, TMCs lost track of travelers’ whereabouts.
An Air France spokeswoman said
flight changes through its mobile app would be fed back into the GDSs. However,
Norman Gage, director of business travel for Advantage, a consortium of United
Kingdom-based travel agencies, told BTN
that airlines that update amendments from travelers on their own reservation
systems do not always hand off the data to the TMCs’ GDSs. "We’ve had a
meeting to discuss this with the GDSs," he said. "It becomes more
apparent when there is an issue like the ash crisis, but it also happens when a
carrier informs passengers directly of a schedule change and the traveler
re-books with the airline, but the passenger name record held by the TMC is not
updated.’
Gage also urged travel managers
not to allow travelers to rearrange travel through individual airline apps but
to use the managed apps being developed by GDSs and booking tool providers, which
will provide a similar service within corporate travel policy.
Air France-KLM said their app is available
immediately through iPhones and will be available "shortly" on the
BlackBerry.
Also last week, Air France
announced it would introduce an improved 2-meter-long lie-flat bed seat in
long-haul business class. The first re-designed cabin will be installed later
this year, and the airline intends to modify 20 aircraft by summer 2011. Air
France unveiled its first lie-flat business-class seats in 2003.