Two new products now are available for companies seeking to integrate private aircraft and traditional commercial airline inventory at the point of sale. Sabre Business Aviator is an inventory management hosting system that allows clients to bring corporate-owned aircraft into the normal booking process, similar to a competing Worldspan product that has been available for a few years. Meanwhile, Air Charter Guide, a content and applications provider for the air charter industry, this month unveiled a new system for corporate travel managers that captures charter aircraft availability from most major operators and compares it with commercial scheduled service options.
Sabre Business Aviator quietly was completed last summer and by Oct. 1 officially had been implemented by its first client, Houston-based ConocoPhillips Co. The tool consolidates commercial and corporate aircraft availability at all points of sale, including GetThere, TurboSabre and the agency desktop. The product offers real-time corporate aircraft inventory and waitlist management, eliminating the need for certain manual processes.
"The benefit is flexibility and scalability from managing and housing corporate aircraft inventory as the corporation sees fit and integrating it into the managed travel process," said Michael Cairns, customer marketing manager for Sabre's travel agency solutions. "They are able to do that with existing processes in mind, the ability to work within a corporate booking tool and integrate into the PNR."
Sabre said corporate client demand for such a product has mirrored growth in the private jet market. "The National Business Aviation Association told us that 9,709 corporations are operating 14,000 aircraft. We realized that some in that group have more passengers boarded on their own planes than some small regional or commuter airlines," Cairns said. "The ideal company is one that owns or has an exclusive lease on aircraft and runs it almost as a shuttle," notably engineering and high-tech firms and other companies that need to send employees to remote locations.
"We took the same expertise we had in managing American Airlines' and US Airways' inventory, for example, and brought it down to a smaller scale for managed corporate operations, at a lower cost," said Dwayne Long, senior technology director for Sabre's national accounts.
Clients use Business Aviator by plugging into the hosted system aircraft scheduling and inventory, and then determining who should have access. In many cases, access is provided to the corporation's travel agency of record. The graphical user interface, TurboSabre, allows for connections to other databases, creating customized solutions for each client.
Sabre officials added that Business Aviator customers can leverage functionality from other Sabre Airline Solutions eMergo products, including crew scheduling, maintenance and other operational processes. Discussions with other clients are ongoing but rollout announcements have remained under the radar because corporations that operate private aircraft generally prefer to do so in anonymity for obvious security and privacy concerns.
Meanwhile, recently sold Worldspan
(see story here) continues to offer large corporations a similar tool that already has been implemented for about 20 clients' corporate aircraft operations. Worldspan Corporate Fleet has been available for licensing for a few years and, like Sabre Business Aviator, manages flight schedules and seat inventories. Once implemented, the tool provides corporate aircraft booking capabilities through Worldspan's corporate booking tool Trip Manager, the client's agency of record and/or any onsite travel offices.
"Any corporate aircraft bookings are made in the company's own partition in the GDS mainframe and integrated into the Worldspan PNR," explained Cheryl Weldon, Worldspan vice president of strategic accounts.
Pricing, based on the number of involved aircraft, includes a one-time upfront fee and monthly fees. Worldspan provides training to corporate personnel and/or travel counselors at the client's travel agency of record.
Worldspan, which recently signed two new accounts to the Corporate Fleet product, observed increased demand after Sept. 11, 2001.
"One theory is that there was so much uncertainty in the marketplace, particularly in terms of cutbacks by scheduled carriers," Weldon said.
DaimlerChrysler, which has a commercial arrangement with Worldspan, uses Corporate Fleet to manage its multiple weekly shuttle flights between Auburn Hills, Mich., and Stuttgart, Germany.
"It integrates the shuttle into the booking process and is used by agents both in Germany and the United States," said Elmar Dziambor, a member of DaimlerChrysler's travel management team.
Competing GDSs Amadeus and Galileo do not offer integrated corporate-commercial aircraft booking tools.
Comparing Commercial W/ CharterIn more recent news, Air Charter Guide by next month plans to offer corporate travel managers and travel management companies a system that links to its database of charter operators and aircraft, allowing users to compare prices and schedules with those of commercial airlines.
The system, CharterXtra, aggregates real-time availability information from several providers of existing charter scheduling software and also enables travel managers to include policies as to who can control, access and purchase charter services. It is built on XML, Microsoft.net and other industry standards, and the user interface is similar to those in use at other travel Internet sites.
"Charter is about to become as accessible as any other business travel option," said Meara McLaughlin, vice president of online services for Air Charter Guide. "The charter industry is at the same point the scheduled airlines were when the Sabre system was introduced in the 1960s. There is the potential for explosive growth."
Available for licensing in April, CharterXtra is a supplier-direct model facilitating transactions between buyer and supplier and does not collect any commissions.
Air Charter Guide last month announced alliances with several charter scheduling software providers to provide CharterXtra users with comprehensive inventory.
"This acceptance of a single, global information standard provides the essential data building blocks to bring reliable charter booking into the travel mainstream," McLaughlin said.