Sabre Airline Solutions
and Aeropostal today announced the successful implementation of the Sabre AirCrews crew management system and the Sabre AirOps Movement Manager system.

Both of these mission-critical products are being delivered through the Sabre eMergo Web-enabled and dedicated network solution, which gives Aeropostal access to the important tools utilized by larger airlines, while ensuring a lower total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for inhibiting upfront hardware costs. These applications are installed on Unix high availability servers and accessed on standard PC desktops, providing a true open-system solution, which results in lower operating costs, decreased training requirements and fast time to market with new technologies.

AirCrews went live at Aeropostal in September with the Pairing Optimizer. A month after this installation, Aeropostal was able to increase the efficiency of its crew operations by decreasing the number of crew days required by almost 6%.

“The ASP model allows us to automate what had been manual processes at Aeropostal, so we were able to see real results with immediate benefits,” said Licio Piccoli, chief information officer for Aeropostal. “We do not have the resources to dedicate to the installation of an onsite Systems Operations Control Center, but with the eMergo option, we get the technology without the expensive upfront hardware costs, nor the ongoing cost to maintain the system. In addition, Sabre Airline Solutions made accessing the system easy by linking Unix servers to PCs for a graphical user interface—such as the use of a three-button mouse.”

The AirCrews suite that Aeropostal implemented contains a full range of functions to meet the end-to-end crew management needs of airlines of all sizes. The system uses a graphical user interface and a centralized database that together provide efficient and easy access to accurate data in all areas of crew operations. In the words of Capt. Enrique Zerpa, responsible for the coordination and implementation of AirCrews within Aeropostal, “Implementation of AirCrews has benefited Aeropostal by permitting a much greater level of control regarding the utilization of our manpower. By integrating functions between AirCrews, AirOps and the schedule generated by AirFlite, we are able to operate more efficiently. The Crew Internet Access (C.I.A.) has provided the crews with an efficient and low-cost means of communicating with the Rostering Department to handle such items as flight, days off, swaps, requests for specific duties and many other functions that normally took up a lot of the schedulers’ time in answering telephone calls.”

The AirOps Movement Manager, which went live at Aeropostal in June, enables airlines to successfully monitor and schedule flight operations and maintenance, while still maximizing the revenue potential of these vital resources.

Airlines using the AirOps Movement Manager are able to gain up to a 10% improvement in on-time performance, improve maintenance yield by up to 2% as a result of better aircraft utilization, reduce communication charges by up to 25% and increase an airline’s productivity by up to 10%, all of which can produce several million dollars in cost savings.

Both of these applications will work together with other elements of the Sabre Airline Solutions portfolio that Aeropostal has been using, which include the Sabre Passenger Reservations System, Sabre Flight Operations System (FOS) and the PC version of Sabre AirFlite Schedule Manager.

“Aeropostal joins a growing number of airlines that have come to us for affordable, integrated systems,” said Steve Clampett, president of Airline Products and Services at Sabre Airline Solutions. “Airlines want simplification, and one of the keys to simplification is having systems that work together in an integrated fashion. Because it is a priority for airlines, we have made it our priority for our continued investment and development. Today we have over 100 points of integration between our products and we have another 100+ in development or planned. This integration is made all the more feasible by our ASP delivery of over 20 applications, including mission critical systems such as AirCrews and AirOps.”

By using eMergo delivery, airlines can access the comprehensive portfolio of Sabre Airline Solutions optimization technology through the Internet or a dedicated circuit, which saves the costs that typically would be required with hardware and software acquisition, system implementation, support personnel, data storage and ongoing maintenance. These savings are producing significant financial results for customers—typically a 30% or better reduction in total cost of ownership versus traditional, proprietary-based solutions.

In addition to lowering the total cost of ownership, the eMergo suite of simplified and standard applications produces faster implementations, improves time to market, and provides greater integration with Sabre Airline Solution’s other software products. The eMergo environment enables an airline to focus on its core business and affords it greater flexibility to manage current internal IT resources. Today eMergo delivers applications to more than 38 different airline carriers through a common portal interface.

Besides the cost savings of these systems, Aeropostal notes it also helps them improve the traveler’s experience.

“With the increased efficiencies in the operations and crewing processes, travelers should encounter less flight delays and cancellations, which then improves customer satisfaction,” said Piccoli.

The next system to be put into production at Aeropostal will be the AirOps Decision Manager, which delivers pre-planning for disruption events, optimized recovery solutions, and fast solution times. These enable multiple scenarios to be evaluated quickly and assist an airline in the delivery of timely solutions to get back to normal operations.

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