Danish low-cost carrier Sterling Airlines has implemented support technology from Sabre Airline Solutions. The implementation follows Sterling’s acquisition last year of Maersk.

The airline’s combined fleet now comprises 30 Boeing 737-800, -700 and -500, and it expects this to grow toward 100 aircraft shortly.

As a main step in this implementation project, the company has replaced Lufthansa Systems’ Netline with the Sabre Rocade Airline Operations Suite of products, designed to meet the needs of the low-cost sector.

Sterling has traditionally used the Rocade suite, while Maersk implemented Netline in 2004.

“We evaluated and benchmarked both systems,” said Christian Balling, Sterling project manager. “Greater automation and flexibility were the Rocade suite’s most significant differentiating features.”

Sterling is the first airline to combine the Rocade suite with Sabre Airline Solutions’ EC Slots real-time European slot request and management module.

Airlines that signed up for the Rocade suite last year included FlyMe (Sweden), Air Austral (Reunion), Aero 2000 (Chile), Eastern Airways (United Kingdom), JSC Air Management Group (Russia), Lan Peru (Peru), Nordic Regional (Sweden), Skywest (Australia), Star Air (Denmark), Goldenair (Sweden) and Transwede (Sweden).

“We try constantly to analyze why deals are won with the Rocade suite, and what the winning factors are,” said Murray Smyth, Sabre Airline Solutions senior vice-president for the EMEA region. “Frequently mentioned functions and features include the intuitive graphical screen, the ARCON auto-rostering tool and the Raptor pairing optimiser. On top of that, our experience tells us over and over again that reference visits to existing customers are important components of the sales process.”
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