Innovata LLC has signed a long-term contract to supply its worldwide schedules data, worldwide minimum connect time data and its full range of reference support files to Sabre Holdings.

Under a comprehensive licensing agreement, Innovata’s schedule data will be used to support the Sabre GDS business for reservations made by all Sabre-connected travel agencies around the world, including both Abacus and Infini.

It is also the source of schedule data for use within the tools and services supplied by both Sabre Airline Solutions and Sabre’s Airline Consulting practices.

This is already being supplied to Sabre Airline Solutions under this agreement, and the intention is to complete the transition to Innovata schedule data within the Sabre GDS during the fourth quarter of 2009.

Richard Thorne, Innovata’s Managing Director Aviation, (pictured) said: “Innovata has made enormous strides in recent years in developing its aviation schedules data content into an industry leading database, and numerous airlines and industry related companies have contracted with Innovata during this time to use this data - and in many cases are using it for mission critical applications and services.”

He continued: “To have a company of Sabre Holdings stature migrating to Innovata and expressing confidence in our data quality, reliability, and the depth of our data management expertise, is a tangible confirmation of the huge investment that Innovata has made in the last few years in this area of its business.  We look forward very much to partnering with Sabre in the years ahead.”

Innovata is a global leader in travel and hospitality content management and distribution solutions, and is now established and recognized as a major industry source for worldwide airline schedule and related data.

The company maintains one of the world’s largest flight databases representing more than 99% of the air segment miles flown worldwide with over 900 airlines participating in the database. Approximately 90% of the database is updated and refreshed every week.