Air France, KLM Complete Change to Amadeus

Air France and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Amadeus have announced the group’s successful migration to Amadeus’ Altéa Inventory solution. The migration sees the replacement of the two legacy systems that have served each airline for the last forty years and marks a major step in the group’s initiative to modernize and consolidate its Passenger Service System Amadeus says.

Fully integrated with Altéa Reservation, the common airline group’s reservation system, Altéa Inventory allows Air France-KLM to benefit from capabilities such as real-time seat availability across all direct and indirect channels, including online distributors, and to take advantage of the most advanced revenue management techniques.

“This successful migration is a strategic step towards the transformation of our IT systems and the achievement of Air France-KLM synergies,” said Bruno Matheu, Air France-KLM e-vice president Marketing, Revenue-Management and Network. “Thanks to the flexibility of Altéa Inventory, the Air France-KLM group has been able to migrate to a platform supporting the combined advanced needs of two major airlines while leveraging both carriers’ best practices.”

"The capability of Altéa Inventory is a key building block towards the creation of a new generation revenue management system common to Air France and KLM that will allow global optimization of our unique co-branded network,” added Pieter Bootsma, Air France-KLM senior vice president Revenue Management.

The project was a major undertaking over several years that delivered noteworthy improvements to the Amadeus platform, such as availability cascading, full support of journey data and enhanced automated flight re-accommodation and schedule management. With nearly two million flights involved as part of the process and with more than fifty systems impacted, the migration was especially significant. It required two critical system cutovers in only two weeks where Air France and its franchisee airlines (Regional, Brit Air, City Jet, VLM and CCM) plus KLM and its partner airlines (Kenya Airways and Martinair) were transitioned to the Amadeus platform.

Air France-KLM will complement the adoption of the Altéa suite with the upcoming integration of ticketing and departure control systems over the coming years, with the objective to further integrate both airlines’ critical operational processes and deliver long-term competitive advantage.

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