Amadeus completes flawless global inventory migration at Lufthansa

Madrid, Spain, 09 April, 2008: Amadeus, a global leader in technology for the travel and tourism industry, has announced that following a flawless migration process, Lufthansa has become the first member carrier to cut over to the inventory management module of the Star Alliance Common IT Platform (CITP). The new system is based on Amadeus’ new generation Altéa Inventory solution.

Several hundred professionals from Amadeus, Lufthansa and its partners, were involved in the five-phase migration process. During the same, all inventory control and 700,000 flight schedules for the entire Lufthansa route network were smoothly migrated and published to all systems, worldwide, in which Lufthansa flights can be booked. An additional 40 existing Lufthansa applications were also adapted in advance, to facilitate the cutover.

According to Hans Jorgensen, Amadeus Vice President, Strategic Airline & Partner Programmes, the new generation technology system allows an airline to better manage its entire inventory and pricing, flight schedules, seat planning and passenger re-accommodation needs, in a way that is fully integrated with the airline’s sales and check-in platforms.

“This is an incredibly rich tool for normal operations but becomes critically important when the user airline needs to handle situations such as flight disruptions for diverse reasons. It brings an airline significantly improved decision making capabilities. This also enables it to reduce operational costs through modern IT processes.”

To optimise data exchange between the new system and existing client applications, Lufthansa has also pioneered the use of the Amadeus product suite’s service-oriented-architecture (SOA) in the airline industry. The latter allows interaction required between the Altéa components and other vital airline applications - such as the data warehouse - to take place in a perfectly structured manner. To achieve this, a middleware IT solution, provided by a Lufthansa partner, has been put in place to provide a structured flow of information between the Altéa Reservation and Altéa Inventory systems and 40 of the airline’s client applications. This results in constant and full, real-time integration, as well as seamless data transfer with the targeted systems, by channeling them through a single hub. This structure eliminates the previous costly and complex need to build myriad spaghetti-like connections in the host system to achieve the same functionality.

“Migration to the new inventory system was incredibly smooth and seamless to the end-user,” said Christoph Ganswindt, Senior Vice President and CIO, Lufthansa Passenger Airlines. . “Collaboration between the teams at Amadeus and Lufthansa was a crucial factor in the on-time and successful delivery of the project.”

“The successful migration to the new Inventory module is a significant step in the implementation of the Star Alliance CITP. This achievement provides a foundation for our members planning the migration to CITP in the near future as well as for those members who are considering CITP” commented, Aman Khan, Vice President and CIO of Star Alliance.

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Notes to the editors:

About the Star Alliance Common IT Platform
The Star Alliance Common IT Platform is a strategic programme, focused on the effort to better serve the customer, markedly lower IT costs and significantly increase the speed of delivering new products to market. Once implemented, it will enable participating member airlines to have seamless access to a single repository of passenger data to improve customer services and operational procedures. It is based on Amadeus’ pioneering new-generation Customer Management Solution portfolio which consists of Altéa Reservation, Altéa Inventory and Altéa Departure Control solutions. The project was originally launched in 2005 with Lufthansa and United as the lead carriers, and has subsequently been joined by Adria Airways, Austrian and Croatia Airlines Star Alliance member carrier South African Airways is using Amadeus Altéa CMS, based on a similar technology as CITP.

About Amadeus
A world-leading technology and distribution solutions provider, Amadeus delivers unparalleled expertise to the travel and tourism industry, including leading-edge solutions that cover airlines’ unique business needs, independent of their size, business model or market reach.

Amadeus’ pioneering new-generation Customer Management Solution (CMS) portfolio, Amadeus Altéa CMS, serves network and regional carriers. The Altéa portfolio, based on a pioneering community platform concept, enables improved operational efficiency and increases revenue. The portfolio consists of the Altéa Reservation, Altéa Inventory and Altéa Departure Control solutions. Currently 40 airlines use Altéa Inventory and close to 150 airlines rely on Altéa Reservation to power their sales and reservation functions.

Low Cost Carriers have alternative Customer Management Solutions – Amadeus Pioneer CMS and Results CMS by Amadeus - based on adaptive technology that provides robust options that easily adjust to their evolving operational requirements.

Further complementing these integrated IT solutions is the Amadeus e-Travel Airline Suite that includes the Amadeus e-Retail engine, which powers more than 120 websites of over 65 airlines.

Other standalone IT solutions include: revenue integrity and automatic ticket reissue tools, in addition to full e-ticket interlining and ground-handling management technology services. More information about Amadeus’ solutions for airlines is available at: www.amadeus.com/airlines.

Press Contacts:

Amadeus
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Tel: +34 91 582 0160
E-mail : mediarelations@amadeus.com