Airline IT provider Lufthansa Systems is to team up with software giant Unisys to supply carriers with a means of bypassing the traditional global distribution system (GDS) providers.
The offering has been dubbed FACE (Future Airline Core Environment) and should be available from 2006. The move comes as Lufthansa Systems faces the prospect of losing valuable revenue from parent Lufthansa. The German carrier is deep in negotiations with Amadeus on a joint IT platform with Star alliance partners United Airlines and Air Canada. Lufthansa Systems chief executive, Dr Peter Franke, says his unit will lose around 5-10% of its revenue if the Lufthansa Airline Division migrates its check-in and inventory to Amadeus.
Dr Franke says its new hosting system, which will be developed through the firm's modular MultiHost airline IT system, will be around 20-30% cheaper than current GDS pricing models . He adds that, with the new system, airlines could have all their IT requirements under one roof.
Source: Airline Business
