Successful migration of mission-critical system to open standards platform takes just four and a half hours, with no impact on flight operations or customers.
TOKYO – Unisys Corporation announced that All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd (ANA) has successfully migrated its mission-critical passenger sales and service (PSS) applications for domestic flights which are based on Unisys’ next-generation Airline Core Systems Solutions (AirCore).
ANA is the eighth largest airline in the world by revenues (2011) and the largest in Japan by passenger numbers (2011). An award winning airline, ANA was named 2013 ‘Airline of the Year’ by Air Transport World and was recently awarded the SKYTRAX 5-Star rating in recognition of the airline being at the forefront of product and service delivery.
Working with Japanese IT solutions provider Nihon Unisys, Limited (NUL), ANA migrated its core business systems for booking, ticketing and boarding, to its new systems based on Unisys AirCore in February 2013. The Unisys AirCore solution, which is based on open industry standards, replaces the airline’s previous proprietary domestic passenger system that had operated for 34 years.
“AirCore’s open system provides ANA with the flexibility to offer new services and more convenient booking and boarding procedures to customers, while reducing the total cost of ownership,” said Takanori Yukishige, Senior Vice President, Innovation and IT Strategy, ANA.
The Unisys AirCore solution is designed to help airlines offer customers innovative new services in response to customer’s changing needs and preferences. Built as a modular suite of next-generation applications engineered in the Java programming language, the Unisys AirCore solution provides an open standards environment that enables an airline to choose the alliances, partnerships and distribution channels that best suit its own business strategies.
Despite the magnitude of moving the airline’s mission-critical systems from one platform to another, ANA and Nihon Unisys completed the migration to the new system in just four and half hours. Importantly, ANA flight operations continued as usual during the migration so that services to ANA’s customers were not disrupted.
“Unisys AirCore is the only operational next-generation passenger system for reservations and departure control that is based on open technology and industry standards, allowing airlines to more easily add new applications and integrate with other systems to make them more customer-centric and competitive,” said Olivier Houri, President Global Transportation, Unisys. “We believe Unisys AirCore represents the platform of the future for airline passenger sales and services, giving our clients autonomy, flexibility and distribution control, in line with IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) initiative.”
Unisys has more than 45 years experience providing advanced, mission-critical IT solutions to the aviation industry. Fifteen of the top 25 airlines – and more than 200 worldwide – rely on Unisys solutions. Asia Pacific aviation industry clients include Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific, Qantas and Vietnam Airlines as well as TravelSky, Beijing Capital International Airport, Guangzhou International Baiyun Airport and Chengdu Airport in China and Delhi International Airport Ltd in India.
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