It seems that there are a lot of rats leaving a potentially sinking ship. Over the last 12 months we have seen Westjet, Jetblue and now Volaris all have announced their exit from Navitaire’s OpenSkies/NewSkies environment.
So there is something going on here that we all need to understand. It is the change in distribution paradigm.
Smart airlines are beginning to realize that the power of distribution has now passed from the GDS into the central core of the airlines business. As such the role of the GDS and the functionality requirements have changed. It also means that the Airlines internal IT systems have to have significantly greater functionality than exists in the LITE PSS systems such as Navitaire.
For many years I have argued that there needs to be a Distribution Manager functionality that was simple and functional available to the airlines. Clearly Volaris et al feels the same way.
Listen up people – the world has changed. Anyone stuck in the old world needs a wake up call. This is it.
Cheers
Couldn't possibly be because Southwest has their own technological issues with their hybrid Sabre system and it was easier to convince Westjet and Volaris to "come to the mountain", rather than Southwest coming to them?
ReplyDeleteI suspect jetBlue is a whole 'nother story. Their code-share start-up last week with Lufthansa is already up and running on Navitaire's Open Skies. Didn't even need to wait for Sabre. Hmmm.