Amadeus buys US airline technology firm

Amadeus is hoping to increase its appeal to airlines with the purchase of US airline technology specialist Airline Automation. Airline Automation provides revenue integrity services for the airline industry. Its technology helps airlines maximise sales by finding and deleting unproductive reservations to keep load factors high and reduce overbooking. A spokesman told TravelMole the technology basically removed “dud bookings” from an airline’s reservation system. He explained: “This is about maximising revenue once the reservation has been made. For example you quite often get duplicate bookings where someone makes a booking direct with the airline then forgets and makes a booking with an agent as well. This means two seats are taken, even though not both are sold, blocking a genuine reservation.” Airline Automation currently services over half (55%) of domestic reservations in the US. The Amadeus spokesman said that take up of the technology was much lower in Europe, where airlines generally had their own systems to fulfil this function, and Amadeus would now be seeking to persuade them of the benefits of outsourcing this requirement rather than trying to do it in-house.