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With four new key players… the ball is rolling!
April 2012
With newcomers such as Servisair, World Flight Services (WFS), Groupe Europe Handling, Airline Assistance Switzerland (AAS), over 25 customers have now opted for our Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers. And among these, we are proud to welcome the 2nd biggest Ground Handler in the world!
An agreement was signed last December 2011 with Servisair, for a migration to be carried out within 30 airports. This represents 188 airlines handled, both Altéa and non Altéa, and a minimum of 6 million passengers, and further establishes our presence in Europe, in particular in the UK, Finland and the Netherlands and marks an opening in the North American market. A joint team of experts from Servisair and Amadeus Airport IT will work closely to ensure a smooth transition to our Altéa Departure Control solutions.
- the world 2nd largest ground handler in terms of number of airports
- operating at 118 airports worldwide
- with 15,000 employees
- servicing 500 customers, 1.1 million aircraft movements, 106 million passengers, 650,000 tons of cargo/year.
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Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers will enable Servisair to handle our customer base using the airline’s own specific business rules, without the requirement for them to install their own connectivity and implementation plan.
Whilst maintaining the different airline processes, the user interface is much more graphical, than the previous DCS systems. This will allow for easier use, a reduction of training costs and allow for increased flexibility within our customer facing teams.
Worldwide Flight Services(WFS) one of the world’s leaders in ground handling services and the world’s largest cargo handling company has lately joined Amadeus. Its Paris-Orly based entity, WFS-OFS, and Amadeus have signed a commercial agreement for the implementation of Altéa Departure Control for Customer Management and Flight Management. WFS-OFS is planning to launch the Altéa DCS suite of solutions in the 2 French major airports, Orly and Charles de Gaulle, representing some 1.8 million passengers serviced and 10 airlines.
WFS has a 20-years’ experience in aviation-related handling service and provides top quality solutions with a vast scope of services such as cargo handling, baggage handling and processing, ramp services, passenger services including premium VIP services.
- leader in Cargo Handling
- presents in 120 airports in 20 countries in North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and Africa
- 10,000 employees
- servicing 300 airlines, 50 million passengers in 2011, and handling 3.5 million tons of cargo.
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Our partnership with Amadeus will enable us to further improve the quality of the services to our airlines customers and to boost our productivity. Together, we will work closely to implement Altéa suite of solutions, which will help us to meet today's complex business requirements and to map out the solutions for tomorrow.
Groupe Europe Handling (Europe Handling and Sky Handling Partner) has decided to use the Amadeus Altéa DCS suite of solutions to support their passengers and flight operations services in Ireland, England and France to cover Dublin, Shannon, London City, Paris Orly and Charles De Gaulle airports. All together this represents traffic of more than 10 million passengers for about 80 handled airlines.
- operates in 10 airports
- with 3,400 employees
- servicing 150 airlines, 295,000 aircraft movements/year and 11.5 million passengers.
Airline Assistance Switzerland (AAS) - a young, dynamic and customer-oriented Ground Handler based in Zurich - lately join us. AAS choose Amadeus solutions for Ground Handlers to optimise its productivity and to further develop its high quality services at the Zurich airport. Especially for Ground Handlers of the size of AAS, operational efficiency as well as best-in-class customer services are critical to put their mark in this highly competitive environment. With Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers, AAS will be able to service all airlines, Altéa DCS customer’s airlines as well as non-Amadeus customer airlines (also known as PNL airlines).
- based at Zurich airport
- providing high quality services to international airlines such as British Airways.
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Expanding our offer beyond DCS: two new solutions!
April 2012
We are aiming to provide a global offer with a full range of solutions tailored to your needs. Two new state-of-the art solutions have just been delivered: Altéa Reservation Desktop for Ground Handlers and Altéa Self-Service Check-in for Ground Handlers.
We built the DCS solution for Ground Handlers by working closely with our launch partners to fully grasp the industry needs, and the same collaborative approach was used for the two solutions now available on the market.
For ticketing, we all know the frustrations when several desk agents are available and you still have to stand in the queue to be helped by the one agent on hand in charge of your flight. Yet it’s practically unavoidable, since handling reservations can be a veritable juggling act, with dedicated PCs for each airline using different applications and interfaces. And it’s not only a time consuming process which slows down customer service, but this work mode also increases the risk of errors.
With Amadeus Altéa Reservation Desktop for Ground Handlers, everything is brought down to one screen: All ticketing desk PCs can be used in parallel for the same airline, with services handled through one intuitive single-screen interface, offering a simple booking workflow with a range of automated tasks. The result is increased efficiency, less errors and a standard quality service from users, all with limited training. This user-friendly solution was designed so that novices as well as experienced agents could be rapidly operational. And the time saved switching from one airline application to another, can now be spent for complex requests and value added services.As for check-in, we worked closely with Ground Handlers to fully grasp the challenges faced, such as how to deal with the limited number of counters for a fully booked flight. Direct passenger check-in at airport kiosks is of course an excellent means to alleviate the waiting lines. But up till now, it all depended on whether airlines offered a self-service check-in to their customers, and in which airports.
So we’ve come up with an Amadeus Altéa Self-Service Check-in solution designed for Ground Handlers, which enables travelers to use the kiosk self-service check-in for all airlines and within all airports. In case of disruptions, Altéa airline passengers can directly handle their self reaccomodation, further diminishing the charge on both ticketing and check-in counters.
More autonomy for travelers makes for obvious gains in terms in productivity, and a growing number of customers have already lined up to implement this solution which will boost efficiency and services. The added plus is that better passenger service at the airport has a positive impact on the airline’s image, which in turn, contributes to reinforce your customer relationship.These two new solutions are just the start. Amadeus teams are hard at work preparing the next deliveries and aiming to build an extended, diversified portfolio of solutions for Ground Handlers.
Want to know more?
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In the starting block: Amadeus offer today and what’s in store for future users
November 2011
First pilot phases successfully completed, deals signed for full scale implementations... This is it! Amadeus is now set to become a key partner for ground handling actors.
To reach this point meant pushing the limits. Sure, as experts in airport operations and departure control systems, Amadeus teams had an excellent head start. But to deliver this state-of-the-art solution, they had to put themselves in the ground handler’s shoes.
The result is a whole new outlook on the complexity of the task at hand and on the wide range of activities to be dealt with. And this is just a start: The product is due to evolve in the next coming period, to rapidly reach full potential. Based on a community model, it will also continue to be enhanced and to evolve along the way, to help ground handlers tackle new challenges.
So what is the status today? As a first step, Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers takes into account all airlines that are already Altéa users. Soon, it will cover all IATA code airlines, whether Altéa users or not, progressing during 2012, to include airlines that don’t have a IATA code.
"As you can see, we are sticking to the roadmap, keeping the promises we made almost a year ago," asserts Yannick Beunardeau, Amadeus Director Airport IT Solutions. "The idea is to develop a 'super' DCS, covering the gaps of the legacy systems, and using our extensive knowledge of the ground handling business to create a solution that fully takes into account all operations processes."The ground handling project represents large scale development efforts. "Major functional gaps were delivered this year to enable the Altéa Departure Control platform to be opened up to ground handlers, using the rich data stored in Altéa Inventory," explains Christopher Edwards, Amadeus Ground Handling Product Manager. "We are now fine tuning the product to suit the complexities of the ground handling market, working on such issues as handling of IATA staff formats, self-service solutions and reception of PNL messages by email... ."
The long term goal is to integrate key Amadeus solutions into the ground handling offer, so customers can benefit from a wide range of innovative tools. For instance, Ground Handlers will have access to DCS payment facilities to issue EMD's to passengers for services sold, or for compensation packages to delayed passengers. They’ll also be able to fully automate their load control process and provide automatic baggage drop-off points. And as Christopher points out, "these are just some of the future benefits in store for users of Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers!"
Market response has been excellent, with implementations scheduled throughout next year.
"Fortunately, based on the numerous Altéa Departure Control implementations for airlines, Amadeus has already developed a full scale industrial process capable of handling all types of implementations," states Alban Momy, Amadeus Ground Handling Implementation Manager. "So we have the knowhow and experience, and today we are growing resources in our dedicated Ground Handling teams in order to initiate, support, and implement each new customer."What is coming next for ground handlers?
"With the never ending goal to satisfy our whole community of customers, Amadeus will soon be marketing additional modules to provide Self-Service Systems and Ticketing Desk Systems for ground handlers," says Yannick Beunardeau, "Our next edition of this newsletter will detail this further, so stay tuned!" -
Aviapartner, lower training effort and higher operational flexibility - 4 questions to Toon Martens, CIO Aviapartner
November 2011
After tangible benefits seen during first pilot phase, Aviapartner has just signed an agreement for the implementation of Altéa Departure Control solution for Ground Handlers, heading towards large scale implementation throughout Europe.
4 questions to Toon Martens, CIO Aviapartner
What motivated the choice of Amadeus as a partner?
Amadeus is becoming the key player in the European Departure Control software market. And today, it is the first to offer a comprehensive solution for 3rd party ground handling, based on state-of-the art technology. So we felt confident to join in on the adventure, expecting Altéa to help us further gain in productivity and widen our offer.Are there any lessons learned during the pilot phase you would like to share?
It certainly is no easy task to evolve a native DCS system into a flexible 3rd party handling solution. However the results of the first pilot phase are very promising and we have no doubt that the second pilot phase, which is still not fully completed, will be successful as well.What are the first impacts noted on your activities?
Already in this first phase, we saw a positive impact in terms of reduced training effort. The solution’s graphical user interface makes it quite intuitive and easier than legacy solutions for employees to become familiarised. Also, implementing Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers means less DCS systems to deal with, and therefore less constraints on staff planning and increased operational flexibility.Looking ahead, what are the key differentiators you expect Amadeus solutions to bring you?
Lower training effort and increased operational flexibility should, of course, help us maintain a competitive pricing. At the same time, we’ll be able to provide all customers, including smaller airlines, with a user friendly, 3rd party DCS, with top functionality.
From left to right:
Karel Bekaert, Group Operations Director, Aviapartner
Georg Langenberg, Sales Manager, Airport IT Services, Amadeus
Toon Martens, CIO, Aviapartner -
Successful pilots send green light signal
October 2011
Seamless departures of flights handled by Aviapartner and by MAP Handling – AMC Group took place last June in Nice Airport.
June 2011… Nice Côte d'Azur airport, the second largest in France, was preparing for the yearly onslaught of visitors. Business as usual for this big airport which deals with around 10 million passengers a year. Not quite…
A worldwide first was taking place!
In a four day span, from 15 to 18 June, Amadeus' Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers was actually being used, for the first time, to handle flights departing from Nice. The successful pilots were carried out with launch partners MAP Handling - AMC Group, and Aviapartner.
As with airlines, Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers is made up of the combined ground handlers' expertise and Amadeus technology, and is based on the community model. "One of the key assets of this community model is that it enables a single data source for all applications through our PNR system;" explains Christophe Tcheng, Director Development Altéa Departure Control, Amadeus. "With Altéa DCS, we are leveraging on technology to offer a seamlessly integrated set of solutions, as well as a robust platform, to support this mission critical application within airports throughout the world."
The pilot take-offs in Nice were the result of months of preparation. As of February 2011, Amadeus teams worked closely with the ground handlers and airlines, from the final development requirements, to on-site simulations to prepare the ground handling agents. "Implementation of Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers has been quite a smooth process, thanks to close collaboration with pilot carriers and efficient support from Amadeus teams," said Thierry Rosolin, Project Manager, MAP Handling - AMC Group.
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"I am confident that Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers will soon be a Must!"
Thierry Rosolin, Project Manager,
MAP Handling - AMC Group
For Albin Rousset, Implementation Manager Aviapartner, "Integration of the solution has been facilitated by the quality of the new graphic user interface and thanks to daily interactions with Amadeus implementation team who were always on hand. The migration to Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers will increase our operational flexibility and allow us to benefit from all advantages provided by the direct link to PNR."
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"Migration to Altéa Departure control for Ground Handlers will increase our operational flexibility."
Albin Rousset, Implementation Manager,
Aviapartner
Moving to a new system was however quite a leap for some protagonists who were anxious that this could create a glitch in their flight departures and cause delays. But these fears were short lived. "Carriers who were not that convinced of the system to begin with, are now pushing to join the project," notes Thierry Rosolin. "I am confident that Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers will soon be a Must for those who seek to deliver better service to their numerous assisted airlines and passengers, relying on an efficient core DCS."
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Pilots were conducted at Nice Airport with
- MAP Handling - AMC Group handling flights from Air Baltic and Tunisair.
- Aviapartner handling flights from Cimber Sterling, Spanair, City Airline and Estonian Air.
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5-4-3-2-1 Take off!
October 2011
Market interest confirmed by back-to-back commercial agreements. Three customers signed on: Alyzia, ASE - Aero Services Egypt and Billund Airport Handling.
The industry has been waiting, watching… As announced, was Amadeus really going to leverage its leadership in airline Departure Control Systems, to make its mark with ground handlers?
Today, after a successful pilot phase, and a first signature with MAP Handling – AMC Group, the answer is yes!
To date, over a hundred ground handlers have shown keen interest and the pipeline is growing. Just in the course of the last few months, deals have been signed with three ground handlers: Alyzia in Paris, France, ASE - Aero Services Egypt, Billund Airport Handling in Denmark.
For Alyzia, which signed last July, they are the first ground handlers to adopt the solution on the Aéroports de Paris platforms; This gives them a definite advantage, since Altéa Departure Control is to be deployed within several major airlines in the two airports of Orly and Roissy. "The implementation of Amadeus' solution, Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers will offer a fully automated, seamless system to handle the whole range of our activities," said François Guth, Deputy CEO, Alyzia "This is a major step which will greatly improve the efficiency of Alyzia operations within the Paris airports, as well as the quality of service to airline customers, since the carrier's business rules will be automatically integrated in the solution."
This was followed by the first commercial agreement in Africa – Middle East finalised in August with ASE - Aero Services Egypt, which handles flights at 13 Egyptian airports for a number of airline partners, representing some 2.2 million passengers in the course of 2010. "ASE - Aero Services Egypt always strives to provide the latest competence and technology in the aviation field," asserts Mohamed Hanno Executive Chairman ASE – Aero Services "Egypt, Morocco & UAE" "And implementing Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers was the logical next step. This decision will simplify our interactions with our partners and we look forward to a long term collaboration with Amadeus."In early September Billund Airport Handling came on board, as first European handler in Northern Europe, a strategically important region for Amadeus: "We aim to help airlines, which are already on Altéa and implement the solution within Billund airport. As ground handlers, it will allow us to do common check-ins and streamline passenger management to benefit our customers. The end goal is of course also to optimise resources and increase our potential for new business" says Lone Teist , Service and Quality Manager, Billund Airport A/S. The signatures of ground handling customers in Northern Europe and Africa-Middle East clearly mark the worldwide interest in the Amadeus solution, underlining Amadeus' global scope. For Yannick Beunardeau, Director Airport IT Commercial, "Even if airports may vary a great deal from one to another, the fundamental needs of ground handlers remain the same. These have been fully identified and addressed within Altéa Departure Control for Ground Handlers and we are set to implement within all regions of the globe." The strong response from ground handlers has created "a first come first served" priority list which Amadeus teams are addressing as fast as they can.
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First commercial agreement signed with MAP Handling
April 2011
Amadeus has already signed over 120 Altéa contracts with airlines. However, on 20th April 2011 MAP Handling - AMC Group became the first ground handler to join the Amadeus Altéa Departure Control ...
MAP Handling - AMC Group will soon benefit from the leading-edge technological capability to use Altéa Departure Control for all of their airline customers whether or not these airlines use Altéa themselves. This will provide them with greater flexibility and allow them to optimise capacity planning whilst ensuring the right level of services with customised Services Level Agreements per airline.
More information about MAP Handling - AMC Group
We are very happy to sign the first agreement with Amadeus as a ground handling company. This will provide our group with a key competitive advantage and enable us to even better service our customers.
The choice of Amadeus has been driven by the capacity to join the Altéa users' community, making sure that a medium size company like ours can also benefit from the undisputed technological leadership of Amadeus.
Altéa Departure Control feeds our appetite to conquer new frontiers, new markets and open new services.
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