Amadeus launches flight disruption management tool

Tam Airlines of Brazil has become the launch carrier of an Amadeus solution designed to help better manage delayed and cancelled flights.

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Tam Airlines of Brazil has become the launch carrier of an Amadeus solution designed to help better manage delayed and cancelled flights.

Intelligent and personalised re-accommodation options will be deployed to enable travellers to enjoy an improved travel experience, while offering airlines the chance to save costs and more effectively manage passengers.

The Amadeus Personal Disruption Companion, to be available on a white label basis in 2015, claims to take a “wholly customer-centric approach” to managing flight disruptions.

It works by understanding and analysing who is travelling and to where, combining this information with preferences such as language and choice of contact. This information is then personalised using each traveller’s specific journey and ancillary purchase history as well as other personal preferences both stated and learned.

The development follows research showing that a third of passengers cite insufficient information about what is happening as the top cause of frustration at times of disruption, followed by 18% of passengers complaining about being given conflicting communication.

Julia Sattel, senior vice president airline IT at Amadeus IT Group, said: “We believe that the market opportunity for the industry to deliver more effective disruption management is huge.

“Indeed, US airlines alone lost $7.2 billion as a result of disruption in 2012 whilst Iata research suggests that airlines who move faster from crisis to recovery could save $455 million every year just in re-booking costs.

“When things go wrong passengers want to see automated and intelligent re-accommodation options and offers that are personalized and bespoke to their unique needs.”

She added: “Instead of taking an operations-centric approach to re-accommodating travellers, we advocate re-thinking entirely how disruption is handled with the customer in mind – rather than shifting travellers from a cancelled flight to another, we should understand and respond to how the delay impacts that person and their unique reason for traveling.

“We believe that as an industry there is a great opportunity here to deliver a better travel experience as part of an intelligent and dynamic global travel ecosystem which places at its very heart the ever-evolving 21st Century traveller.”