Sabre AirFlite Suite

Schedule Development | Schedule Profitability | Fleet Capacity Analysis | Slot Management and Tracking

In order to generate significant revenue and reduce operating costs, an airline must continually decide which markets to serve and how often, when to fly and which type of aircraft to assign to a specific route. It also needs to track slot rights at FAA and international slot-coordinated airports, as well as evaluate the profitability of various scheduling alternatives and codeshare opportunities to stay ahead of the competition.

The Sabre® AirFlite™ Planning and Scheduling Suite combines core flight scheduling functions such as scheduling, profitability forecasting and analysis, fleet assignment and slot management through a seam-less integration with shared interfaces and database information. This integration improves system performance and accuracy and reduces development efforts, resulting in a flexible, stable and efficient tool that runs on multiple platforms. These AirFlite suite planning and scheduling solutions are listed in this section:

Sabre® AirFlite™ Schedule Manager
Sabre® AirFlite™ Codeshare Manager
Sabre® AirFlite™ SlotManager™
Sabre® AirFlite™ Profit Manager
Sabre® AirFlite™ Fleet Manager

SCHEDULE DEVELOPMENT

Flight Scheduling

Sabre® AirFlite™ Schedule Manager enables an airline to develop flight schedules that meet customer needs. Using this system, an air-line can increase its profitability by enhancing the flight schedule development process. Schedule Manager simplifies scheduling tasks previously performed manually, thus making time available for schedulers to continuously explore better solutions. It provides schedulers with options so they remain in control of the decision-making process. It helps create a corporate-wide flight-scheduling database and pro-vides easy connectivity to legacy systems while offering powerful tools and utilities that enable schedulers to view, edit and report flight schedule information.

Current clients have reported that schedulers using Schedule Manager were able to considerably reduce schedule development time.

Codeshare Flight Schedule Development

Sabre® AirFlite™ Codeshare Manager offers an airline a way to develop codeshare flight schedules. When two airlines have officially agreed to codeshare their flights, this product can be used two ways:

To generate a codeshare flight schedule to be distributed to the OAG and other CRSs
To process codeshare scenarios for either adding new codeshare markets, dropping existing codeshare markets or considering potential alliances with one or more airlines

Using the operational flight schedules for two airlines, this system builds connections to identify potential codeshare flights. It can assign flight numbers based on flight number assignment rules. Codeshare Manager produces an IATA SSIM Chapter 7-compliant flight schedule, enabling an airline to electronically merge the code- share flights with the operational schedule. This electronic generation saves an enormous amount of manual entry of auxiliary data required in the publication process of schedule distribution.

Current clients have reported that when using Codeshare Manager, schedule analysts were able to reduce the codeshare flight schedule generation time. The system interacts with an airline’s schedule publication process and exports the codeshare flight schedule solution to all airlines in a codeshare alliance. By reducing the processing time, this solution may allow an airline’s schedule publication process to start sooner in order to meet OAG and other CRSs’ deadlines. It also reduces the chances of schedules being out of sync in any flight reservation system.

Simplified Flight Scheduling

The Sabre® PC AirFlite™ flight scheduling system is for those air- lines needing a simplified, more economical scheduling solution. The system offers a simple, PC-based desktop system that gives flight schedulers comprehensive tools during all stages of the schedule development process. Since the PC AirFlite system runs on a PC, hardware costs are minimal and existing hardware may often be used. The system helps schedulers create flight schedules to meet operational requirements, while maximizing profit. It’s the ideal tool for automating the flight scheduling process while greatly enhancing a scheduler’s ability to view the schedule using a variety of online windows and reports.

The PC AirFlite system has more than 60 worldwide customers. It is fully scalable, as evidenced by its use from small to large airlines to reduce the number of aircraft needed to fly a schedule. Current clients report that by using the system, airlines were able to reduce schedule development time, increase aircraft utilization, improve the schedule publications process and transition to fully dated scheduling. Overall incremental revenue improvement is estimated up to 3% of total revenue.

SLOT MANAGEMENT AND TRACKING

Sabre® AirFlite™ SlotManager™ enables an airline to manage and track its slot rights at FAA and IATA slot-coordinated airports. It streamlines the slot request process, reduces the number of errors associated with generating and sending SSIM slot request messages, and monitors slot status.

The system reduces the possibility of costly errors and provides sup-port to maximize the usage of valuable slot assets. Current system users have reduced time spent preparing slot requests by as much as 50% to 90% over previous manual methods. For airlines operating at a congested hub, what used to take a week or two can now be accomplished in a couple of hours. Additionally, many users have saved time by using system tools to focus on the airline’s slot strategies and identify new opportunities to take advantage of underutilized slots.

SCHEDULE PROFITABILITY

Schedule Profitability Evaluation

Sabre® AirFlite™ Profit Manager evaluates the profitability of a given schedule to assist in strategic, long-range planning. A powerful analysis tool, it can identify strengths or weaknesses within a carrier’s schedule as well as quantify the impact a particular schedule may have. The degree of profitability of an airline schedule depends on how well the schedule satisfies passenger demands considering the yield and cost situation. Profit Manager forecasts the typical-week profitability for a complete O&D network. As part of this evaluation, the tool produces forecasts of passenger demand, passenger traffic and passenger revenue on all services (host and competitor) in the network. Profit Manager delivers a greater understanding of customer and market behavior, an increased focus on network management, quicker evaluation of multiple scenarios, effective management of schedule changes and centralized data sources for corporate use.

An investment in Profit Manager of $2 to $4 million over five years (including software, hardware, implementation, training, maintenance and human resources) can generate 1% to 3% annual incremental revenue. This revenue can be generated by an increased understanding of customer preferences and by exploiting schedule opportunities for better connectivity and increased flow traffic.

FLEET CAPACITY ANALYSIS

Sabre® AirFlite™ Fleet Manager enables an airline to optimally allocate capacity to improve the profitability of a schedule. Fleet Manager employs a sophisticated global optimization technique to provide an airline with strategic and tactical analysis support when developing profitable and operationally feasible schedules. It enables schedulers to swap aircraft assignments, re-time and cancel flights, improve utilization and minimize aircraft towing. Schedulers can also use Fleet Manager as a schedule feasibility solver when creating a feasible schedule. Schedulers can analyze a typical day, week or “fully dated” schedule. The application incorporates a patented O&D passenger flow model in its global optimization.

Fleet Manager can generate 0.5% to 3% in incremental annual profit-ability.