Virgin Atlantic reservation system goes supersonic

Airline Virgin Atlantic says an IT overhaul will give passengers greater control over how they book their tickets.

The airline signed a five-year deal with services company EDS, now owned by HP, to maintain and improve its IT systems - which Virgin Atlantic IT director Mike Cope said will give passengers more control over making and changing bookings.

The deal will deliver a new reservation system, with improvements including a self-service ticket change system and ticket reissue and refund software, which automates a formerly labour intensive process.

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Cope told silicon.com: "It brings more capability to the website and self service systems, allowing the passenger to do more themselves when they want, rather than having to visit a travel agent or phone a contact centre.

"The new facilities are being implemented at the moment and principal amongst these will be access to self service ticket changes.

"Historically, due to the complex and byzantine nature of airline ticket rules, changes to anything but the simplest full fare ticket has meant a wait of several weeks whilst skilled analysts in the back office worked out what is permitted and what is not.

"With the facilities the system will be able to work out on the fly in real time what can be changed and what the cost will be."

EDS has provided IT services for Virgin Atlantic since its inaugural flight in 1984.

EDS will continue to offer passenger-processing services, which include applications development and hosting of EDS Reservation Services - which handles approximately six million passengers for Virgin each year.

The service provider will also use its airline service orientated architecture, which links up software and systems, to integrate Virgin Atlantic's operations.