5th Week: General Description on AirAsia Computer Reservation System

AirAsia outsources its CRS and uses various technologies. One of the technology in which AirAsia had adopted from Navitaire, subsidiary of Accenture, which offers technology solutions for several arilines and high speed rail organisations, from 2002 to 2010 was Open Skies, a cohesive web-based reservation and inventory system. The system included  the Internet, call center and airport departure functionality. These enabled AirAsia’s customers to make reservations and purchase their air tickets online, without going through a third party. Open Skies also maintained AirAsia’s centralized customer data, which tracked booking and schedules of flight activities of the customers round the clock. In addition, Open Skies went hand-in-hand with AirAsia’s already implemented business strategy of maximizing profits by adjusting the prices of seats on every flight based on the demand.

AirAsia’s CRS system had also enabled the firm to become Asia’s first airline to go ticketless, where passengers are first issued a booking number upon confirmation of booking, and flight itinerary with their travel details will then be emailed, faxed, posted or handed to them after payment has been made (Breaking Travel News, 2002). Also, the system provided customers with the option of having advanced boarding passes where customers can save more than an hour as there was no need for them to reach early to secure a seat on the plane (Kho et al., 2005).

In 2003, AirASsia collaborated with mobile phone operator Maxis and a Dutch-based technology firm, Getronics, to become the first airline in the world to provide Short Messaging Service (SMS) booking service (Nick Easen, 2003). With the adoption of this service, customers can pick their flights, confirm their booking and pay for their seats via SMS. On top of that, they are also able to check for their flight, and also receive latest updates on AirAsia’s promotions by signing up for the service without having to pay any additional costs (Angeina Fernandez, n.d.)

In 2005, AirAsia’s CRS brought about greater convenience to their customers with the introduction of their mobile site, mobile.airasia.com, which was an extensive reservation system that targeted mobile phones and wireless device users. This service enabled their customer to search flights, make reservations, pay via credit cards and obtain their flight details around the clock regardless of their location (ASIA Travel Tips, 2005).

Furthermore, since 2010, AirAsia has implemented the use of New Skies, also powered by Navitaire, which is an improved version of Open Skies. New Skies “state-of-the-art” system brought AirAsia’s reservation system to a new level by allowing the firm to deal with the high traffic of about a million online reservations a day. The New Skies reservation system had included the Low Fare Finder, where customers are able to view the lowest fare available with the respect to their flight destinations and date of travel. In addition, customers are also able to make reservations for seats for multi-cities in just one transaction , as opposed to making several, should they want to fly to different cities, in the past. New Skies also improved the user-friendliness of their website by supporting characters such as Mandarin, Thai, Japanese, on to of just alphanumeric characters (ASIA Travel Tips.com, 2010)

Information retrieved from : https://www.allfreepapers.com/Technology/Computer-Reservation-System-CRS-AirAsia/44427.html

Written by Andina F.S