Virgin upgrades to Navitaire's New Skies

Navitaire announced today that Virgin Blue has signed an agreement to implement its New Skies platform later this year.

(Virgin 737-800 image by planegeezer, CC2.0)

New Skies is a sales and management system for airline passengers enabling integrated internet booking, call centre reservations as well as connections to travel agencies and the itineraries of other airlines, real-time reporting and the ability to integrate related travel sales and departure control.

Virgin intended to boost its revenue via the integrated travel sales, including car hire and travel insurance as well as via better alignment with airline partners, according to the release from Navitaire owner Accenture. "Intelligent seating" allowed guests to have more power over their seat choice.

Data from the system would be used to target "high-yield" travellers while better passenger recognition would be harnessed to provide day-of-departure services, the consulting firm said.

"New Skies has the features, the built-in ancillary revenue capabilities, the broad airline alliance and GDS [global distributions system] capabilities and the flexible architecture to give our evolving carrier a competitive advantage now and in the future," Virgin Blue CEO Brett Godfrey said in a statement.

Virgin had already had a multi-year relationship with Navitaire and had been using Navitaire's older Open Skies platform. The new agreement, which had already been discussed earlier in the year, will broaden its scope. The value of the contract was not disclosed.

The new reservation system will be different to that selected for the company's recently launched trans-Pacific V Australia service, which inherited the Amadeus system that is used for its short-haul Pacific Blue service.

Jetstar is also on the New Skies system, having swapped over from its older system earlier this year.