While much of the attention in JetBlue’s cutover to the SabreSonic CSS as the airline’s reservations system provider has focused on new functionalities, Navitaire, the company that JetBlue largely discarded after a decade-old relationship, feels there are misperceptions about its capabilities and believes that the “true winner” in the conversion likely will be Sabre — and not necessarily JetBlue.
I reached out to Navitaire to get its take on JetBlue’s decision to convert to Sabre.
Until the transition, which began Jan. 29, JetBlue was using Navitaire’s Open Skies platform. Navitaire is transitioning its new airline customers to its New Skies system. The new platform uses a ticketless model, where funds are tied to a customer record and not an individual ticket.
Navitaire argues that ticketless New Skies is more efficient than the Sabre e-ticket model because New Skies has an integrated database, which circumvents the need to transfer data back and forth among multiple systems.
So, with little new development taking place for Open Skies, JetBlue opted for SabreSonic rather than transitioning to Navitaire’s New Skies.
Legacy Decision?
Navitaire believes legacy sensibilities played a role in JetBlue’s decision.
“Over the last two years, JetBlue has brought in all new management, creating a team that has primarily come from existing U.S. legacy carriers,” Navitaire says. “If they’ve only worked with and dealt in the legacy, traditional, IATA-bound world, it’s understandable that they would gravitate toward an industry e-ticket based solution that they are familiar with. In our experience, it’s hard for someone with a legacy airline background to truly understand the ticketless model, the cost benefits it delivers, and the flexibility that it enables.”
If economic concessions by Sabre drove JetBlue’s decision, Navitaire thinks they will be short-lived because of the alleged higher costs of operating the JetBlue-Sabre e-ticketing processes.
“With Sabre’s heavy reliance on GDS bookings, it’s in their best long-term interests to continue supporting the existing, old ways of business to drive more transactions and participation costs to their GDS side of the business,” Navitaire says. “They win on multiple fronts through improved/expanded content to agents, more agent and airline GDS transaction fees, more messaging fees from clients, etc. to line their coffers.”
For Navitaire, it’s all about the legacy world versus what it calls a “New World” approach, where airlines can be flexible and use hybrid models.
Navitaire speculates that Sabre doesn’t “have a New World-carrier ticketless product that’s positioned for the long run. If they did, American wouldn’t have opted to move away from Sabre” in favor of a new platform, Jetstream, to be provided by HP.
Misperceptions?
Speaking during JetBlue’s fourth quarter earnings call Jan. 28, a day before the cutover to Sabre, JetBlue President and CEO David Barger didn’t disparage Navitaire directly, but said the transition to Sabre would deliver a smorgasbord of new benefits.
“Transitioning to this new platform offers us the flexibility and robust tools to expand the products and services we offer our customers,” Barger said. “As a result, we believe the system will help improve the overall customer experience and further enhance the JetBlue brand. When fully implemented, the Sabre system will provide pricing flexibility that will enable us to attract more business customers, broaden ancillary revenue opportunities, and facilitate airline partnerships, all core initiatives for JetBlue.”
Navitaire believes that many in the industry have inaccurate, outdated perceptions of its products. In fact, the company says, it has 80 interline and code-share connections, ties to nine GDS platforms, a loyalty program and a travel commerce platform.
Codeshares
Navitaire says it supports codeshares on both Open Skies and New Skies. For example Virgin Blue, which is transitioning from Open Skies to New Skies, has bi-directional codeshares and interline agreements using Open Skies, Navitaire says. And, Jetstar, which had bi-directional codeshares and interline agreements through check-in on Open Skies, expanded them when it converted to New Skies last year, Navitaire says.
Navitaire points out that New Skies supports EDIFACT-compatible codeshares [Jetstar] as well as interline connections using APIs [TUIfly and Air Berlin].
Ancillary Revenue/Merchandising
Navitaire says its systems support a la carte ancillary services as well as bundled fares through New Skies and Navitaire’s Travel Commerce platform. Both systems, the company says, support locally hosted or externally connectioned inventory via APIs. Travel Commerce clients include Jetstar, Azul [founded by JetBlue founder and ex-CEO David Neeleman], Jazeera and Ryanair.
Navitaire concedes it is unaware of any comparisons of ancillary revenue functionalities — i.e. what can Sabre and others do versus Navitaire’s acumen– and adds, “It would be very interesting to see what is out there and get beyond the marketing promises into actual capabilities.”
“We’re certainly not in a position to comment on what Sabre can or cannot do, but based on JetBlue’s published information to passengers and agencies, it suggests there may be shortcomings given the JetBlue instructions to direct travelers and agents to contact the call center to book, change, manage or redeem various items,” Navitaire says. “Some of these require additional agency reporting outside of BSP/ARC.”
Pricing
Navitaire admits that Sabre has one advantage in that Sabre’s revenue management system supports O & D (Origin & Destination) forecasting and Navitaire’s SkyPrice revenue-management system does not. JetBlue had been using a revenue-management system from a third party, which does not support O & D, and presumably will be switching to Sabre’s.
Several of Navitaire’s airline customers use Sabre’s revenue management system, as well.
“We are developing our own O & D revenue management system and expect to build a better mousetrap,” Navitaire says.
Cutover Miscues?
Navitaire says it respects JetBlue’s decision to switch to Sabre and commends the airline for the work it did to make the transition.
“In the end, JetBlue faced a conversion off of Open Skies to either New Skies or one of our competitor’s reservation systems,” Navitaire says. “We would have obviously preferred a different outcome. We respect their decision and we have been honored to support their success over the past 10 years.”
Still, Navitaire points to alleged shortcomings in the reservations’ cutover, noting that many types of transactions — changes to existing reservations, credits and vouchers, agency credit shells, advance check-ins, TrueBlue redemptions and elements of new reservations — require call center support.
“This has got to be very costly,” Navitaire alleges. “This strongly suggests that the Sabre system is not customer centric, but transaction centric, and that the Sabre system (and e-tickets) was not able to accommodate several kinds of data that the seemingly ‘simple’ Open Skies system reservation-core stored and provided, with easy self-service customer access. It seems unusual that so many customer and PNR elements could not be converted in an accessible manner to enable self-service changes, Web check-in and customer credit, voucher and TrueBlue redemptions.”
JetBlue has been widely lauded — on Tnooz and elsewhere — for the transparency it has shown and the massive efforts it made to ensure a smooth transition in the switch to Sabre.
Whether some of the cutover problems that Navitaire points to are understandable bumps in the road or suggest lingering technology shortcomings, this remains to be seen.
Says Navitaire: “The Sabre marketing machinery can be quite prolific, but the track record to illustrate innovation and results isn’t always clear. Time will tell on promises versus results.”
Update
Au contraire, says Henry Harteveldt, Forrester Research’s principal analyst, airline and travel research.
Harteveldt says:
“Navitaire is correct that their ‘ticketless’ system may offer some efficiencies versus the Sabre e-ticketing system, but JetBlue’s decision to change was based on much more than that. In JetBlue’s assessment, NewSkies’ capabilities were clearly viewed as less robust than Sabre’s. The decision that JetBlue made had nothing to do with ‘comfort’ with network airline e-ticketing, but more to do with what Sabre could do in terms of helping JetBlue increase its revenue-generating capabilities compared to what New Skies was able to offer JetBlue.
“Navitaire also did not paint an accurate portrait of JetBlue’s ongoing customer service environment, either. Though it wasn’t ideal that JetBlue had to suspend some activities or conduct others only by phone during the cutover, doing so was a prudent business move given the complexity of the reservation system transition. JetBlue has been processing bookings on JetBlue.com for much of this week, as well as online check-in and supporting TrueBlue loyalty program account management. It is my understanding from JetBlue that other functions, including exchanges and refunds, will also be supported online.
“JetBlue is a more complex airline now than it was when it began 10 years ago. It is inevitable, in almost any business, that as a company grows and evolves — and becomes more complex as a result — that it requires different types of technology infrastructure to support the business. Sometimes the incumbent provider can provide that new infrastructure, and sometimes a new provider is deemed to have a better solution. JetBlue isn’t the only airline to have moved off Navitaire for Sabre. Both WestJet and Volaris either have done so or will be doing so. Even American Airlines, which literally created Sabre, is planning to move off Sabre onto the new Jetstream platform being developed by Hewlett-Packard.”
