Low-cost airline Virgin Blue is taking the mobile travel war to its rivals in Australia by producing a high-profile TV advertising campaign specifically to promote its Blackberry app.

The campaign is designed to only highlight the functionality on the app rather than the core routes or aircraft of the airline, a rare promotional tool in travel but one which is expected to increase over time.

Virgin Blue says the app -- developed by Ireland-based Mobile Travel Technologies -- is an important element in its battle to lure business travellers to airline.

Passengers are able to book flights, change itineraries, check-in and secure a mobile boarding pass via a device, a process as yet not taken on by other airlines in the Australian marketplace.

The most important part is that the app is designed for Blackberry users, a core device for to many of the business travellers Virgin Blue is targeting.

It sure gets sticky when airlines switch from one internal reservations system to another — even when both systems come from the same vendor. Just ask Virgin Blue and Navitaire.

Virgin Blue’s New Skies internal reservations system from Navitaire reportedly crashed for several hours June 18, causing flight delays and disruptions at Australian airports, according to several reports.

Service has been restored, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The outage was a highly embarassing one as the airline distributed a press release two days earlier saying the $8.7 million [$AUS10 million] migration to New Skies had been “completed over two days of the June long-weekend,” ushering in “a whole new class of online service.”

Prior to the outage, the airline’s chief financial officer, Keith Neate, said: “The cutover to New Skies proceeded according to plan. We had a continengent of customer service agents in place at all major Australian domestic airports and I’m really proud to say the cutover was very successful with minimal or no delays to our network or guests.”

That statement turned out to be premature.

Virgin Blue is transitioning from one Navitaire platform to another.

The Australian airline previously had used Navitaire’s Open Skies platform.

The New Skies system, which experienced the shutdown, uses a ticketless model, where funds are tied to a customer record and not an individual ticket.

Among the new features, according to Virgin Blue, customers can compare fares up to 15 days surrounding the day they travel; they can book car rentals and hotels; and they can access booking summaries to better track costs.

The new platform also hosts Pacific Blue and Polynesian Blue.

Migrating from one airline reservations system to another can be a gut-wrenching process.

WestJet experienced much disruption last year when it migrated its internal reservations system from Navitaire to SabreSonic.

Mobile itinerary-management company WorldMate shook up its executive ranks and is making a push for cobranded deals and advertising agreements with airlines, hotels and GDSs, as well as white-label pacts with smartphone manufacturers.

As announced previously, the Palo Alto, Calif., firm will be rolling out a Blackbery app, Virgin Blue by WorldMate, in the first quarter which will enable Virgin Blue passengers to book flights and check-in from their Blackberrys.

A second phase of the implementation will involve deeper integration, including push alerts and opportunities for ancillary revenue such as hotel and limo bookings, says Nadav Gur, WorldMate’s founding CEO, who becomes chief commercial officer in the executive maneuverings.

In addition to the Virgin Blue deal, which involves a revenue-share model, Gur says WorldMate is talking to GDSs about joint solutions, has conversations going with major global airlines, and is “a few days away” from announcing an advertising launch where a major a hotel chain and some airlines will advertise on WorldMate’s Symbian app, an operating system used on Ericcson and Nokia phones.

Rest assured that in WorldMate’s GDS discussions, it probably isn’t having much conversation with Sabre, which has its own itinerary-management app in TripCase.

Among the management changes at WorldMate, Jean Tripier, most previously chief operating officer at mobile-solutions provider Good Technology, becomes WorldMate’s new CEO, and Amir Kirshenboim returns to WorldMate as CEO of WorldMate Israel.

WorldMate says Tripier will head negotiations with “top-level brands” on co-branded distribution deals, which WorldMate argues is becoming a trend as travel companies seek to accelerate rollouts of their mobile offerings.

Tripier says a lot of airlines around the world have been building their own mobile apps for the iPhone, but they are short-changing themselves as many business travelers use Blackberrys and smartphones with the Symbian operating system, for instance.

In addition, an airline’s customers usually have relationships with more than one airline, and WorldMate can provide airline customers access to multiple airlines in these cobranded deals.

Says Gur: “Every airline has a line item to do mobile. Then they figure out that it’s complex” and look for solutions and focus on “how do we make this a profit center instead of a cost center.”

WorldMate says 5 million travelers use its personal assistant and hopes the executive changes will boost global expansion.