SunExpress well positioned in the digital sales world with IBS Software’s Platform

Technoparktoday.com>> SunExpress, the joint venture of Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa, has successfully switched over to IBS Software’s PSS platform, iFly Res, to power its passenger reservation, ticketing, and departure control operations. SunExpress, with a fleet of over 70 aircraft, carried 8 million passengers in 2016 to more than 80 destinations across Europe, Turkey and Northern Africa.

iFly Res, the state-of-the-art software from IBS, enables a strongly enhanced general communication between SunExpress and its important distribution network, the European travel agencies. The new system contains the distribution standard for ticket sales, the “NDC – New Distribution Capability” introduced by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The simple and easy presentation of air fares and other travel services supports both the daily work volume of SunExpress partners within the travel industry and the demand of consumers using the newly redesigned website sunexpress.com. The SunExpress website is now being used more and more intensively for travelers’ direct bookings, for immediate travel modifications, also in responsive design via their mobile devices.

iFly Res also enables the integration of 116 online travel agencies, among that important European metasearch engines, as well as over 70 technical providers and organizations, some of whom using the NDC standards. Included are also 9 Departure Control Systems used at all international stations and 9 systems for ticket payments, combined and integrated in the 5 most important GDS systems. The implementation, spread over a year, involved building a first class internet booking engine, B2B and B2C websites as well as training of over 1000 staff and agents.

“The new platform further strengthens our company to manage different business models – seat only sales & charter operations. For the seat only side SunExpress is now well positioned to significantly increase its ability to sell innovative ancillary services across all sales channels. With this modern, innovative and flexible system, SunExpress is now well positioned to get closer to both, the travel agencies and the passengers, with meaningful digital interactions”, says Peter Glade, Commercial Director of SunExpress. “We are now looking forward to leverage this system even further in the next project phase, so we can even better serve the needs of our tour operator partners.”

“iFly Res is rapidly making a name in the industry as a robust, scalable and innovative solution to support the transformational needs of airline’s passenger services operations. The successful cut over at SunExpress, proves that IBS is able to deliver complex PSS migrations in large airlines. This is a strong endorsement of our implementation capabilities as well as a validation of the significant investments made in our iFlyRES portfolio. We look forward to the partnership with SunExpress.” said Paul Lynch, Senior VP & Head of Airline Passenger Services, IBS.

“We welcome the decision by SunExpress to implement an NDC capable solution, enabling the airline to modernize the way products are presented through its network of travel agents” said Yanik Hoyles, Director NDC Program at IATA.