Amadeus Wins Air Canada Contract as It Digs In Deeper in North America


Skift Take

With this deal, the Madrid-based technology giant has scored another win in North America, after having finished moving Southwest Airlines to Amadeus' reservations platform earlier this year.

Air Canada has decided to move from its 30-year-old, built-in-house reservation system to the Altéa Suite offered by Amadeus, the Madrid-based travel technology giant. The move is another commercial victory in the Americas for Amadeus, which earlier this year moved the international reservations system of Southwest Airlines from a platform run by Texas-based Sabre to an Amadeus-powered platform. In perhaps added poignancy, Sabre's new CEO Sean Menke was Air Canada's chief commercial officer from 2005 to 2007. But Sabre's passenger service system, SabreSonic, did not grab the prize in this instance. More importantly, Amadeus, which had been stymied in breaking into North America as an airline reservation system provider until its Southwest deal, is seeing global momentum in sales of its passenger services system. These systems do everything from handling passenger reservations systems and processing sales of preferred seats to scheduling flight crew. Since 2010, Altea h