Ever Been to Tulsa?

Sometime back in 1953, CR Smith at American Airlines happened to meet a salesman from IBM on one of their flights from LA to New York. That chance meeting ended up leading to the development of a system they called “Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment”.

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By the time 1960 rolled around, American had realized the competitive power of such a system and positioned “The Sabre Corp” as a wholly owned subsidiary of American. By the Other airlines had followed suit by the middle of the decade; Pan Am’s PANAMAC in 1964, Delta’s DATAS in 1968, and both TWA and United with their PARS and Apollo systems in 1971. By 1972, Sabre had outgrown its original mainframes and was upgraded to a new system- one installed in a suitably cold-war-esque bunker in Tulsa, OK.

 

Up to this point, these systems were pretty much only used by those within the airlines. They could talk to each other (somewhat), but no external users had access for a few more years.

 

At this point you must be thinking, “Yes, but why do I care?”

I’m getting there.

 

As the capabilities of these systems grew, airlines started to figure out more and more ways to leverage them to enhance the customer experience. Seat reservations, baggage information, frequent flier info, and meal requests became key features of these systems.

 

As the systems expanded into travel agencies in the 1970s, more and more users had the ability to contribute this info to individual reservations. Airline flight kitchens, having gotten their access to these systems back during the deployment inside the airlines, had become dependent on the info flowing from these systems to ensure each flight had the proper meals in the right quantity.

 

By the 2000s, all the airlines had spun off their reservations systems, and the trend of outsourcing flight kitchens was well underway. Those complex reservations systems were mostly purchased by private equity groups… all of which were eyeing the money to be made with expanded agency (and later internet) bookings. Supporting airline catering was, as you might imagine, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down the list of priorities.

 

So that brings us back to that bunker in Tulsa, where the beating heart of Sabre continues to pump away…. Mostly for stuff like reservations and seat assignments- but still partly for those meal orders. Sabre and the other airline systems all got sold off and many outlived their original airline creators, having streamlined their area of focus and aimed more at the reservations and providing background support for a raft of new travel websites.

 

Many of the “nuts and bolts” functions of these systems gradually moved to newer commercial software tools so the likes of Worldspan and Galileo, and to an extent Sabre pulled-back from the behind the scenes support area… like flight kitchen systems.

 

After American spun off Sabre in the early 2000s, the company emerged as one of those commercial entities that still provided systems support for things like aircraft load planning, flight releases, baggage tracking, and of course, catering. There are of course a few other systems out there now that also offer catering support, but pretty much every major airline has some involvement with Sabre. Which comes with some challenges.

 

Sabre’s “AirVision Inflight” system supports key functions like communicating flight scheduling, meal specifications, invoicing, order forecasting, and a host of other more nuanced tasks (like crew meal ordering). Not all customers use all features, as Sabre sells functionality ala carte. Not surprisingly, that leads to some real challenges when airlines ask for new features, as they are often asked to shoulder a big portion of the cost for something viewed as customized.

 

Big deal, right? You are probably thinking if an airline wants something custom, they should pay for it. Well, I guess I basically agree.

 

Here’s the issue; Sabre is a relatively old system and updates aren’t fast. As airlines move to enhance their offerings through new products and services like “pre-ordering” meals- the technology in the background is largely still from the 1960s. That charcuterie platter you pre-ordered from the lounge before your flight? Well, to Sabre and your airline it might as well be a kosher meal from the 1970s. It’s all built on the same technology.

 

With mainframes replaced more and more by cloud-based computing, airlines should (and to an extent, are) beginning to take steps away from Sabre to enhance the delivery of food and drink to their customers. A great example of this can be found in United Airlines’ “routing change tool”, which United opted to build in-house versus purchasing a solution from Sabre, (who provides several system tools that support United’s catering processes).

 

United, like many airlines, does a hefty amount of “round trip catering” or “back catering”, where one aircraft might be catered with food and beverages for 2 or more flights. This has become a bigger and bigger part of catering delivery in the US, as many airports do not have a local catering option.

 

Unfortunately, when the planned routing of an aircraft changes it often creates a breakdown in what was to be delivered to customers.

 

For example; let’s assume United planned to fly a plane from ORD to LAS to SFO with both the ORD-LAS and LAS-SFO legs catered from ORD, while at the same time planning a flight to operate from SFO-LAS-ORD, with SFO catering both the LAS and ORD departures. Once in LAS, both planes swapped, with the one catered in SFO now coming back to SFO, and the one catered in ORD now going back to ORD.

 

As the meal services for LAS-SFO and LAS-ORD are very different, we now have a disconnect that would have impacted customers. But not now, as United’s new tool monitors the actual flying for each plane and constantly compares it with what had been planned- alerting the catering provider at the origin when a change along the planned route would impact customers.

 

This all might sound simple, but there is actually a lot involved here as kitchens need considerable advance notice to make changes to catering. In some instances, the tool needs to alert a kitchen downstream of the original location that they will need to step in and provide service they hadn’t originally been planned to provide.

 

We hear a lot about new technology in an app or the airport kiosk, usually not non-public stuff like this. It’s impressive that United investing in creative tech solutions; first with “Connection Saver”, and now this “routing change tool”.

 

Sabre should take note, as their customers are showing a greater and greater willingness to build their own solutions versus working with them on a solution.

 

I wonder if United would consider licensing their tech to others??

 

Cheers,

Dan