Avianca Holdings relies on IT from Lufthansa Systems

Mar 01, 2016 – Airline IT specialist strengthens its position in the Latin American airline group with several renewed contracts

Lufthansa Systems today announced that it is expanding its successful cooperation with Avianca Holdings. Avianca Colombia and the TACA Group, two Latin American airlines belonging to Avianca Holdings, recently renewed numerous contracts for commercial and operations solutions products from Lufthansa Systems.

“We have worked with Lufthansa Systems for a long time. For us as a holding company, it’s a great advantage that the IT solutions are perfectly coordinated with one another and can be used as a platform by our airlines. Our subsidiaries can manage their processes across all airlines – but individually – in order to optimize their joint flight operations,” said Álvaro Jaramillo, CEO at Avianca Holdings.

The renewed contracts cover the following products, all of which run in the data centers of Lufthansa Systems’ partners following the ASP (application service provider) model: the NetLine/Ops operations control solution, the NetLine/Crew crew planning tool, NetLine/Sched for optimizing flight schedules, Lido/Flight for flight planning, the SchedConnect codeshare management solution, and ProfitLine/Price for optimal pricing. In the course of these contract renewals, a few solutions which are already being used by TACA will be extended to Avianca Colombia. The platform and the team responsible for the solutions will be expanded as well. The aviation IT specialist also ensures that the programs are integrated into its customer’s existing IT landscape via ISB (integrated service bus). Since all NetLine products are compatible with one another, any change in one program is automatically synchronized with the other programs in real time.

This interaction is especially useful for a company like Avianca Holdings because the NetLine solutions give all integrated airlines the ability to use each other’s crews, aircraft and slots. At the same time, each airline can plan its own flights and crews in isolation. This optimizes and harmonizes business processes in the holding company while also ensuring the optimal use of resources – in terms of aircraft as well as ground, maintenance and on-board personnel.

“Avianca Colombia and the TACA Group have been customers of ours for more than 15 years. We are delighted that they continue to rely on our products and can benefit from numerous synergies and the resulting savings potential delivered by the group-wide, long-term use of solutions such as SchedConnect,” said Greg Cork, Senior Vice President Regional Management Americas.

Based in Panama, Avianca Holdings is the parent group of Avianca Colombia and the TACA Group, which in turn includes regional carriers Lacsa – Costa Rica, TACA International – El Salvador, Aviateca – Guatemala, TACA de Honduras and TACA Peru. Other group airlines include Aerogal – Ecuador and Avianca Cargo. The Avianca Holdings airlines specialize in air cargo and passenger transport and operate a combined fleet of 155 aircraft. Overall, the subsidiary airlines serve 100 direct destinations in 26 countries in North, Central and South America. Avianca Holdings is a Star Alliance member, which enables it to offer its passengers connections to more than 1,300 airports in 192 countries worldwide.