Back in 2016, Southeast Asia’s leading low-cost carrier, Lion Air, had selected Sabre Corporation to deliver an end-to-end airline operations and crew management platform that would allow the airline to optimize daily flight operations while reducing costs in the midst of a push for regional growth.

In return, Sabre Corporation offered its Sabre AirCentre Operations and Crew Platform, which included advanced technology such as aircraft tracking and a next-generation crew management platform.

These advances also included pairing and rostering solutions that simplify the crew planning processes, improve crew productivity for the airline.

Kamal Qatato, a vice president at Sabre, said in regards to the then-new partnership, “Through one unified operations platform we will help Lion Air deliver consistently on customer expectations and on-time commitments while creating greater efficiencies and achieving lower operating costs.”

In regards to why Lion Air chose Sabre Corporation, Edward Sirait, CEO of Lion Air Group, said, “As we undergo rapid route and network growth at the Lion Air Group of airlines, Sabre’s unique, end-to-end platform matches the breadth of our needs.” Sirait also further added that the partnership will be beneficial for the airline to “streamline operations while creating efficiencies and cost savings across all five airlines.”

Extended Partnership

It would seem that both parties have been satisfied with the partnership thus far, as Sabre Corporation made an announcement on Tuesday regarding the extension and enhancement of an agreement  with Indonesia’s Lion Air Group to enable its airlines to make the most of every seat by increasing its ancillary revenue capabilities and to improve its performance with the technology.

Based in Southlake, Texas, Sabre Corporation aids in providing retailing, distribution and fulfilment solutions to help its customers operate more efficiently.

“We’re delighted to affirm and strengthen our long-standing relationship with the Lion Air Group in an agreement which is testament to the group’s confidence in Sabre to deliver the advanced solutions needed to enable its airlines to capture market recovery, to solidify its leading position in the Indonesian marketplace and power future global growth,” said Rakesh Narayanan, Sabre’s Vice President of Travel Solutions Airline Sales.

“The Lion Air Group is one of the largest entities in the global aviation market with evident rapid expansion, especially over the past two decades,” said Datuk Chandran Rama Muthy, Group Strategy Director at the Lion Air Group.  

Beneficial Partners

Lion Air Group and Sabre have a valued and long-standing relationship, with the carrier already using Sabre’s SabreSonic Customer Sales and Service as well as a suite of crew management, operations and scheduling solutions to help optimize daily functions, reduce costs and plan strategically across the Lion Air group.

What’s more, the airline group has also been using Sabre’s GDS platform for the global distribution of its inventory.

The partnership extension allows the Lion Air Group to look towards potentially adding to its technological toolkit with an extra set of omnichannel tools from Sabre.

Additional ancillary revenue optimization solutions will provide end-to-end capabilities to create and market ancillary offers across all channels — including differentiated seat prices — and facilitating the payment and delivery of ancillary services across the airline group.

This will provide significant opportunities to increase revenues through the sale of those services via partner carriers, as well as enabling Lion Air Group to sell add-ons at check-in.

Sabre will also provide Advance Shopping capabilities for more accurate shopping results and enable self-service features complementing the Automated Exchange and Refund capabilities, as well as the automation required to re-accommodate ancillaries to the new flights after a disruption.

In the same announcement, Narayanan said, “Now, more than ever, it is essential to have the right technology to enable a well-implemented ancillary-services strategy in order make the most of every seat, while ensuring that the changing needs and wants of every traveller can be met.”

New Age of Technology

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has led to the introduction of new rules and regulations and changed the way a typical customer service experience takes place, face-to-face interactions being limited for everyone’s safety.

To ensure that its customer service experience for passengers will not be compromised, the Lion Air Group will also be using Sabre’s Digital Workspace to enable faster processing of passenger requests, including using its tablet version to provide personalised customer service remotely away from a traditional check-in, gate desk or workstation.

In addition, the group will use Sabre Digital Connect, a comprehensive, micro-services enabled API Hub, to power e-commerce capabilities.

“The Lion Air Group’s 21-year relationship with Sabre and this renewed agreement with Sabre means we can continue to optimize our day-to-day operations and distribute content globally through Sabre’s GDS, while simultaneously being able to focus on modernising our ancillary revenue capabilities as we look forward to playing a key role in the recovery of travel in our markets,” Muthy said.