An in-depth look at Jetstar’s heart-stopping IT overhaul

Jetstar flatlines then comes up trumps as new IT system is installed this past weekend.

Perry said Jetstar is the first Navitaire customer to go live with New Skies 3.0 - Ryanair is live on 2.1 as are AirTran in the US and Gol in Brazil.

“We had to wait until 3.0 was available because we have close ties with the legacy carrier in the form of Qantas – there is a number of pieces of functionality that we needed relating to our code-share and thru checking functionality that the likes of Ryanair [another Navitaire customer] don’t need. The other piece that we need that they [Ryanair] don’t -- because we fly to the states -- is US security systems. So there are several systems beyond the 2.0 product that we needed which is why we had to go for 3.0.”

The new system should be fairly transparent to users. “Hopefully they should see very little that is different,” he said. “But what they should experience is a much more stable and reliable platform that we had before and they should see gradually over the next few months, as we start to take advantage of some of the opportunities that New Skies presents, a much greater spread of opportunities for them.”

For example, a shopping basket functionality will gradually be rolled out so users can take a flight and add insurance, hire a car, book hotels or purchase side trips to places like the Australia Zoo or the theme parks on the Gold Coast, and put them all together in a similar way to a shopping cart on Amazon.

Perry said the aim is to move away from a flight focus to a “come and help yourself to what pieces of the holiday pieces that you want”.

In a formal statement Jetstar CEO Bruce Buchanan described New Skies as a customer-centric reservation system that provides the airline with an integrated view of customer activity.

“With data oriented around the customer rather than the flight reservation, this new system will allow us to gain insight to customer value to provide unique, differentiated services,” Buchanan said.

Perry said the airline’s focus now is to bed down what it has just installed and take advantage of the additional functionality the New Skies product gives it.

“We think there is a lot of potential there for us to make more attractive fare products and other products available for our customers and the goal for us now is to do that as quickly as possible.”

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