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Qantas Deploys Sabre AirFlite Suite Systems to Improve Flight Schedule Planning

Advanced Planning Tools Provide Australia’s Leading Carrier the Ability To

Profitably Schedule Flights Up to Three Years Into the Future

SOUTHLAKE, Texas, March 9 /PRNewswire/ — Sabre Airline Solutions, the industry leader in airline operations technology, today announced that Qantas Airlines has gone live with Release 10 of Sabre AirFlite Schedule Manager and Profit Manager, providing automation of the flight scheduling and route evaluation processes.

With over 60 airline customers worldwide, AirFlite is the industry standard for scheduling software solutions. All of the top 10 airlines globally are using at least one of the AirFlite suite’s scheduling products. While Release 10 of the product has been in rigorous testing for several months, AirFlite Schedule Manager is now live, running all Qantas’ long haul schedule planning.

Schedule Manager is being used to evaluate Qantas’ route and network decisions up to three years in advance. Currently four other global customers are poised to join Qantas with implementation of the system, going live by the middle of 2004.

Qantas has undertaken the first live implementation of the Release 10 version of the AirFlite suite. This release employs state-of-the-art, multi- user, Java Oracle technology to improve performance, usability, and integration resulting in faster, easier, and smarter scheduling. Smooth implementation has also been a goal of development work.

“I have been very pleased with the smooth introduction that Sabre Airline Solutions has achieved with Schedule Manager,” said David Round, Manager Network Systems & Communication, Qantas. “As the first airline to go live with the new system version, we were expecting some initial problems but we have been impressed with the system and support we have received from Sabre staff.

As a result of the easy rollout of these products and the performance of AirFlite suite to date, Qantas plans to also go live with Release 10 of AirFlite Fleet Manager in the first half of 2004. Fleet Manager enables an airline to optimally allocate capacity to improve the profitability of a schedule employing a patented O&D passenger flow model in its global optimization technique. In addition, Qantas has also committed to the purchase of Release 10 of the Sabre SlotManager system, which will allow them to manage and track slot rights at slot-coordinated airports, and streamline the slot request process.

Cameron Curtis, vice president, Asia Pacific said, “We offer our client base a proven migration path to this new platform using our PC-based systems (PC AirFlite). When our clients want to take the next step in terms of advanced planning and scheduling functionality and optimization techniques — we are ready. We are noticing an increased awareness of the value of schedule and market profitability analysis. Airlines need tools to manage market demand, airline constraints and profitability data so that they can make schedule, network and fleeting decisions quickly and accurately. These are decisions with a high dollar impact that can’t be done manually in many cases.”

About Sabre Airline Solutions

Sabre Airline Solutions, a Sabre Holdings company, is the world’s largest provider of software products, reservation and departure control systems and consulting services to help airlines simplify operations and lower costs. Over 200 airlines worldwide use Sabre Airline Solution’s broad portfolio of software solutions for decision-support tools to increase revenues and improve operations. Over 100 airlines worldwide rely on Sabre Airline Solutions for passenger management solutions, with 15 new carriers added and nine carriers renewals for SabreSonic Res advanced reservations and departure control systems in 2003. In addition, more than 100 clients worldwide have turned to Sabre Airline Solutions consulting group for strategic, commercial and operational consulting. More than 500 contracts worldwide were signed in 2003 within Sabre Airline Solutions.

Sabre Holdings Corporation (NYSE: TSG) is a world leader in travel commerce, retailing travel products and providing distribution and technology solutions for the travel industry. More information about Sabre Holdings is available at http://www.sabre-holdings.com/ .

Sabre Airline Solutions, the Sabre Airline Solutions logo, SabreSonic and AirFlite are trademarks and/or service marks of an affiliate of Sabre Holdings Corporation. All other trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE  Sabre Airline Solutions
    -0-                             03/09/2004
    /CONTACT:  Kathryn Hayden of Sabre Airline Solutions, +1-682-605-2252, or
kathryn.hayden@sabre-holdings.com /
    /Web site:  http://www.sabre-holdings.com /
    (TSG)

CO:  Sabre Airline Solutions; Qantas Airlines; Sabre Holdings Corporation
ST:  Texas, Australia
IN:  CPR STW TRA AIR LEI
SU:



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