LEON, VIKTOR and DUPE are automated flight firming systems (Revenue Integrity tools):

An automated system is a robot, a software able to execute a definite sequence program of operations. An automated system performs tasks automatically, just like a person. Therefore, it reduces the amount of work done by humans and the time taken to do a repetitive task.

The automated flight firming systems ensure that the flight firming process is effective, that is all the reservations are reliable. Indeed, the manual flight firming is a long and expensive process, less effective than the automated flight firming. When flights are firmed manually, they can't be firmed completely at each stage of their life duration because it requires too much time and labour.

The origin of the flight firming is that a reservation on the GDS (Global Distribution Systems) is not always confirmed with an issued ticket:

Some seats are thus "virtually locked". Conceived for the airlines, the distribution systems do not integrate all the validity functions of the bookings. The flight firming is a measure allowing to control the number of seats sold on the flights and to help the Revenue Management to improve the accuracy of the forecast.

There are many different flight firming systems, more or less "automated":

MCC automated flight firming systems are ready to use, you just need to choose the options you want, there is no programming needed.

• The database should be continuously updated when PNRs change or are created.
• The database should accept a very large amount of data.
• The database requires powerful hardware, otherwise its updating speed can become critical.

Such a Revenue Integrity solution has a high cost because it requires :

• Building a specific PNR copy trigger in the inventory system.
• Operating almost in the same manner as the inventory system (central application).
• Heavy procedures to ensure that the "PNR copy database" and the inventory are synchronized.

MCC automated flight firming systems are directly working on live PNRs. They are always synchronized with the GDS / Inventory systems. They use Passengers Name Lists or Passenger Final Sale, that avoid to sweep all the PNRs on the inventory and it ensures that only the unreliable PNRs will be checked.

Some systems are located at the software provider headquarters. The disadvantage for the using airline is that the data processed by the host may not be confidential anymore. The provider supervises the airline data, the computing environment.

Another disadvantage of this location is that the software pricing is based on the PNRs number and it is not possible to buy the software.

In house:

MCC automated flight firming systems are easily installable in the using airline headquarters, because their architecture is easy to integrate in an existing computer environment. Once the license is granted, the software become the property of the airline and the MCC team is supposed to intervene only at the request of the airline (maintenance, request of evolutions…). Our clients are free to do whatever they want with the software, even develop it internally.

MCC automated flight firming systems are priced by licence, and they also offer the possibility to be rent (degressive monthly fees per PNR cancelled / hardware and software installed at the using airline office).

Most flight firming systems are PC-based, some of them allow to use stand-alone "old workstation" with terminal emulation sessions to access GDS or Inventory systems. To ensure performance, the number of workstations must be increased. The old hardware platforms decrease the overall reliabilty and the processing coherency (no synchronisation between each workstation because the processing is stand-alone).

Intranet and scheduling software on servers:

MCC automated flight firming systems have a client / server architecture, the software are installed on a server that can perform load-balancing sessions and multi-session processings. Due to this architecture, there are no limitation of workstations. Using Internet / Intranet browser, each workstation connected to the network can call the user interfaces and prepare, launch the robots. Moreover, the software run on the server.

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