Unisys Corp takes deep exception to our reporting of the upheavals in the airline reservation world, pointing out in particular that although United Airlines is a major 1100 user for its operations and maintenance systems, the Apollo reservation system is based on IBM hardware (CI No 722). As for the decision of the four major European 1100 users – Air France, Scandinavian Airlines System, Lufthansa and Iberia – to opt for an IBM solution for their shared Amadeus system (CI No 709), Unisys says that while it is disappointed at not having been chosen – because it could not point to a working system doing 1,400 transactions a second – it fully expects the four airlines to continue to use their 1100 complexes for all their other operations apart from reservations, and to upgrade them over time. Unisys reckons that in hardware terms it has about 30% of the market for airline systems, with major users including Air Canada, Air India and Indian Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Australian Airlines, Finnair and CargoLux, as well as the Qantas cargo system. In the US, Northwest Orient and Eastern are still major users, although Northwest plans to move reservations to the TWA CRS system.
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