Expanding airline puts Forte onto shortlist

By ADAM GIFFORD

Christchurch software house Forte Solutions has been shortlisted with industry giants Sabre and Lufthansa to supply airline operations software for fast-growing Australian airline Virgin Blue.

Chief executive Mark McCaughan said Virgin Blue had used Forte's Geneva suite since the airline started 18 months ago, and had just signed an extension until March next year.

The extension deal was worth "hundreds of thousands" of dollars.

"Even though it's just an extension, the opportunity is on the table for us to be the vendor of choice moving forward," McCaughan said.



Virgin Blue crew assignments manager Fraser Griggs said the airline's growth from three planes to 17 "and more arriving every day" had put pressure on Geneva.

"Geneva was not designed for that number of crew, but Forte say they can provide us with a substantial upgrade and run it on the new SQL 2000 database, which should improve the speed," Griggs said.

He said a decision on a new system would be made by the end of next month.

Former Ansett staff members McCaughan and Jason Kerr started Forte 10 years ago. Geneva is used by most regional airlines in Australasia, including Mount Cook Air, Nelson Air, Qantas, and what is left of the Ansett regional services, as well as by Air Pacific and Air Niugini.

This year, it also had sales to British Mediterranean Airways and new British charter airline Astraeus.

Geneva handles flight scheduling, crew scheduling, operations control, executive management, revenue and finance, commercial planning and management of resources.

It runs on Microsoft Windows platforms, in contrast to most of its competitors, which are large Unix systems.

Forte