INDUSTRY WATCH
ABOUT OMAN AIR
Oman Air is the flagship carrier of the Sultanate of Oman and an Official 4 Star
Airline (Skytrax 2011). Founded in 1993, the airline has since witnessed massive
growth and has played a major role in making Muscat an important traffic hub in
the Middle East, supporting the commercial, industrial and tourism sectors.
The airline currently operates direct international flights from Muscat to Abu
Dhabi, Bahrain, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam, Madina, Tehran,
Mashhad and Kuwait, in the Gulf region, as well as Cairo, Beirut and Amman
within the wider Middle East/Africa region.
In addition, Oman Air flies to eleven destinations in India (Goa, Mumbai, Chennai,
Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad, Delhi, Lucknow, Bangalore, Kozhikode
and Jaipur); Chittagong and Dhaka in Bangladesh; Karachi, Islamabad and
Lahore in Pakistan; Kathmandu in Nepal; and Colombo in Sri Lanka. The airline
also flies to Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Jakarta, Zanzibar and
Dar Es Salaam. Its European destinations are London, Milan, Munich, Frankfurt,
Paris and Zurich.
Oman Air’s domestic destinations are Salalah, Khasab and Duqum.
Currently Oman Air’s fleet consists of four Boeing 787 Dreamliners, six Airbus 330-
300s, four Airbus 330-200s, five Boeing 737-900s, 19 Boeing 737-800, one Boeing
737-700 and four Embraer 175s. Four more Dreamliners will join the fleet in the
following years. By 2018, Oman Air’s total fleet size is expected to be around 57
aircraft, rising to 70 aircraft by 2020.
Its time consuming as it involves
several iterations of data extraction,
transformation and uploading data on
to the new system.
Mobility solution for our ground
handlers did not take us more than
four months. Major effort was in user
training.
framework for managing over 700 iPads
within our domain and also integration
with several third party systems and
navigation chart providers.
Deployment of the MRO solution took
us about 20 months. Migrating data
from our legacy system and other
sources to the format and structure of
the new system was the major activity.
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What would you say is
particularly innovative about
this project?
As regards the customer mobility
solution, we were possibly one of the
early adopters of a comprehensive
“Manage my Booking” function
that enables our customers to make
changes to their bookings irrespective
of the channel of purchase. This, our
customers found to be very useful.
The Business Intelligence platform was
innovative to the extent that it provides
close to real time data and information
to senior executives of the airline. It
equips them to better control and
manage operations and take necessary
corrective actions using facts and
figures.
What would you say are
the specific business results
generated by the project?
Investments for each of these projects
were done with the objective of
improving our operational efficiency
and were thus directed to some of the
key and critical aspects.
The customer facing mobility solution
enabled us to shift our customers
to the online channel, which in case
of bookings helped us to reduce
distribution costs. Customers,
especially those traveling without
check-in bags found the mobile
check-in extremely useful. The
number of our customers checking
online using the web and mobile has
significantly increased in the last one
year, resulting in reduced wait time at
airport check-in counters.
The EFB solution has significantly
reduced time for pre-flight briefing
activities for the crew. Pilots can now
download flight plans, weather and
navigation charts etc. even prior to
reporting for duty. This has eliminated
printing several documents at the
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