Britannia's briefing portal takes off

Airline hopes portal will help it remain competitive

Britannia Airways has introduced a new flight briefing portal for cabin crew as part of a project to update the company's intranet with secure single sign-on technology.

The initiative is the latest stage of a corporate modernisation project to automate processes, reduce costs and avoid delays caused by information discrepancies.

The cabin crew portal, Flightcrew.net, is based on Open Text's LiveLink technology and allows staff to obtain online passenger and safety information before boarding.

'Crews would turn up and have to go through a whole lot of documents before they could get on the aircraft, such as passenger lists and safety notices,' said ecommerce programme manager John Gough.

'All this used to be faxed and put in wooden pigeon holes, which required a lot of administration and we couldn't be sure they had all been read. There is only about 15 minutes for them to read this and board the flight, so the system has to be really slick. Now they can be printed out. It's about driving out paperwork and driving down costs so we remain competitive,' he said.

Britannia also revamped its 10 crew rooms around the country using modern flat screen technology to give them an 'internet caf‚' feel, says Gough.

He says Britannia is already starting to see a return on its investment from reduced administration costs and efficiency gains.

The project will be the foundation for other initiatives in the future, says Gough.

After the success of the cabin crew portal the airline rolled out a similar system to its pilots, head office and engineering staff.

The next stage of the project is already underway and involves the automation of key processes using electronic workflow technology, which Britannia aims to complete by the end of the year.