LAHORE - New reservation system, HITIT, in PIA has resulted in decline in sale while the chairman had to face tough time before Aviation Committee of the Senate when senators raised questions about the system.
A letter written by PIA Chairman Muhammad Saqib Aziz to Ms Noor Gukman CEO & Chairperson HITIT Computer Services revealed.
The letter available with The Nation further reads, “HITIT team has given the timeline to fix the flight endorsement on other airlines in this week, which has not yet been addressed.
The manual process is cumbersome and not sustainable; fog season in Pakistan is approaching, which will disturb the flight schedule frequently.”
The chairman in his letter said, “PIACL switched to HITIT PSS from September 12, 2018, and right from the onset I feel that even after more than one month of the cutover some basic functionalities that are intrinsic of a PSS have not been configured correctly according to PIACL rules of business. These critical issues have been reported to the HITIT team present here in Karachi.”
During the data collection and configuration/development of the Passenger Service System (PSS), some of business processes and rules have not been implemented in the production system.
For example, the production system still has various functionalities that were tested and cleared in the user acceptance testing (UAT) environment, prior to the cutover, but are now not available.
On October 17, 2018, the HITIT PSS issues were raised in the apex forum of Aviation Committee of Senate/Parliament of Pakistan, where we had to face some difficult situation and questions by the senators, the letter added.
“In this backdrop, I am writing you to call for your personal attention to resolve the issues on the highest priority and ensure that when we go to Aviation Committee of Senate again after three weeks, we are able to give confidence to our parliament about the new PSS,” the letter said.
“In the last meeting with your team in Karachi on September 25, 2018, they had been asked to give three months comprehensive training plan to the CEO office for review, but the same has not reached till yet. Please ensure that the HITIT team should provide a proper and comprehensive training plan for all relevant PIA staff,” it stated.
“It has been observed that a lot of records which were shifted from SABRE are not properly configured in the system and our passengers are facing severe issues because of inappropriate migration of data.
Multiple issues are being reported on daily basis that our staff and agents are unable to refund or re-issue the tickets in the HITIT system.
The issues not only include the SABRE-migrated PNRs but also some HITIT PNRs have been reported in the same.”
“The system is not picking the correct fares; even it shows different fares for the same flights in TravelPort vs AgencyPortal.
This is having a serious impact on our sales,” the letter asserted.
“The Revenue Accounting Application by Accelya was targeted to be integrated with HITIT applications one week after the cutover, but the same has not yet been completed, due to which we don’t have complete picture of our sales and revenues.
HITIT should send its relevant resources and engage Accelya to resolve this issue on most priority basis,” it added.
“Our key agents had a meeting with CEO PIACL and the HITIT team also.
They had highlighted different issues which they are facing on frequent basis. In this context, they want to have your dedicated office to address and resolve the day-to-day affairs and issues. It is, therefore, required that HITIT should set up its office first in Karachi and Lahore,” the letter affirmed.
“It has also been observed that availability of the HITIT team in Karachi to support the PIA team is not ample as we understand that the cutover/migration process has not fully been completed as mentioned above and initial hiccups are still being faced by our ground teams both at sales offices and airports.
A production system, with some functionalities not configured according to the operating environment of an airline, results in decline in sales and passengers’ discomfort,” the letter concluded.