Ethiopian Airlines has signed a three-year agreement with Sabre Airline Solutions for Sabre AirFlite Schedule Manager, helping the airline develop a more efficient schedule, while improving the utilization of its aircraft and providing customers with more flight options.

Schedule Manager considerably reduces schedule development time by automating and simplifying scheduling tasks previously performed manually, while letting schedulers remain in control of the decision-making process. This improved productivity and schedule-planning efficiency has resulted in some airlines increasing their incremental revenues by up to three percent.

Schedule Manager also helps create a corporate-wide flight scheduling database and provides easy connectivity to legacy systems, while offering the ability for schedulers to view, edit and report flight schedule information.

As a critical link from Africa to the rest of the world, it is vital that we can offer our customers as flexible a schedule as possible, said Henock Woubishet, director of Marketing Information Systems for Ethiopian Airlines. We chose to work with Sabre Airline Solutions because its industry-proven flight scheduling product can do just that. Moreover, it is our firm belief that further implementation of the AirFlite Profit Manager will give us a solid return-on-investment by keeping a close check on our profitability.

Vinay Dube, vice president, Sabre Airline Solutions added: We see an increasing demand for automated scheduling tools. Having the right schedule in place can have a huge impact on the bottom line so airlines need to be able to make schedule, network and fleeting decisions quickly and accurately -- a process that can`t be done manually in many cases. Our AirFlite tools are proven, reliable and secure, which is why they are now in use by more than 60 airlines world wide.

The AirFlite suite is the industry standard for scheduling software solutions. All of the top 10 airlines globally are using at least one of the AirFlite suite`s scheduling products.

The contract with Ethiopian Airlines adds to the momentum of EMEA-based carriers opting for the smart, proven and bankable technology available from Sabre Airline Solutions -- with nearly 90 contracts signed in the region during the past 12 months.