Lufthansa Group in co-ordination with its fare distribution subsidiary Lufthansa Process Management has signed up to use ATPCO's Express Contracts tool, BTN has learned.
The platform, which has been developed by ATPCO in partnership with Volaro, streamlines the implementation of negotiated contracts between an airline and its corporate travel clients.
The Express Contract service will be used by the group’s airlines including Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Swiss, Air Dolomiti and Brussels Airlines.
The addition of the Lufthansa Group increases the number of carriers using Express Contracts to 26, including United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, GOL Airlines and Air China.
US-based ATPCO said that around 92 per cent of participating airlines' contracts are being processed and distributed within two hours, and half of those are completed in 30 minutes. This compares with a previous average manual processing time of two weeks.
Express Contracts was launched in 2016, and ATPCO recently announced it has processed more than 200,000 negotiated airline contracts through the tool and estimates that it has reduced manual coding time by more than 750,000 hours.