The large airline companies, in particular, have given ample evidence over a number of years that they know how to integrate supply chain management systems, customer relationship management systems, business intelligence systems, and integrated collaboration environments for competitive advantage, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Integration of SCM, CRM, BI, and ICE in the Airline Industry

The following discussion tells you how they did it - The airlines really got started using IT in a significant way when American Airlines and United Airlines introduced the first airline reservation systems, SABRE and APOLLO. Airline companies that did not have their own reservation system, Frontier Airlines, for example, paid for the privilege of being a “co-host” on SABRE or APOLLO, which permitted its flights to be listed on the systems and available to travel agents. American and United got a tremendous competitive advantage from being the owners of the reservation systems. First, the systems were very profitable. Second, American and United had access to business intelligence on their own flights (for example, which ones were filled to capacity, and which ones were taking off with too many empty seats). In addition, they had immediate access to competitive intelligence on other airlines because it was all available in the reservation systems’ databases. If Frontier wanted to have special competitive analyses prepared, it could request special reports, but it had to pay for them and wait for them to be prepared.