We checked in with Air Canada and ITA Software on the progress of their
new airline reservation system, which Air Canada calls Polaris.
According to an Air Canada spokesperson, "We have not provided a precise timeline for development, testing and implementation of our new Polaris reservations management system. We are currently in the development and testing stages with ITA."
ITA chief commercial officer Gianni Marostica deferred to his customer on comments about timing, but he did offer some insights when asked about Air Canada's cutover to the new system:
"It hasn't happened yet. It's coming. What's most interesting to me is they are a crossover. They have partners around the world, some that are more legacy than others. But they are also kind of at the forefront of pushing these new, alternative pricing models with the
a la carte price menu, with their Tango and Tango Plus fares, so that's forcing us to build a solution that both solves and integrates with other legacy partners but at the same time is all on open systems. Many carriers have said recently that they would love to do that and experiment with a bunch of these things, but their solutions don't permit them to do that. It would be too huge of a rewrite. So it forces us to code to both models and everything in between."