TACA Selects Amadeus to Drive Sales Worldwide

Madrid, 8 July, 2004: TACA, (Air Transport of the American Continent), a leading airline in Latin America, has selected Amadeus’ IT platform, Altéa, for sales and reservations, to drive its sales worldwide across all distribution channels airport and city ticket offices, call centres, travel agencies and TACA.com. In the five year agreement, TACA will use Amadeus Altéa Sell1 as their internal sales and reservation system. To drive online sales, TACA will use Amadeus e-Travel® Planitgo, the most widely adopted, fully customisable Web-based travel booking engine. Complementing the sales platform, Amadeus has partnered with Lufthansa Systems, to offer TACA a complete and fully automated suite of passenger service systems. Lufthansa Systems will provide their Inventory, Departure Control System and other airline applications to TACA. “In our goal to raise operational efficiency and reduce costs, we needed a solution that would give us the necessary reach and flexible infrastructure to enable us to adapt quickly and efficiently to changing market needs,” says TACA President, Alfredo Schildknecht. “Amadeus’ customer-centric sales and reservation platform delivers on this. Amadeus strength in the region and aggressive investments plans in technology complement our growth and integration plans,” he adds. The deal between Amadeus and TACA combines the strength of a leading airline operator in Latin America with that of the world’s leading global distribution system, to bring unprecedented quality of service to travellers and travel agents booking flights on TACA. Additionally, while Amadeus represents over two-thirds of all air tickets sold via travel agencies in Central America, over a third of airline seats sold in the region are on TACA. The airline connects Central America with 13 destinations in North America (10 gateways in main cities in the US; one in Toronto, Canada, and two in Mexico, DF and Cancun) and 21 destinations in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Optimising sales and managing business strategy effectively Amadeus’ Vice President, Airline Business Group, Hans Jorgensen says, “TACA, like many airlines today, is looking for a technology platform to increase sales and manage business strategy with the customer in perspective. Turning passengers into customers starts with the sales and reservation process — this is the first customer touch-point and highly decisive. Altéa Sell and Planitgo help TACA maximise this process through proven and superior technology.” Together, Altéa Sell and Planitgo offer an airline the capacity to exploit multiple distribution channels simultaneously, via a unique, common platform for traditional (offline) and online sales and reservations. The power and richness in content of this platform, plus incorporated functionality of a professional travel agency system — adapted to an airline’s particular requirements — enables airlines like TACA to offer higher service quality to and gain even greater understanding of its customer base. Other key benefits Altéa Sell and Planitgo bring to TACA are:

• the capacity to seamlessly link with partner airlines of their choice using proven solutions — even those using other reservation systems — without investment in additional technological development.
• sharing a unified online/offline sales platform (Altéa Sell is used by 138 other airlines and Planitgo currently powers more than 100 websites from 54 airlines), TACA will protect its investment, enjoy lower operational costs, and benefit from continued enhancements to the future proof technology.
• instant access to the entire GDS travel provider content, state-of-the-art faring systems and searches.

“Amadeus’ objective is to bring value to all the players in the distribution chain,” Jorgensen adds. Specifically, within the region and globally, travel agents selling seats on TACA can seamlessly exchange the very latest flight and passenger data — in real time — with the airline, via the common Altéa Sell platform. This greatly improves their capacity to deliver the most suitable and accurate information to travellers, in real time. 1 Formerly known as the Amadeus Sales System. About TACA TACA flies to 19 countries with 34 international destinations within the Americas and 77 flights within Central America. TACA offers 10 direct routes from Central America to the United States, the best connections within Central America and the most complete hub to South America. The airline provides transportation to more than 3 million passengers a year. TACA operates the youngest, all-Airbus-aircraft fleet on the American continent. Its fleet is one of the most modern in the world, with 28 Airbus airplanes that are recognized globally for their technological innovations, efficiency, and the additional comfort they offer to their passengers. For more information, see www.taca.com. About Lufthansa Systems Lufthansa Systems is one of the world’s leading IT service providers for the airline and aviation industry. As systems integrator, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group covers the entire range of IT services, including consulting, development, implementation and operation. Lufthansa Systems provides its IT infrastructure and operations services to a variety of industries. Headquartered in Kelsterbach near Frankfurt/Main, Germany, the company has branches in Germany and 13 countries and employs about 4,400 people worldwide. In the business year 2003, Lufthansa Systems recorded sales of EUR 610.7 million. For more information, see www.LHsystems.com. About Amadeus Global Travel Distribution (MAD: AMS) Amadeus is the leading global distribution system (GDS) and technology provider, serving the marketing, sales and distribution needs of the world’s travel and tourism industries. Its comprehensive GDS data processing centre serves some 61,000 travel agency locations and more than 11,000 airline sales offices, totalling around 300,000 points of sale located in over 210 markets worldwide. Through the Amadeus GDS, travel agencies and airline offices can make bookings on more than 95 per cent of the world’s scheduled airline seats. The system also provides access to 51,000 hotel properties, 50 car rental companies serving over 26,000 locations, as well as ferry, rail, cruise, tour operators and insurance companies. Amadeus is a leading IT solutions provider to the airline industry. 138 airlines use Amadeus’ Altéa Sell as the sales and reservation system in their offices, to provide passengers with superior and seamless service at optimal cost. Amadeus’ new generation Customer Management Systems include Altéa Plan (inventory management system) and Altéa Fly (departure control system). British Airways, Qantas and Finnair are the first customers to implement these solutions. e-Travel, Amadeus’ e-commerce business unit, is the global leader in online travel technology and corporate travel management solutions. It services travel agencies in 90 countries, and powers the websites of over 260 corporations and more than 60 airlines and hotels. Amadeus is headquartered in Madrid, Spain and quoted on the Madrid, Paris and Frankfurt stock exchanges. For the year ended 31 December 2003, the company reported revenues of EUR 1,929m and net income excluding special items of EUR 158.4m. The Amadeus data centre is in Erding (near Munich), Germany and its principal development offices are located in Sophia Antipolis (near Nice), France. The company has 5,000 employees worldwide. More information about Amadeus is available at: www.amadeus.com More information about e-Travel is available at: www.e-travel.com For further information please contact: Corporate & Marketing Communication Amadeus Global Travel Distribution Tel: +34 91 582 0160 Fax: +34 91 582 0188 E-mail: [email protected] TACA Claudia Arenas, Director Corporate Communications Office Tel: +(502) 279-5700 Fax: +(502) 334-7846 E-mail: [email protected]