Date:22/07/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/07/22/stories/2005072201650800.htm

Back Kingfisher Airlines to have Hughes network

Our Bureau

Bangalore , July 21

KINGFISHER Airlines has signed up Hughes to set up the networking backbone for all its airport offices across Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.

The backbone will provide a framework for the airline's online booking engine for customers and business partners, a Hughes Escorts Communications Ltd (HECL) release said.

The implementation, which was completed in three months, helped the UB group-promoted airline go live with all its services from the first day of operation and was able to handle strong sales on the very first day of ticket bookings.

"We were looking for a partner who could offer us a single information backbone, seamlessly connecting all our offices, customers, data centre, call centres and airport offices. Also given that very few players in the industry have multiple data centres, a VPN backbone, security and management services, we are confident that Hughes will be able to help us deliver the Kingfisher class experience to our guests," said Mr Hitesh Patel, Vice-President (Engineering), Kingfisher Airlines.

HECL President, Mr Partho Banerjee, said, "Kingfisher Airlines is a successful demonstration of Hughes' success to venture into newer growth verticals. We will ramp it up to more locations and services like disaster recovery as the volume of business grows for the airline."

Currently, Hughes provides the airline services like network management, hosting of business applications at the data centre, on-line connectivity of the call centre in Gurgaon with the data centres, connectivity of its offices and airports into the network and high-speed internet connectivity to its customers for online booking and enquiries.