Four years ago this month, Amadeus pulled off a partnership coup d'etat, winning a United contract to supplant Apollo as the airline's internal reservations and inventory-management system provider. The cutover was sketched out for 2008.
Coupled with a new but undefined marketing partnership between United and Amadeus, the agreement was a blow to the historic bond between the airline and Apollo/Galileo.
Today, the Amadeus hosting project for United appears to be on hold, a victim of the airline's economic difficulties and the recession, and there is no work under way to flip a switch to turn on a new res system.
Forrester Research analyst Henry Harteveldt said United has taken a go-slow approach to any transition, and he doubts the project will come to fruition.
"If the project doesn't get going, how can it be completed?" Harteveldt asked.
In response to an inquiry, United spokeswoman Sarah Massier said the airline had "a contractual relationship with Amadeus, and conversations regarding this project are between United and Amadeus."
Hans Jorgensen, vice president of strategic airlines and industry relations at Amadeus, said: "Since United originally signed the contract with Amadeus, they have been exposed to other circumstances that affect any initial cutover plans.
"It is very difficult to know now exactly how this is going to evolve, and to talk about it would be mere speculation," he said.
Those "other circumstances," Harteveldt said, include United's financial losses and on-again, off-again speculation about United merging with Continental.
"The business and technology relationship between Amadeus and United Airlines remains in place," Jorgensen said. "Amadeus continues to work on the specific developments requested by United to deploy the Amadeus Altea suite of airline I.T. solutions."
United's adoption of the Amadeus product would promote the goal of the Star Alliance carriers to share a common I.T. platform.
American chooses Jetstream
Altea has also been adopted by Oneworld partners British Airways and Iberia, but American last month chose Hewlett-Packard and its Jetstream passenger services system over Amadeus as its next-generation I.T. host, eventually replacing Sabre.
On the day that American and Hewlett-Packard revealed that they signed a letter of intent, Amadeus issued a brief statement that "we are disappointed with the decision by American Airlines."
"However, this in no way changes Amadeus' overall commitment to airline I.T. in the North American marketplace, nor our strong presence and dedication to the region overall."
Harteveldt expressed "concern that if United delays its Amadeus development much further, United will find itself at a competitive disadvantage to airlines that are on, or moving to, more flexible, nimble and cost-efficient systems like Jetstream and Altea."
For its part, Travelport, which owns Apollo, United's host provider, said "things are very much business as usual for us in terms of the depth, breadth and quality of service we provide to United, and it would not be appropriate in any way for us to expressly comment on the commercial or other plans of one of our customers with regard to one of our competitors."