Case Studies
Self ticketing / check-in kiosk for one of the world's largest airlines
The Client
One of the world's largest airlines with a modern fleet of over 150 aircrafts.
Business Needs
The airlines wanted to improve passenger throughput during ticketing & check-in, and decrease the manpower costs associated with these two activities. To achieve this, a self service kiosk was conceived, which would make it possible for a passenger to purchase his ticket from a ticket vending machine, as well as check-in themselves for a flight, without the intervention of a sales agent or a check-in clerk.
Business / Technical Challenges
The project posed the following major challenges:
- Connectivity between the SNA-based mainframe which hosted the Reservation & Departure Control systems, and the TCP/IP based Kiosks
- Testing of transactions between the kiosk application and the airlines' host nation's monetary authority
- Creating a high-availability solution that delivers 24X7 uptime
Datamatics Solution
Datamatics developed a software platform for the terminal, employing a Corba, component-based architecture. In this architecture, each functional module was implemented as a Corba component, and the main application orchestrated the activities of these components.
Screen-scraping techniques were used to interface, the kiosks to the mainframe, through a third-party solution called HostFront.
A maintenance mode was also provided, through which a field engineer could perform tasks like
- Configuring parameters, including date/time
- Running diagnostic/self-tests on all devices, and
- View/clear Kiosk errors to bring an out-of-service back into operation
The kiosk was also connected to a lightweight, custom-built Terminal Management System (TMS), which monitored the health of all the kiosks in the field on a real-time basis, and generated alarms for any error reported by a kiosk.
Technology
Software
C++, MFC, Win32
Windows XP/2000
Visual Studio 2003
UML
Corba (OmniORB)
HostFront Server
SNA Manager
Hardware
Touch Screen
ATB Printer/Presenter
Magnetic Card Reader
Intersoft POS Terminal
Ticket Presenter
Digital Camera
To know more about self ticketing / check-in kiosk solutions from Datamatics, please write to business@datamatics.com.
