American Airlines asked its bankruptcy court to terminate its contract with HP Enterprise Services for a new passenger services system (PSS). A PSS includes an airline’s internal reservations, inventory and department control systems.

Agreement not reached on key issues
In court papers filed June 7, American said that over the past two years, American and HP “have been unable to reach agreement on a number of key issues affecting the project’s direction, and it became clear that an orderly termination of the PSS Agreement was in the best interests of both Parties.

“Accordingly, after good-faith and arm’s-length negotiations, the Parties have entered into an agreement (subject to the Court’s approval) providing for the termination of the PSS Agreement.”

'Customer-centric' system envisioned
When American announced the deal with HP in 2009, it envisioned a “customer-centric” system that would combine operational and transactional data with dynamic customer information, providing a seedbed for the carrier’s merchandising strategy.

For example, the system would show not only whether a flight was delayed, but how many executive platinum fliers onboard would be likely to miss a connection.

“It will affect how I interact with customers,” Monte Ford, then American’s chief information officer, said. “We’ll inform that person that he’s not going to make the flight, but we automatically re-accommodated him and we’ll make sure his bag gets there.”

While American seeks a new vendor, HP will remain in its life: Sabre outsourced data management, applications hosting and other technology to EDS, which was acquired by HP in 2008. American uses SabreSonic software as its PSS, but the operation is managed by HP.