Providing New Tracking Tools for Travel Managers

Charter Solutions International, which helps travel management companies and corporations track their travelers during disruptions or crises, implemented a new deal with FlightStats, a company that provides live flight-tracking.

FlightStats is providing Charter with flight information and alerts through its application programming interface (API) to Charter’s Mobile Communications Management (MCM) platform.

The data provide travel managers with visualization tools, such as a map that shows a plane’s last-reported location.

The airplane icons are color-coded, based on configurable delay thresholds, to identify which flights are on time and which ones are delayed.

Selecting an icon will open MCM’s classic itinerary display that identifies the TMC clients that are on the flight based on their itinerary data.

A mix
Thomas Pfeffer, chief information officer of Alpharetta, Ga.-based Charter Solutions, called the new arrangement “a mix of incidence management and proactive management of the VIP traveler. You can have those customers rebooked before they can grab the phone.”

In the airport view, icons appear wherever the MCM user has active travelers. The icons’ colors reflect the status of those travelers’ flights.

For example, an active traveler may be connecting at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and is scheduled to take a flight that is delayed.  The Schiphol icon will appear yellow on the map.

Selecting an airport icon opens a “flight board” with more detailed information about the flight.

Asset management
Charter also is getting into asset management in order to provide corporations with constant visibility of their employees even when they are not on an active travel itinerary.

“It’s a great way to handle ex-pats, or employees on an oil rig,” Pfeffer said.

Companies can upload their office locations around the world with information on the occupants of each site, he said. The information is integrated into the same risk assessment program used for travelers.

“An office or factory is added to the map, and they get the same messages and alerts,” whether about terrorism, earthquakes or other event, Pfeffer said.