United Airlines to implement worldwide flight-crew, cargo scheduling system on HP 9000 servers

Singapore, Nov. 11, 1999 - United Airlines has purchased and installed eight HP 9000 V2500 and V2250 Enterprise Servers to power its worldwide flight-crew scheduling, cargo scheduling and pricing, as well as its speech-recognition systems. The largest majority employee-owned company and the largest airline in the world, offering 2,416 flights a day to 135 destinations in 27 countries and two U.S. territories, it has also selected more than 100 two-way HP 9000 R390 Enterprise Servers to support communications on its Web site and Intranet systems.

United is an industry innovator with breakthroughs such as E-Ticket Service, United Connection, Airport Gate Readers, United Shuttle, and the introduction of the technologically advanced Boeing 777.

HP's V2500 and V2550 servers are configured in application-based clusters, with fibre channel connections to mainframes and other networks and servers. Continuous uptime is virtually assured with the high availability offered by HP MC/ServiceGuard, which monitors the health of various components within each node of a server cluster, and quickly responds to failures in a way that eliminates or minimizes application downtime.

"HP's new V-Class platform, with its robust HP-UX 11 operating environment and the cluster concept, fulfill our organization's goal of consolidating operations on flexible server platforms that trim administrative overhead and maintenance expenses and reduce space requirements in the data center," said Bob Restivo, executive director of worldwide information service operations, United Airlines. "In addition, the CPU utilization on these servers promotes outstanding performance."

Restivo added that each scheduling system is expected to recoup the original investment in less than one year by generating higher sales and reducing costs in the data center.

On-site Testing
Three 32-processor HP 9000 V2500 servers support United's worldwide flight-crew scheduling system. In on-site benchmark testing, a single 32-processor HP 9000 V2500 Enterprise Server outperformed arrays of servers from competing companies. United's previous sequential processing solution required 27 hours to process a day's schedule of 2,400+ flights, but the HP V2500 parallel server handles the job in just two hours.

Because the entire flight schedule can be processed in just two hours, United Airlines can now make dynamic changes to the system as the day progresses. More efficient scheduling of flight personnel alone can save United millions of dollars a year. In addition, the airline expects to boost on-time performance and customer-satisfaction ratings.

Cargo, Speech-recognition Systems
Three eight-processor HP 9000 V2250 Enterprise Servers support a worldwide cargo scheduling and pricing system that tracks more than $1 billion worth of shipments annually, while two eight-processor HP 9000 V2250 Enterprise Servers support automated speech-recognition systems that provide flight information and other services.

Web Site, Intranet Systems
More than 100 HP 9000 R390 Enterprise Servers support communications on United's Web site and Intranet systems. This HP platform offers unmatched performance density per rack and its secure Web console provides secure management from anywhere in the world. R-Class servers also offer built-in Web Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities, which equips them to maintain response times during peak traffic, due to dynamic and intelligent load balancing.