Predator gobbles 'dupe' bookings

SOUTH African Airways has introduced an appropriately named piece of software called "Predator" which will work its way through the airline's inventory eliminating duplicate or "dupe" bookings made by SAA staff and agents who want to hedge their bets to ensure clients get a seat. This is according to André Viljoen, SAA’s ceo, who spoke at the City Center's agm in Gauteng. Duplicate bookings causes SAA to increase its overbooking profile to compensate for no-shows, which in turn leads to more dupes. It is a vicious circle. Predator, on the other hand, searches the system looking for anomalies such as similar sounding or inverted names. He said if SAA could reduce no-shows by 1%, it would save the airline R120m based on its total turnover of R12bn. (Mark Gray)