Mork and Mindy

Southwest Airlines' new Lanyon-based ticket-processing system is driving up productivity and accuracy in the company's Ticket-By-Mail transaction process.

"We estimate that in one year of operation, we've lowered the costs by $86,000 while increasing volume 18%," said Pam Graham, Southwest's Director of Ticketing Services. "The whole cost of implementing the system was less than $50,000."

Two PCs, fitted with Lanyon Boards and application software developed by Southwest, link up with Southwest's four reservations centers in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Phoenix to accommodate customer requests for tickets by mail.

The Lanyon system allows "Mork and Mindy", as the PCs are dubbed by Southwest's staff, to communicate on-line with SAAS, Southwest Airlines' reservation system.

When customers make reservations and request tickets by mail, reservations agents place passengers name records (PNRs) in queues on SAAS. Mork and Mindy then extract PNRs from eight queues. Either PC can be assigned to four queues full time, to the same queue, or one can be deactivated during slack periods.

Before the system came on-line, ticket processing required 18 full-time agents and three supervisors. With Mork and Mindy, nine people can handle the same volume of work and more.

Additional information on the Lanyon Board, and other Lanyon products is available by contacting Lanyon Ltd. in London, England at 011-44-81-994-4544, or Lanyon North America Inc. in Lewisville, Texas at 214-317-0123.