Hong Kong's flagship air carrier, Cathay Pacific Airways believes in creating efficiency and value to its operations by applying electronic business initiatives in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The airline's General Manager, e-Business and Regions, Tim Fitzsimmons, said Cathay viewed the Internet as a tool to streamline its business from ticket reservations to internal purchasing.

“e-Business is a tool that enables us to maintain our profitability and our level of service to customers,'' he said. “Despite the difficulties of the past business year, we have continued to invest in e-Business and hope to continue to deliver rewards in efficiency and convenience so that we can have competitive advantages in the marketplace.''

Online schedule information, notiFLY Flight Paging and CXpress multi purpose kiosks at Hong Kong International Airport are among the new e-products for passengers introduced by the airline over the past year. Some of the clearest benefits of the e-Business initiatives have come from moving existing physical systems such as booking or checking availability online.

Significant savings are being delivered through e-Procurement, according to Cathay Pacific's general manager airline purchasing Greg Hughes. He said the company expects to save about $233 million (US$30 million) by the end of this year by moving many of its purchasing and inventory systems online.

“Under the system, payments are authorised once products are in the warehouse. It is a very integrated system which will leave us with more time to create innovative products.''

Mr Fitzsimmons said the challenge for the future was to drive up volume of usage and sales through the airline's online services, including the main website which is the most visible travel website in Hong Kong according to the latest ACNielsen/Netratings survey.