March 16, 2007: Australia to India is what American Airlines has on its business plan. The founding member of the Oneworld Alliance has announced the shifting of its Asia Pacific call centre operations from Australia to India. The airline currently operates a daily Delhi-Chicago nonstop service with connections to more than 125 cities in the United States from Chicago.

As per this decision, the world's largest airline has appointed Bird Information Systems Pvt Ltd, a leading technology provider of automated aviation and travel related software solutions to provide call centre services for travel related queries of its customers in India and the Asia Pacific region. According to reports, the deal comes after an earlier City Ticket Office (CTO) agreement, which American Airlines had signed with the Bird Group last year.

As per the agreement, said a report, Bird Information Systems will provide American 24x7 call centre services, which will include handling all customer requests related to travel bookings, reservation, fares, ticketing, e-ticketing and other general information related to the airline. Currently, outsourced CTO operations run in the four major cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. The outsourced call centre operations will be run from New Delhi's Connaught Place, the report said.

American Airlines and its sister airlines, American Eagle and the AmericanConnection, serve 250 cities in over 40 countries with more than 4,000 daily flights. The combined network fleet numbers more than 1,000 aircraft, said a report.