QIK (

Qantas Qantas ( ), formally Qantas Airways Limited, is the flag carrier of Australia, and the largest airline by fleet size, international flights, and international destinations in Australia and List of largest airlines in Oceania, Oceania. A foundi ...

Intelligent Keypad) is an intelligent airline agent application first developed in the late 1980s as a front end to

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

computer reservations system Computer reservation systems, or central reservation systems (CRS), are computerized systems used to store and retrieve information and conduct transactions related to air travel, hotels, car rental, or other activities. Originally designed and ope ...

Activity

QIK was designed by a startup within Qantas AirwaysO'Reilly - 0619074736 - IT Project Management, Second Edition
/ref> called Qadrant, as a productivity tool for use in the

airline An airline is a company that provides civil aviation, air transport services for traveling passengers or freight (cargo). Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or Airline alliance, alliances with other airlines ...

's reservation call centres. The software was developed for Qadrant under contract by Tetra Tech Data Systems (a subsidiary of

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...

), a small custom software house in San Diego, California. The Q.I.K. acronym was derived from its use of a separate keypad attached to the keyboard. The keys on the

keypad A keypad is a block or pad of buttons set with an arrangement of digits, symbols, or alphabetical letters. Pads mostly containing numbers and used with computers are numeric keypads. Keypads are found on devices which require mainly numeric in ...

acted as function keys. In later versions the physical keyboard was disposed of and replaced with a logical keypad represented as a quadrant on the user's screen mapped to standard

QWERTY QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

keyboard (F1-F12) function keys. Marketed under the brands QIK, QIK-RES2005 Computerworld Honors Program
& QIK-CHEK these applications encapsulate airline business rules in a PC-based smart application and send the required transactions to the airline mainframe or host for processing. In doing the training time for an airline agent could be reduced from six weeks to two weeks. In addition the automation of host transactions eliminated format entry errors. This reduced the need to resend transactions and led to a reduction in mainframe usage costs for airlines. In the early 1990s Qantas formed a joint venture operation with DMR Consulting to market QIK and other transportation IT solutions under the name of Qadrant International. In 1997 DMR Consulting purchased the remaining 49% stock of Qadrant from Qantas Airways to become the sole owner of the company. Qadrant went on to develop later versions of QIK in conjunction with Sabre Decision Technologies (SDT), at the time an AMR/

American Airlines American Airlines, Inc. is a major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and is the Largest airlines in the world, largest airline in the ...

subsidiary. Sabre was just finishing development its own system called NEW RES. A head to head evaluation of QIK-RES and NEW RES was undertaken in July, 1989 at American Airlines' Southeastern Reservation Office. QIK-RES was found to be 7% faster than the native reservation system, while NEW RES was found to be 15% slower. Shortly thereafter, Sabre licensed QIK was licensed from Qadrant and modified to work with the Sabre reservation system. This joint development exercise expanded QIK from the DOS platform to the OS/2 & Windows platforms and was brought to market as QIK-II. This collaboration continued and QIK-II was migrated to the SITA's Common Use Airport platform CUTE/OS. Now the majority of QANTAS workstations use Novell's Application delivery system to deliver them an emulated version through infoconnect. QIK-CHEK & QIK-RES are also sold as part of the TurboSabre suite by Sabre Systems. QIK applications are used by more than 70 airlines worldwide.

Airlines known to use QIK

Air Canada Air Canada is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Canada, by size and passengers carried. Air Canada is headquartered in the borough of Saint-Laurent in the city of Montreal. The airline, founded in 1937, provides scheduled and cha ...

(transitioned to Amadeus CRS) *

Air New Zealand Air New Zealand Limited () is the flag carrier of New Zealand. Based in Auckland, the airline operates scheduled passenger flights to 20 domestic and 28 international destinations in 18 countries, primarily within the Pacific Rim. The airline h ...

Bangkok Airways Bangkok Airways plc () is a regional airline based in Bangkok, Thailand. It operates scheduled services to destinations in Thailand, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Laos, Maldives, and Singapore. Its main base is Suvarnabhumi Airport in the Thai cap ...

British Airways British Airways plc (BA) is the flag carrier of the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in London, England, near its main Airline hub, hub at Heathrow Airport. The airline is the second largest UK-based carrier, based on fleet size and pass ...

* Caribbean Star AirlinesCaribbean Star Airlines and Caribbean Sun Airlines Choose Sabre Airline Solutions' Qik to Customize Reservations and Airport Check-In; User-Friendly GUI Will Reduce Operations Expenses While Increasing Productivity.(Company overview) - Journal, Magazine, Article, Periodical
/ref> * Caribbean Sun Airlines * Cathay Pacific Airways *

Continental Airlines Continental Airlines (simply known as Continental) was a major airline in the United States that operated from 1934 until it merged with United Airlines in 2012. It had ownership interests and brand partnerships with several carriers. Continen ...

(transitioned to in-house developed EZRQIK-Res Sr. Dev M.Richard) *

Copa Airlines Compañía Panameña de Aviación, S.A., branded as Copa Airlines, is the flag carrier of Panama. It is headquartered in Panama City, Panama, with its main hub at Tocumen International Airport. Copa is a subsidiary of Copa Holdings and a member o ...

* Dragonair * EVA Airways *

Finnair Finnair Plc (, ) is the flag carrier and largest full-service legacy airline of Finland, with headquarters in Vantaa on the grounds of Helsinki Airport, its airline hub, hub. Finnair and its subsidiaries dominate both domestic and international ...

Lufthansa Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), trading as the Lufthansa Group, is a German aviation group. Its major and founding subsidiary airline Lufthansa German Airlines, branded as Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. It ranks List of largest airlin ...

Lufthansa and South African Airways upgrade to Sabre Qik Developer Tool. , Transportation > Air Transportation from AllBusiness.com
/ref> *

* Scandinavian Airlines *

South African Airways South African Airways (SAA) is the flag carrier of South Africa. Founded in 1929 as Union Airways it later rebranded to South African Airways in 1934, the airline is headquartered in Airways Park at O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannes ...

Southwest Airlines Southwest Airlines Co., or simply Southwest, is a Major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States that formerly operated on a low-cost carrier model. It is headquartered in the Love Field, Dallas, Love Field neighborhood ...

* Sun Country Airlines *

Thai Airways Thai Airways International plc () is the flag carrier airline of Thailand. Formed in 1961 as a joint venture between Scandinavian Airlines, SAS and Thai Airways Company, the airline has its corporate headquarters in Vibhavadi Rangsit Road, Chat ...

US Airways US Airways was a major airline in the United States. It was originally founded in History of aviation in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh as a mail delivery airline called All American Aviation, which soon became a commercial passenger airline. In 1953, it ...

Merger On The Fly – US Airways – InformationWeek
/ref>

References

{{Qantas Group Qantas Travel technology