Carmen Systems AB announces that Air France, one of the world's largest airlines, has entered a long-term agreement for Carmen Crew Pairing. The agreement will automatically give Air France access to all future versions of Carmen's optimization solutions.

Guy Zacklad, Vice-President in charge of Crew Resources and Rostering at Air France, said that the enhanced planning technology will result in further reductions of crew costs.

"For Air France it is important to constantly analyse the impact of different business rules and cost structures in our crew planning. To continuously have access to the latest Carmen technology allows us to make this analysis and to also quickly implement small and major changes. In addition, the forecasted return on investment time for this agreement is very short which made the investment an easy decision," said Guy Zacklad.

Carmen Systems President and CEO, Per Norén said, "We are very happy to welcome Air France to the rapidly growing Carmen Development Partners (CDP) group. With Air France joining the CDP group, airlines operating with more than 120,000 crew members, worldwide, are constantly working with Carmen in building optimization technology that significantly increases operational efficiency."

Carmen Systems AB supplies integrated planning and decision-support solutions for airlines and railways. Clients include Aeroméxico, Alitalia, British Airways, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa, Northwest Airlines, Philippine Airlines, SAS, Deutsche Bahn (German railways) and SJ, Green Cargo (Swedish railways). Carmen Systems is a rapidly expanding organization with 180 employees from 25 countries. Carmen Systems participates in joint research and software development at some of the world's leading universities. Company headquarters is in Göteborg, Sweden and features the largest R&D department in the business.