United Airlines Automates In-Flight Shopping With Mobile Handhelds Based On
PenRight!; PenRight! Powered Handhelds Provide ''Mobile Cash Registers'' for
In-Flight Catalog Shopping
(Business Wire; 11/30/98)
FREMONT, CALIF. (Nov. 30) BUSINESS WIRE -Nov. 30, 1998--PenRight! Corporation,
the leading manufacturer of pen-based operating environments and application
development tools, announced today that World Duty Free Inflight, the premiere
provider of international in-flight shopping solutions, has completed a
worldwide rollout of 800 pen-based handheld terminals to automate in-flight
duty free shopping for United Airlines passengers.
The pen-based, Point-of-Sale (POS) solution utilizes a custom software
application created by World Duty Free Inflight, using PenRight! for Windows,
PenRight!'s cross platform rapid application development (RAD) tool, and runs
on the IDFS500 handheld terminal manufactured by 4P Mobile Data Processing for
World Duty Free Inflight.
The software solution is designed to not only automate the Point of Sale
transaction but the entire backend warehouse inventory management system. The
lightweight, compact, IDFS500 is an all-in-one handheld terminal featuring a
pen-input display, integrated bar code laser scanner, magnetic/smart card
reader and thermal printer.
"We looked at all the major development tool vendors in the mobile market and
PenRight! is the clear leader in this field. PenRight!'s rapid application
development environment with built-in, pen-based/touch screen functionality,
saved us significant time to market," said, Chris Pangiotopoulos, World Duty
Free Inflight's vice president, Inflight MIS Services.
"The key to our decision to standardize on PenRight! was the flexibility it
provided when developing our complex POS application for in-flight duty free
sales," added Pangiotopoulos.
Flight attendants equipped with the PenRight! based handheld terminals can now
automatically process thousands of in-flight Point of Sale transactions by
credit card, cash, coupon or voucher, from items selected from the duty free in-
flight gift catalog.
At the passenger's seat, the flight attendant selects the desired products from
the IDFS500's LCD display and scans the product's corresponding bar code.
Payment is then collected and stored on the handheld's internal RAM memory card
and an itemized receipt is then printed from the units internal thermal printer
and handed back to the customer. The complete transaction is now done in a
fraction of the time it took to process orders with older, text based handheld
terminals.
About PenRight! Corporation
PenRight! Corporation, based in Fremont, designs and markets both the PenRight!
operating environment and PenRight! application development tools. PenRight! is
a graphical user interface and handwriting recognition environment tuned for
mobile data collection applications.
The PenRight! rapid application development environment includes object
oriented design tools, integrated API, database, and data communication
libraries. PenRight! is currently available on the leading pen-based computers.
PenRight! can be reached at 510/249-6900 or visit PenRight!'s Web site at
http://www.penright.com/.
About World Duty Free Inflight
World Duty Free Inflight is the largest inflight duty free concession operator
in the airline industry, servicing over 26 airlines. WDFI has the largest
handheld computer POS base in the inflight duty free industry managing 55 plus
operating locations worldwide, including the Americas, Europe and Asia.
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