Southlake’s Sabre sells airline operation division

Friday, October 29, 2021

Southlake-based travel technology company Sabre Corp. is selling its airline operations division to a Canadian company for $392.5 million.

Montreal-based CAE is acquiring Sabre’s AirCentre division that helps airlines with crew management, flight management, repositioning aircraft, airport planning and in-flight services such as meal ordering, the companies said Thursday.

It leaves Sabre with its core business of handling airline and hotel ticketing and reservations. Sabre got its start as the reservations technology unit of American Airlines, which later spun off Sabre into its own company handling reservation technology across the travel industry.

Sabre President and CEO Sean Menke said in a statement that the sale allows the company to “remain laser-focused on the areas of our business that will help drive revenue opportunities.”

In 2019, the AirCentre division created about $150 million in revenue and a $55 million operating profit.

Included in the deal are about 500 employees located in 13 countries. Many of those employees work in software development.

Marc Parent, CAE’s president and CEO says that Sabre’s AirCentre is highly valued by many of the world’s leading airline of whom are customers of CAE today. They look forward to welcoming AirCentre employees from around the globe.

Sabre has about 9,000 employees worldwide and about 25% of those are based in North Texas.

CAE has been on an acquisition spree, buying nine companies since the pandemic began, the company said.

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