Accelya has named Sam Gilliland as CEO of the airline technology company, taking over from Jim Davidson.
Gilliland, who was CEO of Sabre for 10 years until 2013 and previously held senior positions at Travelocity and Sabre Airlines Solutions, returns to travel having spent time across roles in private equity, financial services and fintech.
Jim Davidson is stepping into the role of vice chairman after only eight months as CEO and will continue to advise Accelya's board.
Davidson had been CEO of Farelogix when it was acquired by Accelya in 2020.
Gilliland feels airline distribution has not changed that much since he stepped down as CEO of Sabre in 2013.
"These things take time. If you go back to the days of paper tickets and the work that was done to move to electronic tickets, it does take time because there is a lot of heavy lifting to be done to get from one place to another so it's not surprising to me that it hasn't changed dramatically," he says.
"We were actually talking then about many of the things that are getting implemented today."
He adds that the priorities in his first couple of months at Accelya will include spending time with the teams at its various offices and talking to customers.
Accelya was acquired by Vista Equity Partners three years ago.