Let's get smart about identity

AIR TRANSPORT

LET’S GET SMART ABOUT

IDENTITY PAGE 34

#SITAINSIGHTS

2016

THE ROAD AHEADBARBARA DALIBARD, SITA’S NEW CEO

PAGE 6CYBER ATTACKS: NOT IF BUT WHEN …

A CLARION CALL TO GET ORGANIZED PAGE 30

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INTERVIEW

P 17DENVER AIRPORT,ROBERT KASTELITZ, SENIOR VP OF TECHNOLOGIES & CIO

TECHNOLOGIES: THE PROMISE OF ROBOTICS

P 22ROBOTS ON TRIAL: ‘LEO’ THE BAGGAGE ROBOT

CONTENTS

3ISSUE 2: 2016

Air Transport IT Review – Issue 2 2016Air Transport IT Review online and breaking news: www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review

SITA 252-254 Blyth Road, Hayes, Middlesex UB3 1HA, UKTelephone +44 (0)20 8756 8000Enquiries to [email protected]

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Information is subject to change without notice. All trademarks acknowledged. ©SITA 2016

TRENDS The connected world of travel – Airline IT Trends Survey 2016 9

TRENDS More connected than ever – air transport community networking 11

TRENDS The next big thing – Software Defined Networking 13

INTERVIEW Mittu Chandilya, former MD & CEO AirAsia India 15

CASE STUDY Gearing up for Airport 3.0 at Geneva Airport 19

INTERVIEW Decade of transformation, Francesco Violante, outgoing SITA CEO 26

TECHNOLOGIES Cyber attacks: not if, but when… 30 What is A-ISAC? Faye Francy, Executive Director 31 Dr Simon Moores, Security Futurist & Risk Consultant – on AI 32 A tiered approach, Thomas Gourgeon, Orange Cyberdefense 33 Airport security, Dominic Nessi, ACI World Technology Steering Group 33

INNOVATION Getting smart about identity – single token travel on trial 34 Single token travel using blockchain, Armin Ebrahimi, CEO, ShoCard 36 A new approach, Bob Davidson, Head, Aviation Facilitation, IATA 37 The name game – id management demands naming conventions 38 Collaboration will pave the way, Matthew Finn, MD, AUGMENTIQ 39

TRENDS The rise of hackathons in air travel, and the demands for APIs 40

TECHNOLOGIES Air transport’s digital store – Marketplace.aero 42

MEMBERSHIP Member updates 45

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INTERVIEW

P 6THE ROAD AHEAD, BARBARA DALIBARD, SITA CEO

AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW4

NEWS


MEDIA TO GO... SITA is exploring ways to deliver content to passengers about to board flights, by creating its DigitalMedia portfolio.

HEAR WHAT THEY SAY You can hear reactions on the SITA Online YouTube channel. Swiss International Airlines’ Arnaud Delaloye, Manager Marketing Distribution, discusses the innovation with SITA’s Product Innovation Manager, Thomas Deillon.

“Swiss passengers at the airport will be able to access a selection of newspapers, magazines, TV reports, news and games refreshed on a daily basis and made available through our ‘Media on the move’ program,” says Delaloye.

Meanwhile, Heathrow’s Head of Commercial Telecoms Roberto Segala explains ‘EntertainMe’, the airport’s media kiosks being trialed with passengers, giving rapid access to a range of media and also providing potential opportunities to work with retailers.

Search the SITA Online YouTube channel for our DigitalMedia Kiosk and ’On the move’ interviews with Roberto Segala from Heathrow and Arnaud Delaloye of Swiss.

IRAQI AIRWAYS OPENS GLOBAL CONTACT CENTERIraqi Airways has opened a new reservation contact center in Amman, operated by SITA and allowing the airline to better manage its reservations across 13 countries.Using SITA’s Unified Communications portfolio, the airline is able to consolidate voice, data and audio into one platform.At the same time, the solution’s cloud-based infrastructure delivers secure, reliable connectivity which links the airline to its far-flung destinations.

INTEGRATIONWith SITA’s Horizon® Passenger Management & Distribution system already in place, Iraqi Airways was able to integrate the new center with the airline’s reservation, ticketing, e-commerce, inventory and departure control systems. Using a new interface, agents are able to quickly make or change bookings, while coping with growing passenger demands for multi-channel support, including voice, email and chat.

HORIZON UNDERPINS NEW PASSENGER SERVICESWith a rapidly growing global network, Air Arabia is to introduce SITA’s next generation Horizon® system to further enhance efficiencies across its operations.

Air Arabia carried close to 8 million passengers in 2015, serving 101 destinations from regional hubs in the UAE, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan.

BOARDING SITA’s Horizon Passenger Service System (PSS) will help the airline better manage the boarding of passengers across all destinations while streamlining the turnaround of aircraft.

The service includes the latest departure control and weight and balance systems.

Meanwhile, leading Saudi private aviation services company, Sky Prime Aviation Services, is deploying SITA’s Horizon to manage its new VIP flight service for premium passengers. And earlier this year, one of West Africa’s fastest-growing airlines Cameroon Airlines (Camair-Co), chose SITA’s Horizon to manage every aspect of its operation.

SURVEY PUTS SECURITY IN SPOTLIGHT A colossal 91% of airlines plan to invest in cyber security programs over the next three years, as the connected world of travel becomes a reality. So says the SITA Airline IT Trends 2016 Survey.

The focus on cyber security reflects the move to the ‘Internet of Things’ in which a vast number of physical objects will become connected to the internet.

In this issue we focus on the trends. See ‘The connected world of travel,’ page 9 and ‘Cyber attacks: not if, but when…’, page 30.

www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-reviewFor full story:

www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-reviewFor full story:

MELBOURNE’S BOARDING TRIALS Melbourne Airport continues to use technology in new ways to make the journey smoother for passengers and airlines.

Underpinning improvements is SITA’s common-use platform, which has delivered self-service check-in kiosks and automated bag drop throughout the airport.

SELF-BOARDING TRIAL Self-boarding gates are the next step in delivering a highly efficient self-service passenger experience and reducing the cost of operations for airlines using the airport.

As a trial, SITA and Melbourne Airport have implemented a self-boarding gate in T2 International, allowing passengers to simply scan their boarding pass to gain access to the aircraft.

POSITIVE START Speed of processing, passenger perception and accuracy will be measured as the airport evaluates benefits. Following initial positive indications, SITA and Melbourne Airport teams are to analyze the final results.

The initiative is part of the overall airport development to enhance the experience for the 30 international airlines and more than 32 million passengers who currently use it – expected to double to 60 million by 2030.

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ROLLS-ROYCE HARNESSES BIG DATA FROM ITS ENGINES Rolls-Royce has selected SITAONAIR’s AIRCOM® FlightMessenger to collate and distribute Engine Health Monitoring (EHM) data from its engines.

The engines fly on over 6,000 aircraft and collectively operate for over 100 million hours a year.

As part of its 24/7 monitoring service, Rolls-Royce will use the EHM data distributed by FlightMessenger to anticipate maintenance needs and maximize the operational life of engines.

‘TOTAL CARE‘Rolls-Royce engines intelligently collect and analyze data during flight. This data is transmitted to Rolls-Royce to support its TotalCare® Service Solutions. Across the engine fleet this data amounts to thousands of messages a day.

Rolls-Royce chose SITAONAIR‘s FlightMessenger as a single system to receive and distribute these messages to its analytics and operations teams.

THE NEW LOOK AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW ONLINE!

… COVERING TECHNOLOGIES, TRENDS,

INNOVATIONS, INTERVIEWS AND MOREAvailable on the new sita.aero microsite Whatever your device, the new online edition of Air Transport IT Review will give you easy access to features and insights across the technology issues that matter to the industry, including solutions and innovations embracing the explosion of mobile devices, cloud, big data, business intelligence, predictive analytics, new generation passenger systems, e-Aircraft, border intelligence, and much more.www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review

PASSENGERS WANT CHOICEEuropean airline passengers are among the world’s keenest users of technology to arrange and manage their flights. And they’re happiest when they have more choice and control over their trips.

That’s the evidence from SITA’s 2016 Passenger IT Trends Survey.

Website usage in Europe is hugely popular – with 80% of passengers booking, 35% checking-in and 31% getting their boarding passes online. This compares to lower rates globally of 75%, 31% and 11% respectively.

CHANNEL CHOICES Tablets are more popular among European travelers than across the globe with nearly half (46%) of those surveyed in Europe carrying one. At the same time, 83% carry a smartphone and 9% have a smartwatch. Find out more about airport dwell time, the top five activities at airports, and fluctuating emotions during various steps of the journey across the world. See also our special focus on China.

www.sita.aero/surveysFind out more:

INTERVIEW

THE ROAD AHEADSITA’S INCOMING CEO BARBARA DALIBARD JOINS THE ORGANIZATION WITH A BLEND OF TRAVEL AND TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE. WHAT THOUGHTS ARE TOP OF MIND IN THESE EARLY DAYS?

What attracted you to SITA?

For me it was a personal ‘alignment of the stars’. As SITA combines the areas I have built my career on and am very passionate about; information and communications technology (ICT), innovation and travel. The combination of all three makes it the perfect place for me.

From my previous role with Orange Business Services I knew SITA and respected the company and its people. In fact, while at Orange, SITA was my first global customer and I really admired its strong presence and position in the world’s air transport community.

Having spent nearly 25 years in ICT, my primary objective has always been to implement new technology to help customers transform the way they do business.

I applied this knowledge to the travel industry at SNCF (the French national railway company), as CEO of SNCF Voyageurs, which manages all passenger traffic, long distance and commuter services.

There I introduced the world’s first low-cost TGV and we completely transformed the customer experience providing seamless door to door information to travelers.

What experience do you bring?

At SNCF, we were transporting 4 million passengers a day. The ‘High Speed’ business (TGV, Eurostar, Thalys, etc) had 100 million customers a year. A massive operation that shares many parallels with a large airline or airport.

Like them, a rail operation faces many of the same challenges – disruptions, lack of information, management of customer expectations, and the need to segment customers to provide the right offer.

It was in this role that I created the first low-cost TGV, ‘Ouigo’. In tandem, we broadened our approach launching ‘Ouibus’, a long distance subsidiary bus company and acquired ‘Ouicar’, a car sharing company.


http://www.sita.aero/content/sita-world-sporting-events

“ IT IS AN EXCITING TIME TO BE AT THE INTERSECTION OF TRAVEL AND TECHNOLOGY. MY JOB AS THE NEW SITA CEO IS TO CONTINUE TO WORK WITH THE AIR TRANSPORT COMMUNITY TO DELIVER THE FULL BENEFITS OF TECHNOLOGY. I LOOK TO THE ROAD AHEAD WITH GREAT ANTICIPATION.”

7ISSUE 2: 2016

BARBARA DALIBARD CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SITABarbara Dalibard is CEO and a member of the Board of Directors of SITA, appointed in July 2016.She brings a strong track record and passion for innovation and collaboration to the role.Barbara’s vision is to build on SITA’s leading position at the heart of the air transport industry, using technology to transform business and industry issues. Barbara joined SITA from SNCF (the French National Railway Company), a Fortune 500 company, where she served as CEO of SNCF Voyageurs; which manages all passenger traffic, long distance and commuter services; and was a member of the French rail operator’s Management Committee. Prior to joining SNCF in 2010, she spent seven years with Orange Business Services, five as CEO and President, Equant.The majority of her career was spent at France Telecom where she held a variety of senior management positions and was responsible for creating new internet and mobile service offerings. Later, she became head of the company’s enterprise offering, first for France and then internationally.She holds a Master of Science and Engineering from Telecom ParisTech and a Master of Mathematics from the École Normale Supérieure. She was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the École Polytechnique and the University of Montreal.Barbara is based at SITA’s global headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Third, SITA serves air transport customers globally. Our customers and teams are dispersed. We need to manage a complex world and rise to the challenge of simplifying solutions for our customers whose focus is continually improving the passenger experience.

It is an exciting time to be at the intersection of travel and technology. I look to the road ahead with great anticipation.


INTERVIEW

“ I HAVE SEEN THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INTERNET OF THINGS TO THE RAIL BUSINESS... IT WILL BE THE SAME IN THE AIR TRANSPORT INDUSTRY.”

This move took us out of our traditional rail business towards a door-to-door passenger business model based on new technologies-it also propelled us into the sharing economy. I see many synergies to apply this type of thinking to air travel as well.

Through this experience, I gained an understanding of the travel industry, and a passion for taking care of travelers.

I am equally as enthusiastic about technology and how it can change the status quo.

Introducing new technologies and services that are meaningful for the customers even if it may compete with your existing portfolio is a conviction for me. In 2003, I launched the first application of the Internet of Things (IoT) when it was still called M2M (machine-to-machine). I also successfully launched the first Wi-Fi service, in France, when Wi-Fi was seen as a disruptor of mobile business.

I want to be sure that at SITA we keep up the momentum, with a healthy technology and innovation pipeline that will help our customers thrive.

Your initial plans?

I will hit the ground running by meeting SITA customers around the world. I really enjoy spending a lot of time with customers to understand their needs-they are our life blood. I also look forward to working closely with the SITA Board and Council who are a very important part of SITA.

Meeting with SITA people in each of our geographies is also high on my agenda. Our people are critical to our success and have a wealth of knowledge I will benefit from. It is also important to learn from our teams who are in front of the customer. They often have the best insight into what the market wants and the direction it is moving.

This will help me connect the dots and get a clear vision of our customers and their requirements.

The road ahead?

First and foremost, it is about staying focused on the needs of our members, customers and the wider community.

I will also be focused on SITA’s technology roadmap, and on working with the Board to build the strategic plan to bring continued growth, as well as more investment in our portfolio, innovation, service management and people.

We need the right skills on board, and the right portfolio to compete and deliver the solutions our customers need and demand.

What challenges do you foresee?

One of the first challenges is that the air transport community must keep pace with the speed of technological evolution.

The second challenge relates to the B2B and B2C experience. Passenger demands and expectations are changing quickly. That puts pressure on the IT community, who need to meet expectations despite expenditure constraints. It also puts pressure on IT providers.

THE CONNECTED WORLD OF TRAVEL

NEW TECHNOLOGIES ARE TRANSFORMING THE WORLD OF AIR TRAVEL, CONNECTING PASSENGERS, AIRCRAFT AND ‘THINGS’ LIKE NEVER BEFORE. AS EVER GREATER CONNECTIVITY ENCROACHES, IT’S SHINING AN INTENSIVE SPOTLIGHT ON CRITICAL AREAS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY.

9ISSUE 2: 2016

SMARTER AVIATION – IT TRENDS SURVEYS

AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW10 AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW10

As many as 91% of airlines said they plan to invest in cyber security programs over the next three years. That’s up from fewer than half of airlines (47%) three years ago.

ALL THINGS CONNECTEDThe focus on cyber security reflects the emergence of the IoT, which will see vast numbers of physical objects connected to the internet. By enabling tracking, data collection, analysis and control, the IoT clearly necessitates more security.

The IoT has an overarching influence, according to Pickford. “The Internet of Things simply means things are communicating with each other. They communicate with us only to take instructions and report results.”

An overwhelming majority of airlines (68%) are investing in IoT programs in the next three years, up from 57% this time last year, says the survey.

Initiatives to realize the IoT include smart bag tagging to enable continuous tracking, which is planned by 61% of airlines by 2019. Nearly half (47%) of airlines are also planning IT programs for single token travel for passenger identification.

Over the next three years big increases in services are expected via mobile apps, with more than half of airlines planning to provide destination services and duty-free shopping apps, while

70% plan to provide multi-media file streaming on passenger devices.

The IoT primarily depends for connectivity on everything that’s smart and mobile – and providing passenger services via smartphones continues to be a core area of airline investment: 79% are planning major investment over the next three years while a further 17% are planning a pilot program or R&D in this area.

Services to passengers on tablets will see significant investment with 71% of airlines planning major programs for these devices (up from 63% in 2015). Airlines are using social media activity and physical location to tailor personalized offers to passengers, with three quarters planning to do this by 2019.

There’s ample evidence of the growth in connectivity: 99% of airlines offer web check-in, compared to 78% in 2015. Mobile check-in is offered by 78% of airlines compared to about 50% last year.

Three-quarters of airlines now use mobile boarding passes, up from around 45% in 2015 – and 91% plan to offer them by 2019. Also by 2019, 70% of airlines expect to be using mobile for location-based notifications (14% now), and 72% for missing baggage communication (12% now).

Smartwatches are in the mix, too, with 27% of airlines already offering mobile

boarding passes using the technology – and 47% expecting to do so by 2019 – while 38% will offer location based notifications (5% now).

This move to mobility and self-service on the part of passengers was strongly underlined in SITA’s 2016 Passenger IT Trends Survey: “Passengers are showing a strong preference to use their own technology, where they have the option. This gives them the freedom to complete tasks and prepare for travel at their own pace”.

Not surprisingly, the Passenger IT Trends Survey indicates the highest levels of satisfaction are attained in the early stages of the journey, such as flight booking and check-in where personal technology usage is most prevalent.

BEACONS FACILITATE‘Connectedness’ for airlines, passengers and airports is also facilitated by rampant growth in the use of beacon technology: see ‘Our Digital and Physical Worlds Collide’ and ‘Info on the Go, page 12.

By 2019, more than 60% of airports will be using beacons to offer wayfinding, baggage collection, flight/gate info, and walk to gate time – compared to as little as 34% in 2018.

FUTURISTSInnovations based on the IoT are equally on the radar for both airlines and their passengers. Asked when they first anticipate trialing

The community’s move into the digital age is also giving rise to emerging approaches to identity management, such as single token travel, as more and more people’s transactions are managed and verified digitally – whether on mobile devices or online.

GAME-CHANGERSSo says the recently released SITA Airline IT Trends 2016 Survey. In this issue of ‘Air Transport IT Review’, we dedicate articles to some of these game-changing technologies and trends as they evolve to cater for a more travel connected world. We look at:

• Cyber security, page 30.

• Identity management, page 34.

• Beacons and standards, see page 14.

A CYBER QUEST “Airlines are investing in areas which will promote a connected world of travel for the benefit of passengers and the workforce,” says Nigel Pickford, Director Market Insight, SITA.

“We see new priorities attracting more investment, with cyber security and electronic flight bag solutions coming to the fore in this year’s research.”

According to the Airline IT Trends Survey, one of the biggest quests in cyberspace is indeed assurance of the utmost security.

“ AIRLINES ARE INVESTING IN AREAS WHICH WILL PROMOTE A CONNECTED WORLD OF TRAVEL FOR THE BENEFIT OF PASSENGERS AND THE WORKFORCE.”

NIGEL PICKFORD DIRECTOR MARKET INSIGHT, SITA

As the connected world of travel becomes a reality, we’re witnessing a heightened focus on critical areas like cyber security and the Internet of Things (IoT), along with significant levels of investment to make the passenger experience and services smarter.


MORE CONNECTED THAN EVERPowerful mega-trends and technologies are driving air transport community requirements for connectivity like never before.

“In our data-driven age, the communication requirements of the air transport community are fast moving and many of them are airport-centric.” So says Dan Ebbinghaus, SVP, SITA Communication and Infrastructure.

As the center of the air transport industry’s communications, airports are becoming “more connected than ever,” he says. What’s more, by 2030, the number of new airports will reach 500 – a 30% increase over today – while existing airports will see a 40% growth in capacity.

In addition to growth in airports, the trends at play include the need to keep passengers and staff informed in real-time; the importance of gathering and distributing data for intelligence, analytics and collaborative decision-making; the rising needs of new generation ‘connected’ aircraft’, and many others.

www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-reviewFor the full article:

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IF THE WORLD HAD 100 TRAVELERS... a range of new and emerging technologies, airlines demonstrated a range of visionary ideas.

For example, despite the withdrawal of Google Glass, 40% of airlines expect to trial wearables for staff (either smartwatch or smart glasses) within the next five years – and 51% in the next 10 years.

Similar results were returned for specific wearable-enabled services for passengers: 39% trialed in the next five years, 53% in the next 10 years.

One in five airlines expect to be trialing virtual reality services for both passengers and staff within the next five years – with almost two in five doing so within 10 years.

ACCELERATING CHANGEThe speed of change continues to accelerate and shows no signs of slowing, fed by an appetite from passengers and airlines for technology that improves services, offers a more cost-effective package and simplifies the complexities of crossing continents.

This is being driven by the ability to create seamless connections from kerb to kerb – between passengers, airlines and airports, powered by the IoT and the global ubiquity of mobile connectivity.

And while the incidence, complexity and risks of malicious and criminal cyber attacks has increased at the same exponential speed, the evidence of this year’s Airline IT Trends Survey is that the industry is fully engaged at all levels in delivering the benefits of this technology, as this issue of Air Transport IT Review shows.


DOWNLOAD OUR IT TRENDS SURVEYS For SITA’s Airline and Passenger IT Trends Surveys go to: www.sita.aero/surveys

READ OUR ONLINE ARTICLES More connectivity in air travel means more services at the fingertips of passengers. One of the rapidly emerging lynchpins in the drive to connect passengers and ‘things’ are beacons, as part of a wider proximity sensing strategy.

Find out more from our online articles, and read about the criticality of standards such as Common Use Beacon Registry and ACRIS.

OUR DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL WORLDS COLLIDEWe’re witnessing the collision of our digital and physical worlds at the airport terminal, as Bluetooth beacons begin to change the customer experience at venues around the globe.

New and better traveler experiences at many steps of the journey, the utmost convenience and much greater efficiencies across the airport. Beacons can deliver them all.

Guide to the ‘Beacosystem’But what are the implications for the world’s airports as they harness the disruptive power of beacons? What first steps can they take?

One thing’s for sure, standards and good device management will be critical as airports prepare to embrace beacons as an integral part of their IT infrastructure future.

Steve Statler, author of ‘Beacon Technologies: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Beacosystem’, offers insights into the potential and the pitfalls for airports in charting the way forward.

INFO ON THE GONice Côte d’Azur Airport in France is using beacons to put real-time information and new services in the palms of passengers on the go.

With beacons installed throughout the terminal, the airport is using a recently developed app to deliver up-to-the-minute information and retail offers to its passengers, particularly to facilitate its frequent flyers’ journeys.

More control“Increasingly our passengers are demanding more control over their airport experience. They want to personalize the services they receive from the airport to their own requirements or needs,” says the airport’s Head of IT Jean-Pierre Torres.

But this is just the start for the airport, he says. In the coming months Nice Côte d’Azur Airport plans to add new functionality.

SEAMLESS NOT SILOEDA great deal of complexity still lies behind the diverse sources of flight and airport information and the spaghetti junction of data channels employed to get the right information and services to the right passenger at the right time.

In this often siloed world it makes sense that any initiative to unravel the intricacy of this data labyrinth should be a priority within the aviation community.

Airport standardsSince 2011, the Airports Council International (ACI) has been beavering away at this very task by redefining and reshaping the framework for information sharing in the industry.

Its Airport Community Recommended Information Services (ACRIS) working group aims to deliver the industry standards necessary to improve information exchange between airports, airlines and other aviation partners for passenger and baggage end-to-end processes.

www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-reviewFor the full articles:


HEAR OUR EXPERTS Search the SITA Online YouTube channel for Christelle Laverriere, Research Expert, Market Insight, addressing whether today’s airline passengers prefer tech to people?

13ISSUE 2: 2016

AIR TRANSPORT CONNECTIVITY

URGENCYThis is the premise behind a concept called Software Defined Networking, or SDN as it’s better known in technology circles. It’s been talked about for a few years, but is now taking on greater urgency as the digital world creates increasingly large datasets.

Within data centers, the problem was solved by virtualizing the server environment, which allows IT resources to be dynamically provisioned, when needed.

THE NEXT BIG THING?Bandwidth-hungry applications running on a growing array of devices are pushing traditional networks to their limits.

At peak times, performance and response times over the network can drop off dramatically leaving end-users frustrated and applications dependent on high-speed algorithms compromised.

Instead of fighting for a share of the fixed amount of bandwidth, what if each application could request from the data center the amount of bandwidth it needed to maintain a pre-defined level of performance? In essence, each application would have bandwidth on-demand.

SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING (SDN) WILL HAVE A HUGE IMPACT ON NETWORK DESIGN. IS IT NOW READY FOR MAINSTREAM?

“ SDN HAS THE POTENTIAL TO MAKE SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS TO SERVICE REQUEST RESPONSE TIMES, SECURITY, AND RELIABILITY. IT COULD ALSO REDUCE COSTS BY AUTOMATING MANY PROCESSES.”

BENOIT VERBAERE DIRECTOR OF PORTFOLIO DEVELOPMENT, SITA

“Eventually we’ll package our SDN approach to infrastructure, connectivity and applications into a platform offering that is available to third-party industry partners, such as those in the avionics supply chain or GDSs.”

GOING DIGITALToday’s rigid architecture of conventional networks is ill-suited to the dynamic computing and storage needs of virtualized data centers.

SDN addresses this by introducing flexibility and agility into the network environment enabling network managers to respond quickly to changing business requirements via a centralized control console.

As Verbaere puts it. “Everything in the world is going digital, so our network offering must go digital too.”

He cites other benefits SDN could bring. “The technology has the potential to make significant improvements to service request response times, security, and reliability.

“It could also reduce costs by automating many processes that are currently done manually,” explains Verbaere.

FOREFRONTSITA has already started planning for an SDN future, as it looks to keep its network services at the forefront of air transport industry communications. As Verbaere says, “The future network expectation is to be as flexible as cloud services.”

SITA is taking an airport-centric approach by delivering ‘Connectivity-as-a-Service’ that leverages its AirportHubTM infrastructure at hundreds of international airports worldwide.

PLUG AND PLAYCustomers will have ‘plug and play’ access to industry apps, data and systems with the following advantages:

• Seamless integration between Internet and private networks.

• Online ordering and instant service activation.

• On-demand bandwidth supporting traffic peaks.

• On-demand value added and cloud service type security and WAN optimization.

• Orchestration through a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

These services will be hosted on site and will be enabled on-demand instead of through the deployment of dedicated specific hardware devices per feature.

SITA’s deployment of SDN will be phased to follow the progression and adoption of


FULL ARTICLE ONLINEIncluding ‘SDN Payoffs’ www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review

However, while virtualization has made storage and processing of large datasets possible, its transportation to and from end-user applications is constrained by the limitations of the network.

PROGRAMMABLETo solve this, SDN seeks to apply the same virtualization approach within the network. Instead of the command functions that control the movement of traffic being hard-coded into the underlying network hardware, they’re separated into a ‘logical software layer’, so that they can be independently managed through an SDN controller.

It means the logical overlay can be configured without impacting the underlying physical network, providing full programmability of the entire network from a single location.

Out goes the time consuming need to manually change the fixed hardware, such as routers, and appliances every time a reconfiguration or modification to the network is needed.

RADICAL SHIFTGoogle is an advocate, as are a number of other high profile tech companies, and although SITA Director of Portfolio Development, Benoit Verbaere says the market is still in its embryonic state, he believes businesses need to understand the benefits this radical shift in network technology will bring.

“SDN is going to have a big impact on network design in the future. It enables network automation, which makes it more dynamic and easier to manage.

“Capacity-constrained static networks with fixed bandwidth per site will tomorrow no longer be viable in the digital world. SDN provides a simple way to control the network so it can function more like virtualized data centers.”

the market trend. As the market matures it will deploy SDN around four business models.

ZERO TOUCHVerbaere expects it to lead to exciting developments for airlines and other customers.

“We’re working on a white box architecture that supports multiple services in a single server with a zero-touch deployment approach and with virtualized network functions.

“It will allow optimization, security and bandwidth activation via a central orchestration tool. This should then translate into a shorter ‘time to deliver’ and reduced cost of infrastructure and operations.”

He adds: “Already we’re distributing some of our own applications, such as Airfare Insight and Cargospot, to a major airline using this fully orchestrated, on-demand WAN approach.

WHAT’S DRIVING SDN?A number of trends are driving the need to re-think network architecture:

• The rise of cloud services. On-demand access to applications through the cloud is now the norm for both consumers and businesses.

• Growing number of endpoints. The surge in consumers using their own mobile devices for work purposes requires networks to be far more flexible and secure.

• Changing traffic patterns. Applications are consuming data stored and processed in disparate cloud servers requiring extremely flexible traffic management and access to bandwidth on demand.

• ‘Big data’ requires more bandwidth. Handling the increasingly common mega datasets requires massive parallel processing that’s fueling a constant demand for additional capacity and any-to-any connectivity.

AIR TRANSPORT CONNECTIVITY

15ISSUE 2: 2016

OPINION – SMART AVIATION, INDIA

THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE

MITTU CHANDILYA, FORMER MANAGING DIRECTOR AND CEO OF AIRASIA INDIA, TALKS ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF INDIAN AVIATION, THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN MAKING AVIATION SMARTER AND THE CHALLENGE OF ENABLING CHANGE.

What are the implications?

One thing we need to ask ourselves is what can we offer that’s unique and different from every other experience that passengers have already encountered, and how can we monetize it?

I believe that in India we need to explore the potential here and leverage technology to enhance the customer experience because if we don’t, we’ll be left standing alone while the industry moves forward.

As we address the passenger experience, one thing we must factor in is the power of social media, using it to our advantage but also being mindful that it does leave us open and exposed. But we can’t let this stop us as it’s vital that we make ourselves accessible to our customers through technology.

So, a more digital experience? Less human interaction?

I think a mix is happening. For one thing, there are many airports in the world that are not geared up for the full technology suite that can be deployed.

Where’s Indian aviation heading?

It’s evolving and it has huge potential. About three years back, I became the first CEO of AirAsia India. My aim was to bring a revolutionary product to Indian skies and change the way people fly, with a specific focus on low cost aviation.

India’s aviation market remains fairly untapped – of its 1.3bn population, only 9% have seen the inside of an aircraft.

India is still developing as a country and aviation as a whole is very much considered to be a sector of defense rather than one of commercial travel. So, while India holds a vast amount of potential, bringing the change needed is a lot more challenging.

But this is just the beginning, with India predicted to be the third largest aviation sector in the world by 2020.

As we move in this direction, we’re seeing more focus on the passenger experience in the aviation industry, because our passengers have higher expectations.

But this aside, having an element of human interaction is still key. In India, for example, we’re so used to human interaction that it would be difficult to be without it. Instead of going fully digital, we need to work out a way to harnesses the power of technology while keeping the human element a part of this model.

How can customer experience be smarter?

Today, it all starts from the moment passengers book their flights. But we need to take it further. We’re all used to the mobile booking experience but what if we integrate predictive abilities into this, making it seem that we already know what our passengers needs are before they even have to ask?

From a booking perspective, this means using data to know which departure airport and flight is preferred, which seat is usually chosen, the preference for checked luggage or carry on.

need to move with us and not stay where they are. If they don’t, the risk is that the aviation industry will be unable to fully evolve in all areas.

For example, our regulators in India still regard kites and balloons as aircraft. While this is mostly based on the emphasis on defense in Indian aviation, we’re now entering a time where we need to be more equipped across all channels. It doesn’t just stop at the airline or airport – it extends to all aspects in aviation.

India has enormous growth potential. With both the rise of the working class and the widening middle class demography, the demand for air travel in India is increasing. India plans to have 250 airports by 2030 to cater for this growing demand.

To add to this the Indian government has allowed 49 per cent foreign direct investment in aviation for foreign carriers, while Non-Resident Indian’s (NRI) are allowed to pick up 100 per cent equity in airlines.

These foreign investments are currently planned to total US$12.1 billion in the airport sector by the end of 2017. So, it’s clear that Indian aviation is on a path of perpetual growth and change.

Any final words on enabling change?

Bringing change to the air transport industry in India is a lot more challenging than might be expected. But one thing we should remember is that technology provides us with scale and equips us with the potential to plug gaps. As an industry, digital trends and particularly e-commerce are definitely changing the way we do things, allowing us to benefit and grow.


From an ‘at-the-airport’ perspective, we will need to individually tailor our communication with passengers on a one-to-one basis, from which counter for bag drop and check-in, to which security gate is quickest – and even pre-empting the order of airside goods based on previous purchases.

The opportunities are endless and we’re heading in the right direction – so much so, in fact, that this will become more of a requirement than a ‘nice to have’.

If we get this right, each passenger (despite the fact that traveler numbers are always on the rise) will feel more like an individual rather than just another number.

And at the airport, we must empower front line staff with a direct connection to the central operations control center, allowing them to know exactly what’s happening at any given time.

This provides airport staff with up-to-the-minute operational information and transparency, enabling them to be more equipped to provide passengers with informed knowledge of the status of any given situation.

An airline harnessing the ability to send the right information to the right places at the right time will vastly improve its decision-making and help to quickly resolve operational problems which in turn will reduce costs and increase revenue.

So being a smarter airline means being digital?

Digital is just one part of the ‘smarter manifesto’. For an airline, fuel efficiency is definitely high on the agenda. As fuel costs make up 30% of air costs, it’s essential to find ways in which to improve where possible.

Another way in which aviation can operate smarter is how we’re regulated. In order to make progress, our regulators

FULL INTERVIEW ONLINEwww.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review

A SITA WHITE PAPER ‘Transforming Indian Aviation’ Please request from [email protected]

“ WE’RE IN A TIME WHERE EXPECTATIONS FROM PASSENGERS ARE FAR MORE ADVANCED THAN THEY HAVE EVER BEEN AND WE CAN’T SIMPLY JUST MEET THESE EXPECTATIONS. WE HAVE TO CONSTANTLY BE AHEAD OF THE GAME. KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMERS IS WHAT WILL MAKE YOU STAND OUT, AND TECHNOLOGY PLAYS A CRITICAL ROLE IN THAT.”

SITA IN INDIASITA has a strong local presence in India with more than 60 years’ experience working collaboratively at the heart of Indian aviation:

• SITA’s pan-India footprint, based on long-standing relationships with customers, members and partners, includes 38 airports run by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), Mumbai International Airport, Bangalore International Airport, Cochin International Airport, AirAsia India, Air Costa, Air India, GoAir, IndiGo, Jet Airways, SpiceJet, and Vistara Airlines, as well as ground handlers, government agencies, and policy makers.

• Of SITA’s 280 staff in India, 80% are service-focused.

• 1,500 of SITA’s 1,900 people in offshore operations worldwide are based in India.

Find out more at www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review

OPINION – SMART AVIATION, INDIA

HEAR OUR EXPERTS Search the SITA Online YouTube channel for Mittu Chandilya talking about the mega trends impacting the world’s fastest growing economy.

17ISSUE 2: 2016

SMART AIRPORTS

DENVER’S DATA-DRIVEN AIRPORT

DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT IS MID-WAY THROUGH A STRATEGIC PROGRAM THAT’S HARNESSING INTELLIGENCE AND DATA ANALYTICS TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE, SAYS ROBERT KASTELITZ, DENVER’S SENIOR VP OF TECHNOLOGIES AND CIO.

What’s the context of your digital strategy?

We wanted to exploit business intelligence (BI) and data analytics to improve performance and provide a well-choreographed and seamless journey for airlines and passengers.

This is a big task. As the 19th-busiest airport in the world and the sixth-busiest in the US, more than 54 million passengers travel through our airport each year,

How do BI and analytics fit in?

Executing a thoughtful digital strategy has provided critical capabilities to our airport. BI and analytics have been a central focus, one of the top initiatives that I’ve been championing for many years.

Our vision is to use data-driven decisions to enhance our competitive advantage. Our aim is to maintain the airport’s momentum and competitive advantage by enabling predictive and optimization capabilities through a smarter BI and analytics infrastructure.

What was the trigger?

Three years ago, members of the airport leadership team came to me with a set of needs. They understood the value of data but said their team “couldn’t get to data and reports”, or that “there’s too much data for my team to make sense of”, or “my team doesn’t have the tools or skills to make the data actionable”.

We championed the idea of BI as a strategic initiative and have been busily pursuing that ever since. BI tools are becoming part of the decision-making process across departments.

How has the program evolved?

Like many others, I’m sure that over the years we had produced siloed systems and reporting structures, with minimal data integration. Our users relied heavily on canned reports and reporting was tedious and labor intensive.

In 2013, focusing on the technologies needed, we started by building a foundational BI infrastructure

and team. We began to monitor availability of applications and systems – which led to greater proactivity and improved system availability.

In 2014, we continued to solidify and grow the BI infrastructure, and expanded the technologies dashboard to include complete balance score cards for performance management.

Our performance metrics have contributed greatly to increased customer satisfaction – from a low of 65% to 87% currently. We began an ASQ (Airport Survey Quality) Dashboard to monitor key enterprise KPIs, which also guided us to develop our Wi-Fi improvement program, leading to significant customer satisfaction improvements.

Finally, last year we began to offer BI as an enterprise-wide service. We implemented dashboards and self-service tools, supported data mining, data analysis and data visualization and introduced data science for advanced analytics.

But we’re only getting started! Our objective is to mature our advanced analytics capabilities to support prediction and optimization. Initially, we’re concentrating on operational excellence and the passenger experience.

To get there, we’ve implemented data governance and we continue to integrate data from sources such as sensors and devices.

Our BI team continues to provide the core infrastructure, data cleanup and integration, modeling and correlation, as well as self-service and dashboards.

Data stewardship is essential to ensure established single sources of truth to support the high quality decisions and actions. Our goal is to deliver BI dashboards and self-service tools to support analysis, prediction and action.

analytics, we’ll further integrate social media and sentiment analysis. And as I said we’ll provide predictive analysis and performance optimization. This will help us to identify passenger patterns and proactively address customer experience opportunities.

Finally, the Internet of Things will allow our maintenance teams to proactively address problems prior to them occurring.

And this year?

During 2016 we’re maturing to a more integrated environment for performance management – using balance scorecards and dashboards.

As we move forward, we’ll extend our focus to advanced analytics in support of predictive analysis and optimization. This will entail additional integrations with divisional application data, other internal data sources such as sensors and video, and other external sources such as social media and sentiment analysis.

We will support leadership with optimization scenarios for decision-making – providing an infrastructure for advanced analytics to augment our information.

We’ve established four key elements: integrate additional enterprise data, continue to upgrade our BI infrastructure and support the needed

capabilities, absorb data from new sources, and extend BI to advanced analytics in support of prediction and problem solving scenarios.

Tell us about predictive analysis and TSA wait lines?

This is a key project and includes calculating and predicting accurate wait times, analysis of passenger dwell times and operational impacts, and enhancing passenger flow and passenger experience.

We partnered with SITA as a proof of concept at one of our checkpoints – and the data generated has proven useful and effective for ourselves, for TSA and for our passengers.

We’ve now begun to implement this across all of our security check points – integrate data obtained with data from our location-based services. This will allow prediction and optimization related to dwell time analysis,

passenger flow patterns, and correlation and operational impact analysis.

And in the future?

We’re being asked to provide BI support relating to collaboration, sustainability, passenger satisfaction, security and operational efficiencies. The plan is to provide integration for internal and external data, to correlate partner information. We’ll provide passenger behavior

FULL INTERVIEW ONLINEwww.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review

SMART AIRPORTS


HEAR OUR EXPERTS Search the SITA Online YouTube channel for Robert Kastelitz talking about getting smarter with predictive analytics.

AIRPORT STRATEGY

“WE’RE GEARING UP FOR AIRPORT 3.0”GENEVA AIRPORT’S EXPANSION PROJECT IS ONE OF ITS BIGGEST IN MORE THAN 40 YEARS, AND IT’S SET TO CHANGE THE FACE OF THE AIRPORT. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION IS CRUCIAL.

Driving technology transformation across Geneva Airport will be real-time collaboration, data sharing and the Internet of Things – what Massimo Gentile, the airport’s Head of Information and Communication Technologies, calls ‘Airport 3.0’.

The new East Wing will replace the airport terminal’s current large-aircraft wing, which was built as a temporary structure in the mid-1970s.

Providing a modern facility more appropriate for present-day travel, the new building will house boarding areas, airline lounges, and retail and F&B outlets. It will have six contact gates and six parking bays for large aircraft, catering to its growing intercontinental network.

The expansion is part of Geneva Airport’s master plan to expand its facilities to accommodate 25 million passengers by 2030, almost double the 15 million passengers it served in 2015.

SLEEK DESIGNThe sleek new building is designed with efficiency in mind and facilitating a smooth passenger flow through the travel steps. It allows for quicker boarding and disembarking by using two air bridges – instead of the current one – and does away with time-consuming bus connections.

So what role does technology play in making sure Geneva Airport gets the maximum benefit from the new East Wing?

“In Geneva we are severely constrained by space. Therefore growing our capacity requires efficient use of new spaces and the smart application of technology to

maximize passenger flow and comfort. We need to be smarter at every step,” says Gentile.

BALANCE“Technology needs to strike a balance between making sure that every process in the airport, from parking to boarding, is fast and efficient while making the airport experience intimate and personal for the passenger.”

To achieve balance, Gentile outlines several layers of technology. “First and foremost, the focus has to be on airport process optimization, making sure that every step of the journey is as seamless as possible.

“ WE SEE THE POTENTIAL TO USE INTERNET OF THINGS, TOGETHER WITH GEO-LOCATING TECHNOLOGY, TO GATHER INFORMATION ON EVERY ASPECT OF THE OPERATION AS IT IS HAPPENING, CREATING A REAL-TIME PICTURE OF THE AIRPORT.”

MASSIMO GENTILE HEAD OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES, GENEVA AIRPORT

19ISSUE 2: 2016


Geneva Airport already has many of the building blocks in place in the existing terminal to support the opening of the new East Wing, says Gentile. Many of the systems will not be radically different.

AUTOMATIONThe use of automated boarding and immigration gates will help passengers move quickly through the travel steps. And some of the passenger-facing tools will be available too, such as beacon technology and an app to guide passengers through the airport.

Underpinning these passenger-facing tools is a solid base of business intelligence which provides the operator a clear view of what is happening in the airport at any point in time.

Gentile warns that with the rapid pace of technological innovation, it’s impossible to look too far in the future.

“It’s equally important to define your passenger flow, the second level. Getting both right is fundamental to the successful use of airport infrastructure,” he says.

COLLABORATIONTo maximize the benefit of optimized processes and passenger flow also requires collaboration between airlines, ground handlers and the airport, which is the third level. “Increasingly, airport stakeholders recognize that sharing information is the key to better decision-making,” says Gentile.

This all leads to the fourth level: Passenger intimacy. “More than getting our passengers through the travel steps quickly, it is important we provide them with a travel experience that is extraordinary.”

“However, there are some key trends we are keeping an eye on that hold tremendous potential for airports in the next few years.”

At the top of Gentile’s list is the Internet of Things. “Airports have over the decades moved through three distinct technology life stages. In Airport 1.0, the airport was largely managed by the airlines.

“As passenger numbers ballooned, this was followed by Airport 2.0, with a big focus on process optimization by airports. This was about speeding and smoothing the passenger flow. This era spurred new innovations in the area of self-service check-in, bag-drop and boarding.”

AIRPORT 3.0Airports are now firmly in Airport 3.0. “Over the next 5 to 10 years the focus for

airports around the world is on integration of all stakeholder information in real-time.

“This is key to proactive operations where stakeholders can act in real-time to whatever is happening in the airport.”

Here the Internet of Things holds significant promise to deliver relevant data from across the airport.

“We see the potential to use Internet of Things, together with geo-locating technology, to gather information on every aspect of the operation as it is happening, creating a real-time picture of the airport.

“This is the cornerstone of Airport 3.0, where we can respond proactively and ensure that every process and passenger touch point is optimized and integrated with all stakeholder requirements. This will help our throughput while reducing the stress on our passengers.”

AIRPORT STRATEGY

21ISSUE 2: 2016

SINGLE TOKENSingle token biometrics is of great interest. “The use of single biometric identification at every step of the journey holds the potential to dramatically improve the flow of passengers through the airport and potentially reduce the number of touch points,” says Gentile.

“It also holds out increased security without making the immigration any more onerous.” See page 34.

But we must never forget the passenger, he admonishes. Here, artificial intelligence is likely to dominate. Geneva Airport is looking at a second generation of Robbi, the prototype robot that roams the airport, providing information to passengers.

ROBOTICSBuilt by Swiss company BlueBotics, Robbi was initially used in the baggage hall to welcome passengers and help them find points of interest, like money change and free transport tickets.

It was then used at departure immediately after security, promoting the airport’s shops and their various promotional offers. By touching the screen and selecting the promotion you’re interested in, the robot will take you to the outlet.

“We found passengers were more than happy to interact with the robot. They also understood that this was not just another gadget, but an important tool to provide information to them.

“We believe that we can develop Robbi even further as a mobile information kiosk that is able to interact with passengers on all their queries and potentially assist them at any point in their journey,” says Gentile.

The airport also played a part in a trial, with SITA Lab, of Leo the baggage robot, see ‘The promise of robotics’, page 22.

Technology is ever-evolving, and while the new East Wing will provide a major step forward for Geneva Airport, there’s always something better just around the corner, taking us closer to the ultimate airport of the future.

“ IN GENEVA WE’RE SEVERELY CONSTRAINED BY SPACE ... GROWING OUR CAPACITY REQUIRES EFFICIENT USE OF NEW SPACES AND THE SMART APPLICATION OF TECHNOLOGY TO MAXIMIZE PASSENGER FLOW AND COMFORT. WE NEED TO BE SMARTER AT EVERY STEP.”

MASSIMO GENTILE HEAD OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES, GENEVA AIRPORT

HEAR OUR EXPERTS Search the SITA Online YouTube channel for Scan&Fly at Geneva Airport.

AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW22 AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW22 AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW22

SMARTER AIR TRANSPORT

THE PROMISE OF ROBOTICS

THE ERA OF ROBOTICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE PROMISES TO CHANGE THE WAY AIRPORTS WILL BE DESIGNED IN FUTURE, MAKING FOR AN EASIER JOURNEY.

SITA continues to trial “Leo’ the baggage robot.

23ISSUE 1: 2016 23ISSUE 2: JUNE 2012 23ISSUE 2: 2016

Robotics and artificial intelligence continue to open new possibilities and uses, from hotels and the service sector to manufacturing and healthcare.

The air transport sector is no exception. The use of robotics holds tremendous potential, from helping provide passengers with information on their journey through the airport to easing baggage check-in and handling.

KEY RESEARCH AREA For this reason robotics remains a key area of research and development for the SITA Lab, SITA’s innovation arm.

“Our task is to investigate new technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things to provide new solutions that make the air transport sector stronger,” says Renaud Irminger, Director of SITA Lab.

“Robotics is an interesting area as we can see that it will have several benefits, particularly in the area of baggage where it provides a smarter way to ensure a safer, more efficient process from the moment passengers hand over their bags to when they collect them.”

WELCOME TO ‘LEO’In the Lab’s most recent project, working together with robotics specialist Bluebotics and Geneva Airport, SITA trialed a new baggage robot at the airport, named ‘Leo’.

Leo is a fully autonomous, self-propelling baggage robot that has the capacity to check in, print bag tags and transport up to two suitcases.

It has an obstacle avoidance capability and can navigate in a high-traffic environment such as an airport. It allows passengers to check-in their bags outside the terminal and then head straight to the gate. Leo then takes the bags directly to the baggage handling area where they’re sorted and connected to the correct flight.

EASING CONGESTIONAccording to Massimo Gentile, Head of Information & Communication Technologies at Geneva Airport: “In a busy airport such as Geneva Airport, the use of a robot like Leo can limit the number of bags in the terminal, helping us accommodate a growing number of passengers without compromising the passenger experience at the airport.

“Anyone who has passed through the airport during the winter months will appreciate how removing big, bulky items such as skis will help create more space. This is an area where Leo can help us and we will continue to work with SITA to develop Leo and see how best he can serve our requirements.”

GLIMPSE THE FUTURENamed after the Italian Renaissance inventor and engineer Leonardo da Vinci who built what is now recognized as the world’s first robot, Leo provides the airport with a glimpse into the future of baggage handling being explored by SITA Lab.

It‘s these longer term benefits that will really interest airports such as Geneva over the next few years.

“For us Leo proves the case for increased use of robotics to make the passenger’s journey a little more comfortable, whether it is checking in baggage, providing directions or helping them through the security process,” says Gentile.

“It helps us shape our thinking when we start to look to the future and how we will build new facilities to accommodate these technologies.

“It allows us to approach the design differently and say ‘maybe we don’t need to have so many check-in counters’ if we have a way where the bags never enter the terminal in the first place.”

Irminger says Leo is the first tentative step towards helping airports use robotics to improve baggage facilitation and handling. “We see several ways in which robotics and artificial intelligence can be used to manage baggage more smartly.”

ROBOT TRIALSIn a follow up to Leo, the SITA Lab is looking to trial a system where an autonomous vehicle will receive sorted baggage and deliver it directly to the aircraft.

“Using robotic technology, we believe that bags can be delivered more efficiently and accurately with less likelihood of being loaded late or on the wrong flight, helping employees manage a growing number of bags each year as passenger numbers around the world continue to grow.”

JUST THE STARTWhile Irminger acknowledges that these developments may not change the way bags are handled in the immediate future, it holds the potential to reshape airports as we know them today.

“This is just the start and over the coming years we will continue to look at ways we can take the existing automation of the baggage handling process a step further.

“Bags will be automatically checked-in long before they get to the airport – be it at a hotel or railway station – and delivered when and where passengers want them.

“Artificial intelligence and the use of robotics will be key achieving that vision of the future,” concludes Irminger.

LEO THE BAGGAGE ROBOT: HOW DOES IT WORK?• Leo comes to the assistance of passengers as they

approach the terminal building.

• Touching Leo’s Scan&Fly bag drop interface opens the baggage compartment doors to allow passengers to place their bags inside.

• After passengers have scanned their boarding passes, the tags are printed and can be attached to the bag.

• With the bags loaded and tagged, the compartment door closes and Leo displays the boarding gate and departure time.

• The doors of Leo the robot can only be reopened by the operator unloading the baggage in the airport.

FULL ARTICLE ONLINEwww.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review

HEAR OUR EXPERTS Search the SITA Online YouTube channel for Leo, SITA’s baggage robot.

24

SITA’S TRANSFORMATION OVER THE LAST DECADE TELLS A REMARKABLE STORY. WE TALKED TO SITA’S OUTGOING CEO FRANCESCO VIOLANTE, WHO’S BEEN AT THE HELM OF THE COMPANY’S STRATEGIC JOURNEY.

SITA BUSINESS AND PERFORMANCE

A DECADE OFTRANSFORMATION

levels, with respective ratings of 4.15 against a 4.10 target, and a huge 63.3% NPS figure, well above the average for a business-to-business service company like SITA.

Rounding off the performance was a score of 3.55 out of 5 for a newly introduced Community Value Index, reflecting SITA’s remit in meeting air transport community requirements.

SITA TODAY“The SITA of today is a growing broad-based business that is positioned strongly for the future,” says outgoing SITA CEO Francesco Violante. “Its latest results keep it on track for more growth, which is critical to the organization’s ongoing transformation.”

THE JOURNEY STARTSYet only 10 years ago – in an era when most of SITA’s business centered almost purely on network communications – the story was very different, says Violante.

“In 2006, we embarked on a transformation program for SITA, when the SITA Board decided to create the single SITA Group, bringing together under the same leadership


With the announcement of SITA’s results at its mid-2016 Annual General Assembly in Barcelona, SITA members heard how, against market trends, the organization’s transformation over the last decade has steered it on a trajectory of steady growth year after year.

Latest figures show that in the face of global economic and geopolitical volatility, compounded by marked shifts in currency, SITA’s total revenue reached US$1.7 billion for 2015 – some 3.2% over the previous year based on constant currency rates.

PERFORMANCEAlong with continued growth in its airport, aircraft, cargo and inflight connectivity businesses, SITA performed soundly against all other financial indicators in 2015, with a net margin figure some 10% better than prior year, one of its highest ever free cash flow figures (77.3% better than budget), the highest cash balance for several years and little debt.

The company’s customer satisfaction index and Net Promoter Score (NPS) in the meantime reached record

“ THE SITA OF TODAY IS A GROWING BROAD-BASED BUSINESS THAT IS POSITIONED STRONGLY FOR THE FUTURE. IT IS ON TRACK FOR MORE GROWTH, WHICH IS CRITICAL TO THE ORGANIZATION’S ONGOING TRANSFORMATION.”

27ISSUE 2: 2016

SITA’s cooperative network business (SITA SC) and its commercial application entity (now SITA NV).”

At that time, the SITA Board appointed Violante as CEO of the new single SITA organization, recognizing his experience as CEO for SITA’s commercial entity for the previous three years. SITA’s transformation since then has been nothing short of dramatic.

PROFOUND CHANGEWhat makes the story all the more remarkable is SITA’s revenue shift over the last 10 years. “This demanded the management of two parallel tracks of the business,” Violante explains. “First, with commoditization reducing SITA’s core network revenues, SITA needed to consolidate its network leadership in air transport while preserving market share.

“Second, given the shrinking market for network services, SITA needed to focus on growing other businesses and building new ones – which it has achieved in the areas of airport, cargo, border security and connected aircraft.

“This has required profound organizational evolution, backed by a commitment to consistent major investments over the years in portfolio development and strategic acquisitions,” adds Violante.

“In addition, we needed to build up an organization with new skills and professions, through significant talent acquisition and management programs, putting into place global teams able to provide the complex solutions demanded by customers of SITA’s new and growing businesses.”

NEW CAPABILITIES To support the transformation, new underpinning capabilities needed to be put into place. That included the setting up of a powerful global software development capability – while

simultaneously working with offshore partnerships, including NIIT, Mindtree and IGT.

With the objective of meeting the mission-critical requirements of air transport, SITA invested heavily in new state-of-the-art Command Centers, Next Generation Data Centers and Service Desks, each of them unique in their 100% dedication to air transport on a 24/7/365 basis.

GROWTH AND MIX SITA’s resulting long-haul strategic journey has brought about an entirely new business mix and a new evolved portfolio. “SITA’s transformation has more than compensated for declining revenues from commoditized network services,” Violante points out.

“Several SITA businesses have seen double-digit growth. SITA NV, the application business entity, grew its revenue from US$779 million in 2006 to around US$1.3 billion in 2015 – with a compound growth rate of 5.7%.

“The combined revenues from SITA’s other businesses now exceed our core network revenues, accounting for as much as 83% of SITA’s entire business. So SITA has moved from being mainly a pure network-based company, to a growing broad-based information and communications solutions business.

Its growing and new businesses are now core to SITA. “In fact, SITA is the industry market share leader in services for air transport communications and infrastructure, airports, air-to-ground, governments and cargo, which has greatly

27ISSUE 2: 2016

enhanced the company’s value to the air transport community,” Violante adds.

COMMUNICATIONS & INFRASTRUCTUREWith over US$600 million in revenues last year, Communications & Infrastructure (CIS) is SITA’s largest business. As Violante underlines, CIS credentials distinguish it in the marketplace. “SITA provides network services in 220 countries and territories around the world,” he says.

“It reaches 95% of all international destinations, and has more than 20,000 connections in over 1,000 airports, with shared infrastructure at more than 400. So without doubt, SITA’s network infrastructure is the communications backbone of the air transport industry worldwide.”

To strengthen this position, SITA has embarked on a far-reaching airport-centric program to develop more air transport-specific services.

“SITA is building on its unique presence at the airport, which is at the intersection of air travel industry stakeholders and processes. Through programs such as AirportHubTM shared infrastructure, SITA already enables the interaction of airport stakeholders, but it is also introducing next generation communications for full service, low cost and hybrid carriers.

“To provide further value to the community, SITA is defining a number of Community Innovation programs,” says Violante, “looking at solutions for cybersecurity, cloud networking, application assurance, air transport data collaboration, and more.

“These are all areas where the air transport community is calling out for direction and services, and as a community provider SITA is committed to programs that will deliver value here.”

NO. 1 AT AIRPORTSSITA’s expanding US$530 million Airports business has played a huge role in creating the SITA of today. Experiencing double digit growth, it is now set for further portfolio innovation and development to strengthen its position as the number one airport services provider.

Two 2015 strategic acquisitions are key, the first being Delair Air Traffic Systems – which enables SITA to offer Airport Collaborative Decision-making – and the second being Type22, an innovator of self-service bag-drop solutions.

“These acquisitions give SITA a full portfolio across the end-to-end journey,” says Violante. “They will be of great value to customers deploying business intelligence and bag-drop solutions. SITA’s investments will also leverage its common use, airport management and cloud platforms to give customers the most cost-effective IT.”

BORDER EXPERTISE “SITA’s Border Management business is another highlight of the transformation story. Representing around 8% of SITA’s business, it continues to evolve rapidly, with revenues growing by an average of 17.9% a year since 2010.”

As SITA’s newest business, the momentum to build border management services gathered pace in 2007 at the start of a period of strategic acquisitions, including those of biometric

SITA BUSINESS AND PERFORMANCE

kiosk provider Biowise (2007), and Australian-based long-term border management partner CPS Systems (2008).

“SITA now leads the market, with a portfolio of end-to-end border management solutions which ensure security, and – being airport-centric – enhance operations and passenger flow,” says Violante.

“Looking ahead, new developments will integrate biometrics into self-service operations. And we will witness enhanced risk assessment and integrated identity management, another focus of SITA’s Community Innovation programs.

CONNECTED AIRCRAFTAlso built during SITA’s evolution, a relatively new ‘connected aircraft’ business is tackling the airline need to digitally connect new generation aircraft into IT operations.

As an early market mover, SITA created in-flight connectivity specialist OnAir which in 2015 then combined with SITA’s Aircraft (air-to-ground) business to form SITAONAIR

SITAONAIR’s proposition is unique, resting on the provision of a vendor-neutral, nose-to-tail approach for the air transport community, taking into account the aircraft’s entire connectivity needs: for passengers, the cabin, the cockpit, aircraft health monitoring, and air traffic navigation and control.

“The approach breaks down the silos that exist across the functions needed to e-enable aircraft,” Violante explains. “It will allow airlines to make the best operational use of the volumes of data generated by connected aircraft.

“As aircraft ‘go digital’, the market is demanding more solutions to address the opportunities presented by connected aircraft, and SITAONAIR is well positioned for this.”

INNOVATIONBringing about profound organizational change demands a culture of innovation and service excellence. SITA placed both principles at the heart of its transformation strategy.

Violante again: “The creation in 2007 of SITA Lab, our strategic technology research arm, was a major milestone in this endeavour. Set up to work collaboratively with customers, industry bodies and technology partners, it has demonstrated an excellent track record in innovations that deliver more value to the community.”

One example is the growing use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) at the Developer.aero website, built by the SITA Lab. The site leads travel app development, including among its successes a mobile boarding app for JetBlue in 2015, as well as a baggage tracking app for Etihad.

Another example is the Lab’s leading work in proximity sensing technologies and the use of beacons. Miami International Airport became A DECADE OF TRANSFORMATION


the first in the US to use beacons and a mobile app to give travelers contextual and personalized information. The SITA Lab is now undertaking pioneering work in the areas of the Internet of Things, big data and analytics, robots, drones and more.

SERVICE EXCELLENCECustomer service has played a central part. “Through significant investments over the years, SITA has become strongly differentiated by its customer service organization, quality of service, and the dedication of support teams to the community SITA serves,” says Violante.

SITA now has a 2,000-strong service team with a local and global footprint, and a unique strength in being able to integrate its local and global

touchpoints. Because service teams are dedicated entirely to air transport, they understand the impact of IT issues on operations and passengers.

“The customer service culture, combined with industry knowledge, is endemic. No other provider has SITA’s level of dedication to service, combined with industry know-how and technical capability,” Violante points out.

COMMUNITY VALUEAttention to service excellence contributes to the value SITA creates for the air transport community. But in addition, SITA returns community value through the SITA SC cooperative, including significant price reductions to customers, as well as yearly repayments to members between 2005 and 2015, in

the form of over-recovery. (As a cooperative, every year SITA SC returns any excess between income and expenditures to its members – called over-recovery.)

At the same time, the enterprise value of SITA has risen. The organization’s financial value comes from the increasing valuation of the SITA NV commercial entity, which has grown, at current market multiples, between four and five times from 2005 to 2015. By 2017, SITA NV will have doubled its revenue from the level in 2005, tripled its EBITDA and grown its value seven-fold.

POSITIONED FOR THE FUTURE“This has been a remarkable strategic journey,” concludes Violante. “It is thanks to SITA’s members and customers who have remained loyal during the organization’s transformation.

“And it is thanks to the guidance of SITA’s Board and Council, as well as the Senior Leadership Team working with SITA’s teams and employees.

As I hand over to new CEO Barbara Dalibard, I am confident that SITA is on a strong footing and I wish Barbara and SITA a very successful future.”


29ISSUE 2: 2016


CYBERSECURITY

CYBER ATTACKS: NOT IF, BUT WHEN…

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES ARE BRINGING MANY BENEFITS TO AIR TRAVEL, BUT THEY ALSO POSE NEW THREATS.

In June 2015, Polish airline LOT cited a cyber attack on its flight planning computers for a disruption at its Warsaw Chopin Airport hub. Two years before, a cyber attack is reported to have shut down the passport control systems in the departure terminals at Turkey’s Istanbul Atatürk and Sabiha Gökçen airports causing long queues and flight delays.

There are other anecdotal reports of attacks on the industry. The Center for Internet Security (CIS) reported that 75 US airports were affected by a cyber attack in 2013, including two where the computer systems were compromised.

SILVER BULLET?There are likely to have been many more. Few aviation businesses openly admit to being hacked in order to not erode public confidence. That makes gathering information much harder. Even industry insiders are largely working in the dark about the true scale of the problem.

What’s become clear is that there is no silver bullet solution to the issue.

Cyber attacks targeting businesses are dramatically increasing year-on-year. Air transport has not escaped.

In fact, things are likely to get worse as the Internet of Things drives greater use of connected technologies and the proliferation of interfaces and endpoints that can be exploited.

Against this background, the panel discussion on cybersecurity at the Air Transport IT Summit 2016 was all the more timely.

COMPLEXITYDr Simon Moores, Security Futurist and Risk Consultant, explains: “We are starting to see such complexity of attacks – so large, so regular, and so highly scaled – that it is beyond the capabilities of human operators to handle the risk,” he says.

“In 2016, it is not about if you are going to be hacked, but when,” he adds.

Faye Francy, Executive Director of Aviation Information Sharing and Analysis Center (A-ISAC), gives an equally downbeat assessment. “The aviation cybersecurity honeymoon is over. We are getting attacked on a daily basis and it is unrelenting.”

CALL TO ACTIONAt the corporate level there are encouraging signs that businesses are ramping up their efforts to tackle the issue.

The latest Airline IT Trends Survey indicates that cybersecurity is a board level responsibility at 63% of airlines, while 72% of airlines plan major cybersecurity projects over the next three years.

It’s a step in the right direction, Peter Andres, VP Corporate Security, Lufthansa, believes. “We have to move the

“ THE AVIATION CYBERSECURITY HONEYMOON IS OVER. WE ARE GETTING ATTACKED ON A DAILY BASIS AND IT IS UNRELENTING.”

FAYE FRANCY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, A-ISAC

WHAT IS A-ISAC?The Aviation Information Sharing and Analysis Center (A-ISAC) is a non-profit making member-driven organization for sharing security information in the aviation sector. It was formed in September 2014 by seven major aviation companies. Today it has 22 members from across the aviation sector.The A-ISAC gathers threat, vulnerability and risk information about security risks facing the aviation sector around the world. Sources of information include members, government agencies, academic sources, open source and other trusted sources. Its goal is to share the information in a timely, actionable way, as well as build up a body of subject matter experts that can share mitigation techniques. More information on A-ISAC can be found at www.a-isac.com

31ISSUE 2: 2016

CYBER ATTACKS: NOT IF, BUT WHEN…

discussion on cybersecurity from the expert level to the corporate level.”

The German flag carrier has been doing this since 2013. It defined five levels of activities as Andres explains.

“First, locate cybersecurity and find a joint perspective between IT and security.

“Second, increase cooperation with stakeholders in industry.

“Third, perform risk analysis for the business divisions – we identified 20 business areas critical to Lufthansa’s performance. Four, upgrade IT. And five, perform a process analysis exercise and feedback into the organization.”

JOURNEY OF LEARNING But Francy believes the rapidly emerging cyber threat landscape is also a clarion call to get organized and coordinate efforts to tackle the issue at the community level.

“There is a need for us to come together as an industry and to recognize that there are potential vulnerabilities as we interconnect everything,” she says.

Working hard in this area is Francy’s A-ISAC. It’s a non-profit making organization for sharing security information in the industry.

“ WE HAVE TO MOVE THE DISCUSSION ON CYBERSECURITY FROM THE EXPERT LEVEL TO THE CORPORATE LEVEL.”

PETER ANDRES VP CORPORATE SECURITY, LUFTHANSA

OPINION

COULD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BE THE ANSWER? By Dr Simon Moores, Security Futurist and Risk Consultant

If you think about some of the numbers around cybersecurity, it becomes quite scary: • 1.2 million polymorphic viral threats being created each day.• Cyber criminals using bot armies with a quarter of a billion

bot attacks on a daily basis.• 264 million attacks by botnets alone in the first quarter of

2016. That’s about 35 per second.• More than half a billion records reportedly stolen last year,

suggesting that large businesses will suffer an attack, on average, around three times each and every year.

One area that is getting a lot of interest from companies, such as IBM and Google and others, is Artificial Intelligence (AI). What we are starting to see is the evolution of something called deep learning and machine learning which we can start to think of as a solution to be used in the information security space.

www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-reviewSee full online article at:

AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW32 AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW32 AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW32 AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW32

“Our goal is about sharing timely, actionable, relevant information and analysis on threats and vulnerabilities to aviation,” she explains (see ‘What is A-ISAC?’).

Francy sees it as “a journey of learning”. She says: “We must look at how to prevent the attack, but in the event that we don’t, we must be able to identify and detect the threat, mitigate it and then build resiliency into what we do.”

INITIATIVES There are also other industry initiatives ongoing.

Just last year, Airports Council International (ACI) set up a cybersecurity task force to develop a community approach for airports.

Meanwhile, IATA is trying to bolster the cyber defenses of airlines with a security tool kit that includes training videos, a risk analysis tool and other resources.

WEAKEST LINKThe importance of collaboration was echoed by Dominic Nessi, Airport Cybersecurity Consultant working with Burns Engineering.

“This is an industry-wide problem. A common approach is critical. We need to start with education and information

sharing, proceed to mitigation and defense techniques and work as a community.”

Nessi is particularly concerned that many airports are much less resourced than their larger partners in the industry and this will impact their ability to tackle cyber threats.

“Cyber security threats are growing faster than cyber security mitigation measures. I don’t worry about large airports, but I do for all of those medium-sized and smaller airports,” he says.

“If you have a breach anywhere, it can affect our entire system. How do we assist airports in emerging economies?” he continues.

“Many airport managers, if they don’t see this as a threat they are not providing funding.” See ‘The Airport Cybersecurity Challenge’.

SKILLS AND BUDGETSThomas Gourgeon, Head of International Operations, Orange Cyberdefense takes up the resourcing issue.

“Security is a field where there is an immense skills shortage and of course security budgets are not unlimited,” he says. “You need access to IT experts, security analysts, security researchers.”

Gourgeon believes it’s a lot of diverse skills for the IT department to master and companies would be better served partnering with experts.

“If I take the example of Orange Cyberdefense it’s a group of 800 people dedicated to security so it helps us attract, it helps us retain, the best people,” he says.

“ CYBER SECURITY THREATS ARE GROWING FASTER THAN CYBER SECURITY MITIGATION MEASURES.”

DOMINIC NESSI AIRPORT TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT AND MEMBER OF THE ACI WORLD TECHNOLOGY STEERING GROUP

“ IN 2016, IT IS NOT ABOUT IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE HACKED, BUT WHEN.”

DR SIMON MOORES SECURITY FUTURIST AND RISK CONSULTANT

CYBERSECURITY

HEAR OUR EXPERTS Search the SITA Online YouTube channel to hear expert commentary on ‘Cybersecurity - tackling the threat’ from:

Faye Francy, Executive Director, A-ISAC

Dr Simon Moores, Security Futurist and Risk Consultant

Dominic Nessi, Airport Technology Consultant & ACI World Technology Steering Group

Thomas Gourgeon, Head of International Operations, Orange Cyberdefense

come together if it’s to move in the right direction. SITA is playing its part working with its members and other industry partners to support this goal.

In the meantime, Moores believes the battle between cyber attackers and IT security specialists will only escalate. “It is an arms race”, he declares.

There are signs this is starting to happen. In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been tasked by the government with developing regulations on cybersecurity, including mandatory reporting of incidents.

At the global level, a more coordinated government approach could get a kick start in 2017 when aviation associations, such as IATA, present a declaration on cyber security to the United Nations’ aviation safety arm.

COLLABORATION With the lack of international oversight on cybersecurity, who should be responsible for coordinating the efforts? The answer is not so simple. “There is no one owner, no one regulatory body,” points out Francy. She believes the

33ISSUE 1: JANUARY 2012 33ISSUE 4 : DECEMBER 33ISSUE 4 : DECEMBER 33ISSUE 2: 2016

OPINION

A TIERED APPROACH IS THE BEST DEFENSE By Thomas Gourgeon, Head of International Operations, Orange Cyberdefense

To really tackle the whole cyber threat landscape needs a specific approach. What I call a four tier approach.• The first layer is the basics. It’s important to get the basics

right and by this I mean user awareness.• The second layer is reactive. It’s about firewalls, it’s

about proxies, it’s about identity and access management technologies that have been out there for the last 10 years.

• The third layer is proactive. You have to go beyond reactive protection and look at what’s actually happening within your infrastructure.

• The top layer is predictive. This is where you need threat intelligence and R&D.

I think that there’s a lot of learning to do and a lot of expertise needed if you want to do it right. This is why you may want to consider relying on partners rather than going down the full Do-It-Yourself route.

OPINION

THE AIRPORT CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGE By Dominic Nessi, Airport Technology Consultant and member of the ACI World Technology Steering Group

Despite being one of a country’s most important and critical infrastructures, airports are not well-suited to address the challenges of an insecure cyber world. • First, airports traditionally attempt to keep operating costs

as low as possible so that their airlines can operate in the most cost effective manner, and effective cybersecurity measures do have a cost.

• Second, airports come in a variety of sizes and all but the world’s largest airports tend to have a very small information technology staff.

• Finally, the cyber risk to an airport is generally not well known or understood at the airport management level and, as a result, may not always get the attention that it deserves.

Led by ACI World’s Cybersecurity Task Force, ACI is currently developing an IT Cybersecurity Benchmark Tool that will allow airports around the globe to compare their current cybersecurity efforts with the ISO standards 27001 – 27003.

In addition to the Benchmark tool, ACI’s Cybersecurity Task Force offers a Ten-Point Approach to the airport community to increase its cyber-awarenes, as articulated in the full online article.

“Another thing is that, as a network operator, we are in the middle between the attackers and their targets. For example, we are able to listen to what’s going on and pick up the signals for Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

“It means we can define countermeasures 30 minutes in advance of the website attack,” he continues.

GOVERNMENT LEADNessi believes the industry cannot work in isolation if it’s to deliver a concerted response to the issue. “The airport community needs to work with government,” he emphasizes.

It’s a view endorsed by airlines, with IATA saying cybersecurity can best be managed through stronger collaboration between the governments and key industry stakeholders.



A-ISAC is currently the best way for the industry to unite against common threats.

There is also the issue of trust. “Companies are resistant to publicly or directly sharing their threat intelligence information. They don’t want to see it in the media,” she says, adding that “In A-ISAC we anonymize the information that members don’t want to share directly.”

Nonetheless, there’s a strong consensus that to assemble a well-orchestrated cybersecurity risk and mitigation strategy, the industry must find a way to


IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

GETTING SMART ABOUT IDENTITY

AS WE MOVE DEEPER INTO THE DIGITAL AGE, THE MORE OUR PERSONAL LIVES AND THE TRANSACTIONS WE UNDERTAKE WILL BE MANAGED AND VERIFIED DIGITALLY, EITHER ON OUR MOBILE DEVICES OR ONLINE.

35ISSUE 2: 2016

As part of ongoing research into travel identity of the future, SITA is exploring single token travel which will allow travelers to pass through borders with a single, digitally verified identity.

“Single token travel will make moving through airports less onerous while dramatically improving security. This is the industry’s Uber moment. It’s the chance to completely change the way we travel,” says Renaud Irminger, Director of SITA Lab.

BLOCKCHAIN Using blockchain technology, SITA’s innovative research imagines passengers creating a verifiable ‘token’ on their mobile phone which contains biometric and other personal data.

In this vision of future travel, no matter where in the world you go any authority can simply scan your face and scan your device to verify you are an authorized traveler.

This can be done without all these agencies ever controlling or storing your biometric details or personal information.

“Blockchain technology offers us the potential to provide a new way of using biometrics. It could enable biometrics to be used across borders, and at all airports, without the passenger’s details being stored by the various authorities,” says Irminger.

PRIVACY BY DESIGN In terms of security, blockchain technology allows ‘privacy by design’ so that passenger data can be secure, encrypted, tamper-proof and unusable for any other purpose. At the same time, it eliminates the need for a single authority to own, process or store the data.

The crypto-led computer science of blockchain provides a network of trust, where the source and history of the data is verifiable by everyone.

“This is a whole new way of working. Ultimately the blockchain is simply a database where transactions are recorded and confirmed anonymously.

“Whether it is used for currency or travel it is simply a record of events that is shared between multiple parties but most importantly once information is entered, it cannot be changed, and privacy and security are by design,” says Irminger.

For the air transport industry this shift presents an opportunity to dramatically improve and speed up the way passengers’ identities are validated, with benefits both for the passenger and governments seeking to secure their borders.

“ SINGLE TOKEN TRAVEL WILL MAKE MOVING THROUGH AIRPORTS LESS ONEROUS WHILE DRAMATICALLY IMPROVING SECURITY. THIS IS THE INDUSTRY’S UBER MOMENT. IT’S THE CHANCE TO COMPLETELY CHANGE THE WAY WE TRAVEL.”

RENAUD IRMINGER DIRECTOR, SITA LAB


BUILDING SINGLE TOKEN TRAVEL USING THE BLOCKCHAIN

Armin Ebrahimi – CEO, ShoCardShoCard believes that the solution to digital ID lies with the blockchain, the technology that launched Bitcoin.Blockchain is a publicly shared database that actually is not owned by any one person, or any one entity.

Anyone can have copies of that record and you’re able to access the record that’s stored on the blockchain and use that to validate transactions. While Bitcoin uses the blockchain to validate financial transactions, we believe we can use it to create a single travel token to validate identity everywhere and at anytime. With SITA, we have developed a mobile traveler app to demonstrate the functionality of a mobile single travel token that enables passengers to be verified by an airline, airport or government anywhere in the world. Once travelers have booked their trip, they download the Traveler App, scan their passport and take a selfie. Checking-in at the airport, travelers securely present information, via the Traveler App with a Quick Response (QR) code.

Travelers may be asked to present their physical passport and other booking information for additional verification. If at a kiosk, a new image is taken for facial comparison with the selfie or the agent can verify the selfie against the traveler in their presence. If the traveler’s identity is confirmed, the digital traveler identification is certified and a single travel token is issued.Once travelers have their single travel token, they can use the travel token to pass through any checkpoint equipped to process the Digital Traveler Identity App.At a checkpoint, the user simply presents a new QR code issued at check-in to an agent, or uses a kiosk to scan that code and take another image of the traveler. The travel token is verified for authenticity and origination. The certified selfie of the user is compared with the new image taken for facial recognition. If the information matches, the traveler can proceed.The only information shared by the traveler is what he or she chooses to pass on to the agent via the Traveler App, and this only happens when the agent or station does the authentication and verification. While blockchain technology will take some time to develop fully, with standards to be agreed on across the industry, we believe blockchain promises to enable a far more secure identity solution while making it easier for the passenger.


CHALLENGESHowever, this opportunity is not without its challenges. “As an industry we agree that existing systems and processes are unlikely to keep up with the pace of changes in air transport,” says Bob Davidson, Head of Aviation Facilitation at IATA.

“The challenge is designing, agreeing and adopting a new common standard that all industry parties agree to.”

Streamlining border management is a key element of IATA’s Simplyfing the Business initiative and SITA, which is a strong supporter of the program, continues to work with the industry to build support around single token travel as the answer to smarter border management.

INVESTMENT “SITA’s research into the travel identity of the future is part of our ongoing investment in research for the benefit of the entire air transport community and is one of the five community innovation programs that SITA launched this year,” says Jim Peters, Chief Technology Officer at SITA.

“The aim is to drive innovation such as single token travel as well as build support around a common solution. It will take time but agreement on a single solution would be a huge benefit to the entire industry.”

As part of this drive, SITA has partnered with blockchain start-up ShoCard on an early demo of these concepts as well as develop a discussion paper on the use of blockchain technology, laying out the benefits of single token travel.

IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

“ WHEN YOU COMBINE THIS ABILITY TO CHECK A PASSENGER’S IDENTITY WITH BIOMETRICS, WITH THE SYSTEMS GOVERNMENTS ARE USING TO DO RISK ASSESSMENT OF TRAVELERS BASED ON AIRLINE-PROVIDED DATA, YOU CREATE A STRONG OPPORTUNITY.”

SEAN FARRELL PORTFOLIO DIRECTOR GOVERNMENT AND SECURITY SOLUTIONS, SITA

37ISSUE 2: 2016

A NEW APPROACH NEEDEDBob Davidson – Head of Aviation Facilitation, IATAThe world of commercial aviation is changing rapidly. Every year more people take a flight and with increased frequency. In 2015 more than 3.5 billion individual passenger journeys were undertaken, a number that is expected to double by 2030.

This exponential growth together with new security threats to countries across the globe requires knowing who is in your airport, boarding your aircraft or entering your country at all times. The industry’s existing identity management systems and processes are simply unable to keep up with the growing mass of data that they are required to handle. Their ability to keep up with this growth demands that they start looking at new ways of handling identification. Slow changeThe biggest challenge is that the air transport industry is slow moving. Hamstrung by complex systems owned and managed by numerous stakeholders – airlines, governments and airports – change does not come easily. Adopting entirely new methods of doing business takes considerable time and effort. Yet new emerging security threats require that we make that effort. We must look with renewed urgency at new ways of providing faster and more secure identity management. The attacks on Brussels Airport underline that urgency.

Better access threatsAs an industry, we agree that co-operation and open communication will be vital if we’re going to be successful. We may even have to look at how we can better assess threats before people even enter our airport terminals. Information gathered in advance, shared and vetted, will allow us to continue to open up the doors of the airport terminals and get people on our aircraft. Many governments around the world are already extending their border control offshore and trying to make decisions about the suitability of individuals for travel before they get onboard aircraft. Another part of the problem is that we identify individuals at one point in our airport process yet that identity is no longer valid at the next touch point. We have to re-identify the passenger over and over again as they move through the airport. We simply can no longer support that process model. e-passports and single tokens The question is what technology will support these requirements? In the short term, e-passports will probably be the best solution. Further into the future, we’ll be able to make use of that live capture biometric as a single token so that passengers verify their identity just once. We will need to agree across stakeholders a roadmap on how we incorporate the new ideas and allow all the stakeholders to achieve their objectives.


While Davidson acknowledges the potential of single token travel – “a cloud-based record is increasingly food for thought in the industry” – he believes the transition to this technology will be more gradual.

“While there’s a lively debate around whether e-passports or single travel token is the way forward, e-passports are available now and therefore the best short-term solution.”

SMART PATH SITA is already leading the way forward with an initial step towards single token travel using e-passports through the development of SITA Smart PathTM.

This technology allows passengers to move through the airport and board the aircraft simply by presenting themselves for a biometric

check. Once verified there’s no need for the passenger to present a boarding pass, a passport or travel documents again.

“More than 100 airports around the world have some sort of automated border control,” says Sean Farrell, Portfolio Director Government and Security Solutions at SITA.

“And the key to this is the expansion of e-passports with more than 50% of passengers already using these passports which contain their biometric.

“When you combine this ability to check a passenger’s identity with biometrics, with the systems governments are using to do risk assessment of travelers based on airline-provided data, you create a strong opportunity.

“ AS AN INDUSTRY WE AGREE THAT EXISTING SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES ARE UNLIKELY TO KEEP UP WITH THE PACE OF CHANGES IN AIR TRANSPORT. THE CHALLENGE IS DESIGNING, AGREEING AND ADOPTING AS NEW COMMON STANDARD THAT ALL INDUSTRY PARTIES AGREE TO.”

BOB DAVIDSON HEAD OF AVIATION FACILITATION, IATA

“We will not get to a mobile single token travel in one leap but with steady steps such as Smart Path the ultimate goal of one token for all airports, borders and airlines is within our grasp,” says Irminger.

This includes standard common-use, self-service equipment already in use across the industry such as check-in kiosks, bag drop units, gates for secure access, boarding and automated border control, making rapid deployment easy and cost-effective.

Smart Path also integrates with government systems and databases, allowing integrated immigration and border checks.

Smart Path has already been trialed at a major airport in the Middle East with further proofs of concept planned for similar-sized airports in the region.

PLAN OF ACTION For the SITA Lab’s Irminger, Smart Path is an important step on the path toward ultimate progression to a mobile single travel token.

“We have a clear plan of action and over the coming months we will continue to trial single token travel technology with various partners while engaging the industry around developing a common standard that meets the requirements of most players.


“And that opportunity is to automate the border crossing for passengers you know are low risk and whose identity you can check by comparing their live biometric to the one contained in their e-passport.”

With SITA Smart Path, the passenger’s biometric details are captured through a facial scan at the first touch point in the journey. The record is checked against the passenger’s travel documents, typically the e-passport, and a secure single token is created.

Then, at each step of the journey – from check-in, to aircraft boarding or border control – passengers gain access simply with a facial scan and without having to show their passport or boarding pass.

WALKTHROUGH SITA Smart Path puts the fast, secure and seamless walkthrough experience of mobile single token travel within reach of passengers today. And unlike other offerings, SITA’s can be easily integrated into existing airport infrastructure and airline systems.

IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

“ THE AIM IS TO DRIVE INNOVATION SUCH AS SINGLE TOKEN TRAVEL AS WELL BUILD SUPPORT AROUND A COMMON SOLUTION. IT WILL TAKE TIME BUT AGREEMENT ON A SINGLE SOLUTION WOULD BE A HUGE BENEFIT TO THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY.”

JIM PETERS CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SITA

READ OUR ONLINE FEATURETHE NAME GAME Any process and technology for identity management must get all the basics right – like names. Depending where you are in the world, this can confuse, but can we cross the cultural divide?

Community innovation Mismatching names are a major cause of identity management headaches for airlines and border control agencies. Confusion often lies in the complexity of naming conventions across different countries, cultures and ethnicities.

SITA Lab trials in APAC, the Middle East and Europe have yielded interesting results, while proving that an algorithm-based name matching solution far exceeded eye-ball comparison of names.

As part of its Identity Management Community Innovation Program, SITA is considering how name matching rules could be established and maintained as part of a community role, with the possibility of automating processes.

Find out more SITA is developing a new white paper called ‘Matching Passenger Names for Air Travel’.

Go to www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review and www.developer.aero for our online feature and the new SITA White paper.

39ISSUE 2: 2016

COLLABORATION WILL PAVE THE WAY FORWARD

Matthew Finn – Managing Director, AUGMENTIQIt is only now that just about everyone has a biometric e-passport, and that gives us a real opportunity to establish – and benefit from – the link between the person to whom the document was issued and the person presenting it. Arguably, the evolution of the modern passport should have resulted in reducing, if not

eradicating, the identity vulnerability. However, over the past few years, as security features of passports have improved, the previous problem of ‘document fraud’ has given way to a new and perhaps even more worrying problem of ‘identity fraud’. There has been a near wholesale shift away from people trying to falsify what was once a genuine travel document to people creating entirely fake identities and getting genuine documents issued to them.Much of this is owed to the fact that we have not paid nearly enough attention to the integrity of document issuance processes or the authenticity of ‘breeder’ documents such as birth certificates.

In short, what we’re facing is the ability of people who can create a new identity, to obtain a birth certificate in that name and subsequently obtain a genuine document. Fraudulently-obtained genuine travel documents, or “FOGs” as they are often known, are notoriously difficult to detect.To understand identity in a purposeful way, governments need to review the entire document issuance process. What documents were needed to apply for a new passport? What checks were made on those documents and the identity of the individual presenting them? And so on. Technology can play an important role. But we have to be robust about how we work together across the boundaries that exist between the public and private sector and collaborate across the entire spectrum of stakeholders: document manufacturers, technology providers, airlines, airports, ground handlers, governments, regulators and security organizations.The challenge of identity management is here to stay and will become increasingly complex. Companies such as SITA, and other companies with deep specialization in identity management, are in a unique position. They can offer support and help industry stakeholders to collaborate and use new technologies, such as biometrics, to secure the entire identity chain and the entire passenger process – in a way that improves security, mitigates risks and delivers better, smarter outcomes and experiences for the billions of passengers who travel every year.Collaboration is absolutely essential to leading the way forward.


HEAR OUR EXPERTS Search the SITA Online YouTub channel to hear expert commentary from:

Armin Ebrahimi, CEO, ShoCard – Blockchain, revolutionizing identity management.

Matthew Finn, CEO, AUGMENTIQ – The benefits of a single travel token.

Sean Farrell, Portfolio Director Government and Security, SITA – Automating the border control process through identity management.

Stephen Challis, Senior Product Manager, SITA – Identity verification, Smart Path demo and overview.

WORKING TOWARDS WHOLE JOURNEY IDENTITY MANAGEMENT


APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACES

THE RISE OF HACKATHONS

GEEK PARADISE OR A VALUABLE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE? THE PHENOMENON OF HACKATHONS HAS RISEN FAST, PROVING ITS VALUE ACROSS A RANGE OF INDUSTRIES – AIR TRAVEL AMONG THEM.

Hackathons are on the rise, having captured the imagination of companies across all industries – from healthcare to insurance, car manufacturing, social media and IT, to name a few.

Some hackathons are open to a wide audience of participants from perhaps a particular industry or even country location or university, with a designated theme to try and trigger new ideas that can be developed into products for the host company.

“Hackathons are becoming increasingly popular for airports, airlines and other travel related operations,” says Kevin O’Sullivan, Lead Developer for the SITA Lab.

“They’re anxious to eke out any new spark of inspiration that will lead to the latest technological innovation to enhance their customers’ experience or improve operations and staff efficiency.”

IATA’S NDC IATA chose the Tnooz THack hackathon in Hamburg in 2015 to expose the first release of its New Distribution

Capability (NDC) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as part of its initiative to transform the airline shopping experience for itineraries and ancillary services.

An earlier Tnooz hackathon in London was in fact won by SITA Lab, with an entry by SITA Lab’s O’Sullivan taking gold prize. The seven day event saw the Lab deliver a voice controlled travel booking engine, using APIs from a number of companies.

In 2016, IATA organized a hackathon in Berlin – again to target business travel and its NDC standard, an event supported and attended by SITA.

Speaking at the hackathon, Dominique El Bez, SITA’s VP Portfolio Management for Messaging, said: “What you can be sure of at a hackathon is that you’ll always be surprised.

“This hackathon provides the opportunity to look at NDC from a different angle – to think creatively for the benefit of airlines and their passengers.”

Some airlines have even hosted hackathons on an aircraft in flight. The finalists of the

Wearable World Hackathon two years ago got to test out their wearable creations on a transcontinental American Airlines flight from New York City to San Francisco.

AIRPORTSOpen airport hackathons focus on exploring new ideas to enhance the traveler experience – be it pre-departure, in transit or on arrival.

O’Sullivan again: “Airports need to keep up with the increasing passenger demand for instant access to the latest flight information, navigation

assistance and dining and shopping options, and all from the convenience of smartphones or smartwatches or other digital channels.”

Changi Airport’s inaugural hackathon uncovered some inspired innovations that employed kiosks, including one which allowed personal communications between travelers in the airport and city center attractions.

Another winning entry was an Automated Form Kiosk (AFK) that allows travelers to scan their boarding pass

http://www.sita.aero/content/sita-world-sporting-events

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“ HACKATHONS ARE BECOMING INCREASINGLY POPULAR FOR AIRPORTS, AIRLINES AND OTHER TRAVEL RELATED OPERATIONS. THEY’RE ANXIOUS TO EKE OUT ANY NEW SPARK OF INSPIRATION THAT WILL LEAD TO THE LATEST TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION TO ENHANCE THEIR CUSTOMERS’ EXPERIENCE OR IMPROVE OPERATIONS AND STAFF EFFICIENCY.”

KEVIN O’SULLIVAN LEAD DEVELOPER, SITA LAB

and passport to generate a prefilled immigration card.

Winning ideas at Singapore Airlines App Challenge included an app that aims to improve passengers’ resting patterns on board, and an intelligent virtual inflight assistant.

Other finalists tackled the challenges of group decision-making and social media collaboration and communication within travel groups and destination experts.

DEVELOPER.AEROAPIs at SITA’s www.developer.aero are continually in demand at global airport and airline hackathons.

They provide access to all types of sample airport and flight data including beacon locations, gate status, baggage information, weather, flight tracking, and mobile boarding passes.

Hackathons also give SITA teams a chance to network with the developer community and see the innovative ways that SITA’s APIs are being deployed.

A concept that proves very popular with participants at hackathons is the availability of beacons and the SITA Common Use Beacon Registry. The beacons and Beacon Registry APIs enable teams to utilize a simulated airport zone within a hackathon venue and retrieve lists of beacons and beacon locations deployed at this pseudo airport.

IMPACTWith all the time and design constraints on in-house development projects, company hackathons are an excellent way of providing creative space allowing developers to try out their own ideas or new technologies in a more relaxed and fun environment.

The events promote more dynamic collaboration across multifunctional teams that may include other skillsets such as user experience (UX) design and marketing expertise.

Hackathons may not produce the latest, greatest product or solution that will change the world or be practical or cost-effective to implement, but they could lead to the discovery of a clever little utility or feature that will contribute to the next stage of a product release, as in the case of the ‘Like’ button in Facebook.

‘HERE TO STAY’“Hackathons are here to stay and have fast become an integral part of the event calendar for product development and marketing teams across all industries,” adds O’Sullivan.

“As hackathons in the air transport industry gather momentum, more and more they’re playing a significant role in the development of digital strategies for airlines and airports.”

IATA’S NDC HACK, BERLIN 2016 With IATA's New Distribution Capability (NDC) offering an alternative to the distribution of airline and ancillary products – bringing the added advantage of enabling more personalized itinerary planning – it’s no wonder that IATA targeted business travel for its Berlin-based NDC hackathon this year.

It’s an obvious area that will benefit hugely from a more simplified and direct relationship with suppliers.

AIMING TO TRANSFORMNDC is a travel industry supported program, launched by IATA, for the development and market adoption of a new XML-based data transmission standard to simplify the way air products are retailed to corporations, leisure and business travelers.

SITA was delighted to support the hackathon which required developers to incorporate the IATA NDC Application Programming Interface (API) into their designs that aimed to transform the corporate booking process or the travel experience for business travelers.

SITA’s Developer.aero range of APIs were available to complement the NDC API, providing access to all types of airport and flight data including beacon locations, gate status, baggage information, weather, flight tracking, and mobile boarding passes.



HEAR OUR EXPERTS Search the SITA Online YouTube channel for SITA’s Dominique El Bez talking about the IATA NDC Hackathon.


STRAP

AIR TRANSPORT’S DIGITAL STORE

THE MARKETPLACE.AERO ‘DIGITAL STORE’ IS SET TO PROVIDE A WEALTH OF AIR TRANSPORT SOFTWARE AND SERVICES CAPABLE OF TACKLING INDUSTRY INEFFICIENCIES, ENHANCING PRODUCTIVITY AND REDUCING COSTS.

MARKETPLACE.AERO

Using smartphones, ruggedized handsets and IP-based two way radios, the solution is not restricted to in-airport communications (unless chosen), because of its use of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage. And by not using spectrum frequencies there are no restrictions in the number of channels used.

“Our approach is to avoid the limitations of existing airport radio communication solutions which are used for mission-critical users, such as airport fire brigades or police officers,” says Miquel Teixidor, CEO, Genaker.

43ISSUE 2: 2016

Why shouldn’t air transport companies be able to shop at a digital store to simply and quickly select and pay for a range of applications, software and other solutions that are specific to the industry?

That’s the idea behind the on-demand Marketplace.aero platform, which is becoming the air transport industry’s single online point of reference for everything from air transport services to networking solutions, mobile apps and software.

Making available SITA and third party vendor solutions – including services and consultancy – the online marketplace exploits the software-as-a-service delivery model. It’s an approach that’s potentially useful for any company working in the air transport industry.

‘PERFECT’According to Benoit Verbaere, Portfolio Director, ATI Cloud Platforms & Solutions, SITA: “In the early days we’re expecting most interest to come from smaller airlines, regional airports, airfreight, and other regionally focused service companies – for whom Marketplace.aero offers a perfect approach.

“A new local or regional airport, for example, will find a wide selection of information and communications technology in the marketplace – including services and consultancy, networking and software.”

COMMON THEMESAs more vendors join Marketplace.aero, we start by looking at three of them: Genaker, GCR and Testia.

“A common theme across these vendors is the need to save time and money by improving efficiency and reliability,” says Verbaere.

In the words of each vendor, there are a number of drivers for the new approaches enabled by their software.

Those drivers include current airport and airline inefficiencies, the need for better and more consistent communication channels across airports, more effective collaboration, and the ability to reduce current demands and strains on employees.

“Each vendor also underlines the need to provide end users with more mobility and autonomy as they go about their jobs, while ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and proper reporting across organizations,” he adds.

PUSH-TO-TALK … AND TEXTTop of mind for Genaker are more efficient and cost-effective mobile communications and collaboration across airports. Genaker provides an IP-based push-to-talk (PTT) solution using secure, real-time walkie-talkie communications over cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

“ A COMMON THEME ACROSS OUR MARKETPLACE VENDORS IS THE SAVING OF TIME AND MONEY BY IMPROVING EFFICIENCY AND RELIABILITY. EACH VENDOR ALSO UNDERLINES THE NEED TO PROVIDE END USERS WITH MORE MOBILITY AND AUTONOMY AS THEY GO ABOUT THEIR JOBS, WHILE ENSURING ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, AND PROPER REPORTING ACROSS ORGANIZATIONS.”

BENOIT VERBAERE PORTFOLIO DIRECTOR, ATI CLOUD PLATFORMS & SOLUTIONS, SITA

MARKETPLACE.AERO – INSTANT ACCESS TO AIR TRANSPORT SOFTWARE AND SERVICES


MARKETPLACE.AERO

“Many stakeholders in the air transport industry don’t like the radio communications limitations and will find them costly, restrictive or inflexible for their ‘off-airport’ needs.

“So we target airlines, catering services, ground handling, airport shops, cafeterias, airport services, crews, check-in or boarding teams, fuel operations teams and so on,” Teixidor adds.

COLLABORATIONTeixidor believes that it’s vital to fully exploit ubiquitous coverage and emerging advanced communication services based on global standards, because the growing air transport industry needs its stakeholders to collaborate closer than ever.

“All airport-based workers need to be empowered to quickly exchange information,” he says,“ and using our standards-based approach there’s no restriction in rotating a limited number of radio units.

“Also they can exchange information via text not audio, meaning fewer mistakes with certain operations being completed faster, such as embarking by counting outstanding passengers; and baggage handling, which helps to increase overall flight punctuality.”

SAFE AND SECUREAirport collaboration and the gathering and sharing of critical information are central to GCR Inc, our second profiled Marketplace.aero vendor, which offers its AirportIQ Safety & Operations Compliance System, or ASOCS for short.

Used daily in over 30 US airports and now moving into Europe, ASOCS gives airports both large and small a solution for operations, safety, security, wildlife, law enforcement information management, and enterprise-wide communications.

It enables these airports to meet ICAO’s Annex 14 or FAR Part 139 requirements for safety, security and certification.

As well as ensuring compliance reporting, the solution performs intelligent data sorting of incidents. That includes tracking incidents by category and department, sending notices and alerts to staff and supplying supporting documentation, tracking related actions and more.

“Using ASOCS to its fullest potential, airports can gain efficiencies across many areas,” says Tim Walsh, Associate Vice President Airline Services, GRC Inc.

“It facilitates communication across all parties: airport management, tenants, and regulatory agencies. Effective communication is the foundation for increased safety and efficiency.”

FOR FULL PROFILES ON EACH VENDORwww.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review and see www.marketplace.aero for more.

MAINTENANCE EDGEIn keeping with the theme, Testia, our third profiled vendor, brings the potential of huge efficiency gains in the area of maintenance.

Its Online Maintenance Assistance (OMA) mobile teleservice system enables wireless and intuitive live video and audio communication between mobile device- enabled technicians in the field and the experts on hand to advise them.

“In a context-driven way, the service optimizes browser-based real-time communication and document sharing between remote inspectors and those experts able to provide support,” says Holger Speckmann, CEO, Testia Germany.

“So we’re able to provide communication and additional functions while focusing on the inspection context, meaning that communication about maintenance happens at the very place where an issue may occur – such as at the aircraft in the field or in the hangar.”

PRODUCTIVITY “This increases productivity and reduces the high incidence of idle time that’s often a characteristic of usual maintenance communications,” adds Holger.

Beside inspections, OMA tackles other maintenance tasks, for support of suppliers, for test support (large scale tests) and for any other task where a direct support is needed on a short and immediate term basis.

ENDORSEMENTAs Marketplace.aero evolves, bringing to market the software and services to streamline air transport processes remains very much a goal of the relatively new industry portal.

As SITA’s Verbaere says: “As a community player, SITA is committed to constantly enhancing efficiencies and reducing costs in air transport. Our vendor program, in which we endorse vendors with solutions complementary to SITA products and services, is central to that commitment.”

“ USING OUR SYSTEM, AIRPORTS CAN GAIN EFFICIENCIES ACROSS MANY AREAS. IT FACILITATES COMMUNICATION ACROSS ALL PARTIES: AIRPORT MANAGEMENT, TENANTS, AND REGULATORY AGENCIES. EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IS THE FOUNDATION FOR INCREASED SAFETY AND EFFICIENCY.”

TIM WALSH ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT AIRLINE SERVICES, GCR INC

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MAKE MORE OF YOUR MEMBERSHIP

AS PART OF OUR COMMITMENT TO HELPING THE AIR TRANSPORT INDUSTRY, SITA IS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR WAYS TO PROVIDE ENHANCED OFFERS TO OUR 400-PLUS MEMBERS TO COLLABORATIVELY TRANSFORM THE AIR TRAVEL EXPERIENCE.

SITA MEMBER AND CUSTOMER UPDATES

Earlier this year SITA launched an extended range of free or discounted services to our members on some of our critical solutions, helping them build a stronger business. These include seven new offers launched in 2016 on some of our latest products and services, taking the total offers available to members to 16. Among them are three offers available exclusively to new members in the first 12 months after joining SITA.

INTRODUCTION TO MOBILE BOARDING PASS APISITA is offering a free three-month evaluation of Mobile Boarding Pass API (Application Programming Interface) to qualifying* SITA members, with preferential member terms when contracting for ongoing service. The Mobile Boarding Pass API is a cloud-based service that provides airlines with complete flexibility in the creation and distribution of mobile boarding passes.

INTRODUCTION TO BAGCONNECT This offer provides a free one-month evaluation of BagConnect to qualifying* SITA members, with preferential member terms when contracting for the ongoing service before the end of the evaluation period.

BagConnect is a managed service that generates “pseudo-BSMs” (baggage source message) for transfer bags passing through hub airports. Messages are generated if the original BSM is not received by the hub airport’s automated baggage handling system in time to facilitate baggage sorting. BagConnect reduces the mishandled rate of transfer bags which reduces costs, improves on-time departures and can increase passenger satisfaction.

The seven new offers include:

used by air transport professionals to exchange operational mails anywhere, any time and in a wide variety of industry formats – providing secure and cost-effective access exclusively to the air transport community.

INTRODUCTION TO MESSAGE INTELLIGENCE ARCHIVESITA members can benefit from a free subscription to the brand new Message Intelligence Archive module up until the 31st December 2016 when they sign an ongoing 12-month chargeable contract with effect from January 2017.

This is a brand new SITA product and will provide visibility and self-service access to Type B messaging traffic content to answer operational and business questions.

*To see if you qualify, contact your SITA representative.

SITA MEMBER AND CUSTOMER UPDATES


CELEBRATING MEMBERSHIP MILESTONES Several long-standing members of SITA were officially recognized for achieving major membership milestones at this year’s Air Transport IT Summit held in Barcelona.

United Airlines, Saudi Arabian Airlines and Meridian all celebrated their 50th anniversaries while Pakistan International Airlines and Middle East Airlines-Air Liban have been SITA members for 60 years.

“Let me congratulate you all collectively for your organizations’ contribution and commitment to SITA since those pioneering days of air travel,” said Jappe Blaauw, President of the SITA Council and Chief Transformation Officer at KLM.

“These awards really bring home the community spirit within our industry and the continuous desire to work together through organizations like SITA, to make the industry better for both big and small”.

Azhar Nawaz, Pakistan International Airways and Adib Charif, Middle East Airlines – Air Liban, with Jappe Blaauw, President of the SITA Council..

VIEW ALL 16 OFFERSwww.sita.aero/memberbenefits

INTRODUCTION TO WORLDTRACER® TABLETThis offer provides a free one-month evaluation of WorldTracer® Tablet to qualifying* SITA members, with preferential member terms when contracting for ongoing service before the end of the evaluation period.

WorldTracer® is a mishandled baggage tracing service provided in co-operation with IATA to reduce baggage repatriation costs by matching mishandled baggage faster and at a lower cost than other services.

WorldTracer® Tablet allows customer agents to assist and support passengers who have delayed baggage issues, using a mobile tablet device, connected to SITA’s WorldTracer® service.

DRIVING VALUE FROM HORIZON® SOLUTIONSSITA Horizon® Passenger Management and Distribution offers the most comprehensive range of passenger management services available.

This offer provides members an opportunity to have SITA experts work with them post-implementation of Horizon® solutions to help drive the maximum business value out of those new services.

Customers taking up the offer within six months of the implementation can take advantage of up to two days of remote support from our consultants for each of the in-scope products contracted.

The Horizon® services in-scope for this offer are Horizon Business Intelligence, Real Time Revenue Integrity, Airfare Insight and merchandizing solutions, including Horizon Service Fees, Electronic Miscellaneous Document and iTravel®.

USING THE SITA CLOUD SITA members are entitled to a free investigative two-hour call, plus qualifying members get a free one-day workshop and personalized Cloud architecture and solution outline recommendation. Members signing a contract within three months of the assessment will get preferential terms when contracting for SITA Cloud services.

SITA’s Cloud delivers managed cloud, IT and application services to the air transport industry on a hybrid platform that provides access to a broad set of industry and business process optimization applications.

The ATI Cloud is mission-critical, secure, and simple, hybrid and cost-effective, enabling business transformation, agility for growth, end-to-end service levels, and cost savings.

SITATEX® ONLINE ENTERPRISE SITA members will receive a preferential fixed monthly price covering the SITATEX® Online service subscription fee and the end-user traffic charges for an initial 36-month term when signing a new contract or extending an existing contract.

SITATEX® Online is a SITA managed, web-based operational mail solution, delivered on a SaaS model,

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