Airline electronic data speed doubled to meet London Games travel surge

December 31, 1969 LONDON -- Air transport communications specialist SITA has doubled the speed that airlines can exchange the electronic data that is vital for the functioning of the air transport industry. This will allow SITA to manage the major peaks in traffic at airports worldwide smoothly this summer and in particular in July through September during the London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

At Heathrow Airport, 80,000 extra passengers are expected to arrive over a fortnight with two peak days, and departures will be compressed into just three days. One of these will be the busiest day in Heathrows history, when it will have 45% more departures than on a normal day [http://www.heathrowairport.com/about-us/host-airport-of-the-2012-games]. Electronic data exchange, commonly referred to in the air transport industry as SITA Messaging, underpins every aspect of operations with close to 100 million messages carried between airlines, airports, government regulators, suppliers and partners each day. Airlines transmit information regarding flights, passengers, crew, cargo and baggage and also exchange messages with various partners. At Heathrow Airport, Omni Serv, the ground services provider that manages assistance for passengers with reduced mobility (PRM), is using SITAs PRM Data Access Services to feed the special service requests (SSRs) coming from more than 90 airlines to its performance management system. This ensures that all passengers with reduced mobility get the best attention at Heathrow. This year, SITA invested significantly in its Community Messaging infrastructure ahead of the summer 2012 world sporting events. This was in response to the overall industry trend towards distributing more messages electronically, the changing requirements in information needs and the increasing number of companies joining the SITA messaging community. With the new infrastructure, the speed of sending and delivering electronic messages has been doubled, enabling SITA to adapt seamlessly to its customers changing needs during peaks in traffic on an hourly, daily, seasonal or occasional basis. Rukmini Glanard, SITA Vice President, Communications and Infrastructure, said: SITA is the community provider of messaging and we have more than sixty years of experience providing the most reliable and effective service. Our messaging is the glue that enables the whole industry to communicate and to operate effectively. Our recent investment has led to significant improvements in performance that have exceeded even our own expectations. Our capacity to receive messages has doubled and we can now send more than twice the number of messages per second as previously. With more than 2,400 industry players, from very small to very large companies, depending on SITAs messaging for their everyday operations this is great news and we can be confident that the summer 2012 traffic surge will be handled smoothly. Notes to Editors: It is more than sixty years since airlines created SITA to provide an industry-wide common messaging service. They built their computer reservations systems around this service which is called Type B Messaging. These messages only carry text, but SITA has recently created a new Type X service using XML and Web service technologies that can carry any data format with extended features. Glanard added: Over the next twelve months we expect to see more of our customers migrate to the newer Type X message format which uses XML and enables richer and more effective data transfer, which will allow messaging to provide further benefits to operations. Message numbers are growing as evolving services, new security concerns and increased regulatory complexity generate new needs for sending messages. In 2012, SITA exchanged 30 billion operational messages for the air transport community. SITA continually invests in its messaging portfolio, infrastructure and service capabilities in an effort to adapt and respond to customers and industry needs in the best possible way. Many similar projects were conducted over the past two years and so it is no surprise that more than half of all industry messaging is handled by SITA with customer satisfaction ratings of 98 per cent being recorded. About SITA SITA is the world's leading specialist in air transport communications and IT solutions. SITA delivers and manages business solutions for airline, airport, GDS, government and other customers over the worlds most extensive network, which forms the communications backbone of the global air transport industry. SITAs portfolio includes managed global communications, infrastructure and outsourcing services, as well as services for airline commercial management and passenger operations, flight operations, aircraft operations and air-to-ground communications, airport management and operations, baggage operations, transportation security and border management, cargo operations and more. With a customer service team of over 2,000 staff around the world, SITA invests significantly in achieving best-in-class customer service, providing integrated local and global support for both its communications and IT application services. SITA has two main subsidiaries: OnAir, which is the leading provider of in-flight connectivity, and CHAMP Cargosystems, the world's only IT company dedicated solely to air cargo. SITA also operates two joint ventures providing services to the air transport community: Aviareto for aircraft asset management and CertiPath for secure electronic identity management. SITA is one of the world's most international companies. Its global reach is based on local presence, with services for over 500 air transport industry members and 2,700 customers in over 200 countries and territories. Set up in 1949 with 11 member airlines, SITA today employs people of more than 140 nationalities, speaking over 70 different languages. SITA had consolidated revenues of US$ 1.517 billion (1.09 billion) in 2011. For further information go to www.sita.aero