SITA Launches Air Transport Command Centre in Singapore

India, Oct. 14 -- SITA today officially opened a global command centre in Singapore for the proactive monitoring and management of its communication and IT solutions used by hundreds of airlines and airports around the world. This follows the opening of SITA's first centre in Montreal last year and supports the company's ambition to deliver "zero downtime" to the air transport industry.The centre, which has created more than 70 highly skilled, technical jobs in Singapore, will manage systems such as airport, web and mobile check-in; aircraft communications; baggage management; and border management systems. For 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, SITAs command centres are manned by teams of IT experts who have real-time visibility of the IT and communications systems in use at airports, in airlines and aircraft by SITAs 3,200 customers.

With its real-time visibility and sophisticated technology, SITA can identify issues and proactively initiate resolutions before service at its customer airlines and airports are impacted. Dave Bakker, Senior Vice President, SITA Global Services, said: "The opening today brings SITA a step closer to our goal of "zero downtime" for the air transport industry. No-one involved in this industry, which transports more than two and a half billion passengers each year, wants any disruption and at our command centres in Singapore and Montreal, we identify and fix issues before they escalate."Our decision to base our second centre in Singapore was due to a combination of SITA's growing presence in Asia and the availability of highly skilled, multi-lingual personnel in the city. All our team members are at the very least bilingual and about 40% speak Mandarin, catering for the increasing number of SITA customers in China." SITA is the only provider to the industry that has command centres that are uniquely dedicated to the air transport community. Its experience and presence at hundreds of customer airline and airport sites worldwide gives SITA unique visibility at the edge of the air transport industrys communications network and allows its specialists to monitor activity and to be aware of issues where customer connections are impacted. SITA uses next-generation monitoring tools to capture multi-vendor performance. In this way the command centre's technical experts can identify problems along the entire IT chain before they become major issues.The company has had a presence in Singapore for more than forty years and today's opening expands the SITA team by more than 70 people. In total, 230 employees of more than 20 nationalities speaking more than 15 different languages are now based at SITA's offices in Singapore. They serve more than 400 airline, airport and government customers in the Asia and the Pacific regions. See a brief overview of SITA's command centres: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihGwuPepgCYNotes to Editors:About SITASITA is the worlds 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 world's most extensive network, which forms the communications backbone of the global air transport industry. SITA's 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 worlds 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 worlds most international companies. Its global reach is based on local presence, with services for over 500 air transport industry members and 3,200 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$1.46 billion in 2010. For further information go to www.sita.aero Published by HT Syndication with permission from Web Newswire. For any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement, please contact Editor at [email protected]