Sita, the leading specialist in air transport communication and IT solutions, has reported consolidated revenues of $1.47 billion for the year 2008, up 3.5 per cent on the previous year’s figure of $1.42 billion.

“In the context of the worsening economic downturn, Sita performed well in 2008,” said Hani El Assaad, Sita regional vice president, Middle East and Turkey.

“Not only were overall revenues up at $1.472 billion but for the third year in a row we have won over $1 billion worth of new business. This is because IT and communications are now such an essential part of the daily operational life of the air transport industry and play a crucial role in managing costs and increasing productivity.”

“A good example is e-ticketing. Last year the 75 airlines we support on our e-ticketing platform issued over 82 million e-tickets compared to just 10.6 million two years ago. This is a remarkable acceleration of a change that is saving the industry millions as online booking and paperless travel become more prevalent,” El Assaad added.

“We also saw a steep drop in lost baggage claims which went from 14.2 million in 2007 to 11.9 million last year. Again this is an enormous saving to the industry which is due not just to fewer items of checked baggage but also major improvements in baggage tracking and sorting enabled by both IATA’s baggage improvement programme and Sita technology.”

Paul Coby, Sita’s chairman and British Airways CIO and head of financial shared services, said: “Sixty years after it was founded in 1949 by the air transport community, Sita’s business model continues to respond with remarkable resilience to both changing technology and to global economic storms.”

“The way Sita combines competition and collaboration as an entirely commercially-run cooperative with 550 members allows us to remain very close to our customers. Our constitution means we can uniquely address the industry’s common challenges on behalf of the entire air transport community,” added Coby.

“Even in these very difficult economic times, Sita has no debt, although we invested $79 million last year in product development for our customers, acquiring cargo system provider Softair, (through our subsidiary Champ Cargosystems), and the Australian border security company, CPS Systems.

"At our OnAir subsidiary we have also led the way in in-flight connectivity to allow the commercial launch of on-board mobile phone use,” Coby concluded. – TradeArabia News Service