SITA communicates their vision for African airports at ACI Africa/Asia Conference in Cairo

Dr. Khodr Akil, Vice President and General Manager, SITA INC, Egypt & South Africa will be speaking on Wednesday 1st December, about the nature of airports in the region, the challenges they will be facing, the growing role of state-of-the-art technologies in enabling Airports in overcoming those challenges and how SITA INC fits in this equation.

"Airports in this region need to invest in proven seamless IT infrastructure solutions and applications to ensure readiness in the face of future challenges in parallel with their international counterparts," said Dr. Akil. "Effective and reliable IT solutions for passenger handling, baggage management, security and operations systems have a direct impact on the lowering of operating costs, enhanced resource utilization, improved safety and security and greater customer satisfaction."

SITA's global experience and its Middle East, Africa presence for many years - an active player in the Egyptian aviation world for over 50 years - makes SITA a reliable partner to evaluate, recommend and provide advanced technology solutions that meet the existing and emerging needs which are specific to the aviation industry in the region.

Industry growth is dependent upon the adoption of reliable integrated IT platforms that can support both current and future applications and boast the capability to deliver secure, anytime, anywhere access to systems throughout the airport community.

SITA's Baggage and Passenger Solutions offer an integrated suite of baggage services and passenger processing capabilities for all airlines using the airport's facilities, maximizing operational effectiveness, reducing costs whilst enhancing security. SITA's comprehensive integrated passenger solutions provide common use enhancements to the airport with an impressive offering including the self-service AirportConnect Kiosk, iBorders/iDetect, s-Travel and Airport identity Management applications.

"In our world today, pressures on airports are mounting to deliver strong commercial results which are directly linked to an increased emphasis on customer satisfaction and enhanced security measures. Airports in the region have recognized that to achieve this, they would need to have state-of-the-art operating infrastructures in place," added Dr. Akil. "By standardizing information exchange at airports and building a community infrastructure, new applications services and systems can implemented quickly and cost effectively, streamlining passenger services and operations. As the leading supplier to the Aviation industry, SITA has the experience and on the ground presence to provide customers with the necessary technology applicatons to achieve such an environment."

AirportConnect another comprehensive solution managed by SITA, consists of network, hardware, software and support services. This next generation solution succeeds in enhancing operational efficiency, resulting in airport staff benefiting from access to applications anywhere in the airport, including front and back office, and in turn passengers enjoying a simpler travel experience, with different check-in options and shorter check-in times. AirportConnect runs on any user hardware of choice including PCs, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant), thin clients, self-service kiosks and mobile phones.

Focusing on the complete integration of the technology systems at airports SITA's solutions are aimed at helping airports maximize security, combat congestion, improve the utilization of limited resources and promote operating efficiencies, reduce costs and help identify new streams of revenue. They also provides airports with the technology architecture required to take advantage of a broad range of services based on Internet Protocols (IP) that are vital to the future of the air transport industry.