Proactive adoption to make India world leader in aviation technology, asserts SITA Asia-Pacific head

The deployment of solutions based on mobile phone applications and cloud services will help create a modern and sustainable ecosystem to meet the impending boom in air traffic in India by 2030, a senior executive with a leading technology provider for the air transport industry has said.

Sumesh Patel, president of Asia-Pacific at the Geneva (Switzerland) headquartered SITA, said technology would play a defining role in the aviation industry and commended the country for being a front-runner in this regard through biometric-focused facial recognition projects like Digi Yatra.

He was, however, quick to caution, “With rising passenger volumes and rapid industry growth comes a significant risk of operational turmoil leading to congested airports, flight delays and cancellations. The [Indian aviation] industry must now become laser-focused on operational efficiency, agility, and delivering a modern, seamless passenger experience.”

Patel was speaking at a round table in New Delhi that coincides with the upcoming greenfield Noida International Airport (NIA) selecting the company’s airport management system (AMS) to automate and streamline operations Friday.

With passenger experience at the centre of India’s proposed $12-billion investment in new air transport infrastructure and 500 million passengers expected by 2030, SITA was contributing to Digi Yatra’s deployment with its tech expertise. In collaboration with the US-based NEC Corp. and the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the company successfully launched the country’s first biometric boarding experience with passengers flying with low-cost airline IndiGo out of Varanasi airport in December 2022.

Thereafter, Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) has partnered with SITA to implement the state-of-the-art Smart Path biometric solution for a seamless passenger experience at over 280 touch points in Terminal-2 of the country’s third-busiest airport. More touch points are expected to go live in the third quarter of 2023 for faster passenger processing, especially at check-in counters and self-service.

Airports transitioning to asset-light cloud processing

Patel said the other notable development was Indian airports transitioning to SITA’s agile cloud-based passenger processing systems.

This spared airports from investing in on-premise infrastructure to instead leverage common-use platforms for passenger processing, allowing airlines to share workstations at check-in and boarding gate counters.

“Now, thanks to cloud computing, airports no longer need to find space to operate and maintain a ‘core room’ full of hardware. The [asset] light approach saves airports the cost of servers and other equipment without compromising security or functionality while also helping airports towards their sustainability goals,” observed Patel.

Furthermore, this approach also enables airports and airlines to scale up or scale down their services on demand to support fluctuating workloads owing to passenger volumes and pay only for what they use.

On July 10, SITA announced a landmark deal with AAI to provide its technological solutions to 43 Indian airports.

Patel further said the company was committed to expanding its manufacturing facilities to support the Make in India programme as well as making incremental headcount additions through direct hiring as well as its partners.

“We are committed to creating solutions not only for India but also developing solutions for the world from India,” he declared.