SITA’S INNOVATION AND PORTFOLIO EVOLUTIONS EXPLORE TECHNOLOGIES, BUSINESS MODELS AND PROCESSES TO ADDRESS INDUSTRY PAIN-POINTS AND SHAPE THE FUTURE OF TRAVEL.
Key areas of collaborative innovation for SITA: digitally transforming travel in 2022-2023 and the years ahead
Enabling safer, easier, and more sustainable travel, including helping to reduce costs, overcome operational hurdles, and improve the passenger experience.
Solving today’s travel challenges, through operational efficiencies and sustainability. Ensuring safe and smooth journeys, to meet passenger expectations.
Shaping tomorrow’s travel, with emerging technologies to overcome future challenges and create more sustainable and inter-modal passenger journeys.
Community-owned for nearly 75 years, SITA has innovated collaboratively with the industry for decades, including airlines, airports, governments, industry bodies, proven innovative companies, early-stage ventures, and universities. As the leading air transport community IT provider, we aim to deliver positive change in travel, tackling post-pandemic needs by advancing innovation, technology, and strategic industry partnerships.
While SITA’s portfolio teams address industry problems with today’s deployable technology, our SITA Lab engages with industry players to investigate the potential of emerging technology in a three-to-five-year timeframe.
Proofs-of-Concept (PoCs), trials, pilot and other research projects underway in 2022 and into 2023 involve new and emerging technologies across the passenger journey, supply chains and operations, including touchless ‘walk-though’ travel, aircraft turnaround, baggage tracking, digital identity, digital health credentials, and many more.
A YEAR AT-A-GLANCE:
CO-INNOVATING WITH THE WORLD’S AIR
TRAVEL INDUSTRY
year-on-year in spend on R&D, design and testing, in addition to other SITA collaborative innovation initiatives with industry stakeholders around the world, working on Proofs-of-Concept (PoCs), trials and pilot projects.
granted to SITA by the end of 2022 for innovations. SITA continues to safeguard its investments in key technologies in the new post-pandemic era of growth in travel, with 243 more patent applications in the pipeline.
major SITA Lab Proofs-of-Concept in 2022 at airports in America, Europe, and the Middle East, along with demonstrations at industry events around the world of a Digital Travel Lane, for biometrically driven walk-through passenger experiences.
co-innovation projects by the SITA Lab since inception in 2008. They include trials and Proofs-of-Concept for use cases addressing industry challenges, complementing innovation in SITA’s portfolio teams.
A YEAR AT-A-GLANCE:
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE YEAR
Travel
remains a critical focus area. The year saw the milestone of some 4,000+ biometric touchpoints committed in airports globally, in total, along with leading trials and implementations of digital identity solutions. SITA strives for a future where you can travel from anywhere to everywhere without ever needing to present your travel documents.
Credentials
and Trust Frameworks continue to be top SITA priorities. We work as a Premium Donor of the Sovrin Foundation to advance blockchain self-sovereign digital identity (SSI) giving individuals sole ownership and control of their identity.
Symposium and Conference proved a crucial event in the advance of Digital Travel, with SITA as sponsor presenting our vision and capabilities. ICAO’s Digital Travel Credential (DTC) is one of the driving forces for universal and interoperable solutions for digital identities. SITA stands with ICAO, IATA, ACI, WTTC and other industry bodies in charting the way forward. See ‘SITA AT BORDERS’.
trusted traveler credential trial took place with the Aruba Tourism Authority and our partners Indicio in the area of decentralized identity technology and pre-clearance. Our ongoing trial includes ICAO’s Digital Travel Credential (DTC). Passengers can share relevant data directly from their digital wallet on their mobile device to multiple entities across journeys.
success
in 2022 resulting from SITA’s innovative digital border and airport implementations as they smoothed the way for tens of thousands of visitors to the tournament in Qatar, thanks to SITA Advanced Passenger Processing and the integration of digital identities into the Hayya digital fan card. See ‘SITA AT BORDERS’.
Lane
developed by the SITA Lab, combining biometric recognition and ICAO’s Digital Travel Credential (DTC) to enable seamless immigration arrival. It uniquely detects and tracks individuals for autonomous operations and automatic contactless boarding services.
health credentials
will be important for future pandemics or localized epidemics and diseases. SITA led the way during COVID with the secure exchange of health credentials among health authorities, governments, airlines, and airports, working with Aruba and a major US airport, and introducing a Digital Travel Declaration embraced by Jamaica’s authorities, along with others.
leadership
continues as more airports and airlines become customers of the SITA-NEC biometrics partnership, combining SITA Smart Path’s ground-breaking touchless passenger processing with NEC’s market-leading identification technologies.
This includes Frankfurt Airport and Star Alliance, whose airline passengers will be able to complete touchless processes using their face biometrics, for tickets, loyalty programs, and payment cards. See ‘SITA AT AIRPORTS’.
use cases in the year saw work on measuring passenger and curb side traffic density using Computer Vision. SITA Lab also created three-dimensional ID maps and asset catalogues from LIDAR and camera data, as used in the Lab’s Digital Twin research.
with Computer Vision in multiple areas, including 3D models of the environment, curb side tracking of vehicles and people for higher security and seamlessness for smart airport operations, and more.
and SITA continued their partnership with a trial started in the year on digitally automating baggage re-flight operations. SITA has since launched WorldTracer Auto Reflight to radically improve industry baggage management. The initiative won SITA’s 2022 Council Awards.
A YEAR AT-A-GLANCE:
Innovation milestones in the year
became a major goal with the introduction of SITA Launchpad welcoming partners to help meet the post-pandemic needs of the travel industry, with approaching 50 applications from interested companies following the initial launch. The program is complemented by a key initiative to capture ideas and accelerate innovation throughout SITA.
is focused on innovations and partnerships in four areas where we see strong market demand for new and efficient solutions: Digital identities, advanced analytics and data management, security and safety at airports, and sustainable alternative energy.
through net-zero technology is the objective of a SITA partnership with Envision Digital. Announced in 2021, it deploys AI and Internet of Things technologies to create the world’s first integrated net-zero carbon airport offering. See SITA AT AIRPORTS.
award
by Qatar IT Business, winning ‘Smart Solution of the Year’ for an innovative initiative between SITA and Hamad International Airport. Successful Digital Twin trials at Boston Logan Airport using Computer Vision for data gathering. Digital Twins create a virtual replica of the airport to model vast amounts of data to rapidly analyze, predict and control airport operations.
and SITA’s partnership in 2022 produced impressive results late in the year with the launch of the Skyports Cergy-Pontoise vertiport testbed in Paris, to demonstrate the full passenger journey, using SITA’s passenger processing technologies as the electric air taxi revolution takes off.
or ‘UAM’ is a growing mode of short-distance transport. SITA is pioneering UAM work focused on reliable and secure communication, flight preparation and training, flight tracking and fleet management, health monitoring, and data management. Large-scale operations are planned for 2030. The first commercial route is planned for 2024.
and SITA are collaborating on digital infrastructure for vertiports. Plans and discussions in the year led to a 2023 announcement which sees SITA join Volocopter’s Series E funding round, as the UAM pioneer’s preferred digital and IT systems partner for vertiports.
became digitalized in the year, issued to enable better collaboration between airlines and civil aviation authorities. See ‘SITA FOR AIRCRAFT’.
became the focus of an insightful SITA report receiving an overwhelmingly positive response as it identified technological, societal, traveler and economic trends set to shape the future of travel. SITA’s ‘Meet the Megatrends’ homed in on metaverse operations, autonomous electric vehicles, the digital economy, and much more.
research initiated to identify industry standards to accelerate adoption of autonomous devices for terminal and airfield use cases. After demonstrations of Boston Dynamics’ ‘Spot the Robot Dog’ at ICAO’s 2022 TRIP conference and discussion with airports leading robot research, this work on standards will be taken to the Airports Council International (ACI) Aviation Community Recommended Information Services (ACRIS) event in 2023.