IATA ENCOURAGES TECHNOLOGY TO FACILITATE INDUSTRY CHANGE

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

IATA ENCOURAGES TECHNOLOGY TO FACILITATE INDUSTRY CHANGE

Tony Tyler singles out distribution, decision support and operational efficiency as focal areas for IT partnerships

Tony Tyler, director general & CEO, IATA

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) encouraged strong information technology (IT) partnerships to continue to facilitate change that strengthens the air transport industry.

“IT has changed aviation for the better. Aviation today is a global mass transit system for nearly 3 billion people and 50 million tonnes of cargo. This is a critical component at the foundation of our global community. We could not deliver this enormous value at an ever expanding scale without the support of IT partners,” said Tony Tyler, director general and CEO, IATA.

The comments were made at the SITA Air Transport IT Summit, in Brussels, Belgium, where Tyler challenged aviation’s IT partners to deliver change to shore up the bottom line at a critical time for the air transport industry.

“We are expecting a razor thin consolidated industry margin of just 0.5 per cent. Even that anemic profitability faces downside risks of high oil prices and the European sovereign debt crisis. We will be counting on our IT partners to work with us on opportunities to generate revenues, cut costs and improve the bottom line,” said Tyler.

“Change is not a zero-sum game. Alignment among stakeholders and partners has underpinned transformational changes such as the move to 100 per cent e-ticketing. Everyone in the value chain—and our customers—benefitted,” said Tyler.

Tyler singled out distribution, decision support and operational efficiency as focal areas for IT partnerships.

IATA is currently working on a new distribution capability (NDC) that will bring the industry up-to-date with online retailers and revolutionize distribution. The foundation standard for the NDC will be presented at the World Passenger Symposium in October.

Last week, IATA launched Direct Data Service (DDS) in partnership with the North America-based ARC. DDS is a more powerful evolution of IATA’s PaxIS business intelligence tool.

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