Karen Walker
North American airlines are leading the way in Information Technology (IT) and the gap between the leaders and the laggards continues to grow, according to data just released in the joint SITA/Airline Business IT Trend Survey.
Speaking at Farnborough yesterday, Airline Business editor Kevin O'Toole and SITA president, Europe, Dean Bibb stressed the importance that airlines should attach to addressing business-to-business (B2B) and e-commerce applications with a long-term IT strategy in order to stay ahead of the game.
The IT Trend survey, the second to be published, focuses on the world's top 150 airlines and provides a benchmark against which airlines can measure their success in meeting the challenges posed by IT and the Internet revolution.
The survey cites 87% of carriers as having already begun the transition to IT, with almost a third expecting to complete this migration by the end of the year. This leaves over 60% who will not complete the task for another two to five years.
"What we are seeing, as we also saw in last year's survey, is a growing gap between the leaders and the laggards," says O'Toole. "And it is the North American carriers that are definitely leading the way."
The competitive advantage implications of this are just beginning to play out, but O'Toole warns: "Those who are using the latest IT technologies are already taking great strides ahead of others. The competitive edge will go to those airlines.
"SITA's Bibb adds that the survey also indicates a need for greater commitment from airline boards for long-term IT strategies. More than half of the airline respondents say they have no-one at board level with specific responsibility for IT.
Reveals
The survey also reveals that more than two-thirds of airlines do not have any B2B e-commerce applications. Of those that do, however, the main focus is in the areas of airframe and engine manufacturing (64%); spares and repairs (64%) and alliance partners (41%).Airlines expect to see an average cost saving of some 13% by 2003 from these e-marketplaces.
Although a third of carriers are not yet selling tickets via web-based services, among those that are, the practice is to sell through a variety of online channels. Almost 50% of those carriers use their own web site as one of those channels.
SITA is a leading provider of integrated telecommunications and information solutions to the air transport industry. Airline Business, a sister to Flight International and Flight Daily News, is the leading international publication targeted at senior executives in the airline industry.
Source: Flight Daily News
