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PARIS--Serving 417 airlines out of a total clientele of 477 companies, Societe Iternationale de Telecommunications Aernautiques (SITA) ranks as one of the world's major providers of telecoms and information services to the air-transport industry worldwide. But in the face of increasing competition, it is seeking new members both inside and outside aviation.
Registered in Brussels but headquartered here, SITA was established in 1949 by 11 airlines as a cooperative organization to serve their communications needs. The "founding fathers" were Air France and KLM.
Today, it claims to have the largest private data-communications network in the world, connecting 36,000 user offices in 187 countries via medium or high-speed leased circuits. The three global control centers are here, in Atlanta and Singapore; message-switching centers are in London, Atlanta, Singapore, Amsterdam and Cairo. To give some idea of the sheer size of the SITA business, the company handles nearly 42.8 billion messages a year.
But despite its dominance of this specialist sector of the world airline scene, by no means is SITA a monopoly, according to Claude Lalanne, the former Air France executive who is director and CEO.
"Although this organization was created by the industry to serve the needs of the industry in the field of essential telecommunications and later computer applications, the airlines retain their freedom of choice," he said here. "They can either select SITA or they can go for another type of solution.
"The basic principles that obtained when we were set up 43 years ago are retained today: Cost, efficiency, neutrality and a service to the airline industry which, at the same time, is controlled by the airline industry.
"Over the years, a number of new applications has been Lalanne requested by our members on the basis that they could not have been handled by any one airline in isolation."
Lalanne cited the joint SITA/IATA lost-baggage tracking system Bagtrac, coupled with Bahamas, which automates airlines' baggage information, and the Airfare data base, in Atlanta, used by 50 airlines for fares quotations. Airfare processes well over 200 million transactions a year and provides fares quotes for more than 150 million passengers. Some 60 million fares for 500,000 city-pairs are held in the data base. Recent addition of the British Airways Fareshare system will double...