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Airline industry to spend USD33 billion on IT upgrades this year
The commercial aviation industry is expected to spend big to update IT this year, according to the just released SITA 2017 Air Transport IT Trends Insights report.
Both airlines and airports are focusing their efforts in similar areas and are estimated to spend nearly US$33 billion on IT.
CIOs at both airlines and airports are prioritizing investments in cyber security and cloud services, the report says.
SITA’s research also found airlines are increasing IT spend as an overall percentage of revenue, up to 3.30% in 2017.
That represents about $24.3 billion across the industry.
"The air transport industry is going through digital transformation and focusing its attention on protecting the business and passengers; making it more efficient; and improving the passenger experience," said Ilya Gutlin, president of air travel solutions at SITA.
"Cyber-attacks are a very real threat in the highly interwoven air transport industry so building solid defenses is essential. Cloud services provide important efficiencies which play a key role in keeping costs down."
Cloud services is a major investment priority with up to 95% of airlines and 85% of airports expecting to invest in this area within the next three years.
Integrating more services on mobile is another key focus, SITA says.
Nearly three-quarters of airlines provide some form of mobile check-in and that is slated to increase to 97% by 2020.
Arguably the biggest customer service change will be the increase in the number of airlines providing real-time flight updates via social media, from a current 31% to 92% in the next three years.
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