Although IT budgets have stayed largely flat in 2021, airport and airline CIOs are tapping technology to support their recovery from Covid-19.
This means a significant increase in spending on digitalization and sustainability as key priorities by 2024, according to new findings from SITA’s 2021 Air Transport IT Insights.
The majority of airlines (84%) and airports (81%) expect to spend the same or more in 2022 compared to 2021, with spending on automation of passenger processing seeing a significant rise.
This compares to 56% of airlines and 67% of airports that planned investment in automated passenger service in 2021.
This year’s IT Insights identifies passenger health certificate verification a focus as airlines and airports invest in digitizing the process.
During 2021, staff across 81% of airlines resorted to performing manual verifications of health certificates in paper or scanned format.
Airlines want to automate the process with the majority investing in verification via a mobile app (51%) and nearly half investing in kiosk-enabled health checks (45%).
Digital passenger health certification is also an urgent requirement for airports with a need to standardize approaches to verification.
Nearly half of major airports plan to implement mobile app-enabled verification.
Almost a third have plans for verification through kiosks by 2024.
David Lavorel, CEO, SITA AT AIRPORTS & BORDERS, said: "The industry faces pressure from all sides with an urgent need to reduce costs by optimizing operational efficiency while also adhering to new operational hurdles connected to ovid-19."
