SITA’s 2023 Passenger IT Insights have recently been released, analysing airlines’ estimated $34.5b spend on IT in 2023. The report provides critical insight into the strategies shaping the future of air travel, shedding light on the industry’s investment priorities as they evolve. This survey conveys the views and insights of carriers representative of 29 per cent of global traffic, accounting for the opinions of senior IT executives in the top 292 passenger carriers.
This article focuses exclusively on the insights regarding airlines, detailing some of the interesting investments, expectations, and challenges highlighted within the report. For more detail, see the full report: SITA’s 2023 Passenger IT Insights.
Investment trends
- Business intelligence (BI) and artificial intelligence (AI) are the top technology priorities for airlines, with BI noted as the biggest area of technology investment for the coming three years.
- Investment in AI is more broadly predicted to continue increasing over time.
- Cyber security and cloud services retain their status as key investment priorities of IT services with 97 per cent and 95 per cent respectively having major programs/R&D in place.
- Investment in real-time wait monitoring systems has nearly doubled since 2022.
- Renewing fleets is the leading environmental sustainability initiative in the industry.
- Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is set to be the subject of significant investment over the next three years.
Expectations
- Mixed reality is set for growth with 53 per cent of airlines running trials or pilots versus only 6 per cent currently investing in major programmes.
- 70 per cent of airlines are expecting to have biometric ID management in place by 2026.
- Over half of airlines plan to have a single token for passenger identification across all touchpoints by 2026.
- Accessibility technology is projected to become increasingly important with 41 per cent ensuring their web content follows accessibility guidelines but an additional 40 per cent planning to do this in the next three years.
- 2/3 airlines have plans for integrated systems to predict potential issues, automated predictive alerts prior to flight disruption, and simulation capability for optimal reaction.
- Half of airlines plan to start using the SAF book and claim system by 2026, bring adoption up to 78 per cent.
- Almost all airlines are planning to adopt data collection and sharing across most areas by 2026.
- By 2026, over 90 per cent of airlines plan to have IT in place to boost the efficiency of flight operations and aircraft turnaround.
Challenges:
- Transforming business processes and culture.
- Retaining and recruiting IT staff and workforce management.
- Data maturity and the use of data to improve operational efficiency.
- The integration of Large Language Models (LLM) and cyber threats.
SITA’s 2023 Passenger IT insights offers a useful snapshot of the industry’s trajectory, pointing towards areas of growth and the notable challenges that are influencing the future of air travel.
For more like this see:
- Twelve takeaways from SITA’s 2023 Passenger IT Insights report
- Four big picture take aways from the SITA sustainability report
- SITA finds aviation CIOs are “ramping up digital technology investments”
