St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport, the fourth busiest in Russia, today announced a major improvement to passenger services with the selection of SITA’s AirportConnect Open platform which will provide agent and self-service check-in for its six million passengers.

This five-year deal includes the installation of 100 new workstations and five CUSS (common use self-service) kiosks throughout the airport in addition to the modernization of the existing airport infrastructure.

Michael Richter, Executive Director, Chief Operations Officer of Northern Capital Gateway, LLC, Pulkovo Airport’s managing company, said: “By working with SITA, the global aviation specialist, and selecting AirportConnect Open we are able to provide both the airlines and their passengers with fast and efficient check-in at our airport. Because this is a common-use system, we will also benefit from reduced investment in infrastructure as passengers can use the kiosks to check in for any airline based here.”

SITA’s AirportConnect Open is a CUPPS (Common Use Passenger Processing System) compliant platform. CUPPS is the new standard being adopted by the air transport industry and SITA’s AirportConnect Open is the only fully-integrated common use platform supporting CUPPS, CUTE, and web-based applications, as well as CUSS kiosk applications.

Boris Padovan, SITA Regional Vice-President for East and Central Europe, said: “This is an exciting time for Pulkovo airport, which in recent years has seen double digit growth. This investment will not only improve current passenger check-in services and, introduce self-service check-in, but because AirportConnect Open is CUPPS compliant the airport authority is future-proofing its systems in line with expected long term growth.”

The new systems have received the backing and support of all the airlines that provide services in Pulkovo and the project is well underway with kiosks already in use in both of the terminals.

Pulkovo Airport serves the city of St. Petersburg and operates flights from more than 70 domestic and international airlines. Passenger figures in 2009 were close to seven million while the long term forecast is for passenger flows to reach 17 million by 2025 and 43 million by 2039.