SITA has signed an exclusive US$4.4 million dollar contract to provide and maintain its AirportConnect suite of IT solutions at Adelaide Airport over a period of 5 years.Adelaide Airport Ltd’s (AAL) new AUS$260 million terminal is designed to accommodate up to 27 aircraft at a time, including the new Airbus A380, and will be capable of handling more than 3,000 domestic, international and regional passengers every hour when it commences operation in mid-October 2005.

Installation of SITA’s next generation AirportConnect suite of IT solutions will bring about greater cost and efficiency improvements at Adelaide Airport. It will also provide flexibility and control to users by allowing consolidation of technology into one network and integration of shared use applications including voice, video and data.

Speaking about the new terminal, Mr. John McArdle, AAL’s Manager Corporate affairs said: “The fundamental need for our expansion is to add capacity to serve a growing region whose economy is increasingly intertwined with international markets. Our goal is to provide a convenient and efficiently operated airport serving the needs of people all over the world. To accomplish this, we need a strong, experienced technology partner. This is why we chose SITA to help us achieve our vision.”

“We wanted a flexible and future proof solution. SITA’s AirportConnect provided us a solution based on open standards. It will bring our airport to the frontier of technology and let us provide our customers with an integrated, fully-managed solution which helps us to effectively manage the transition between various access technologies.”

“We are very excited with this project, as it will be the first in the Asia Pacific region using our AirportConnect technology,” commented Russ Lewis, SITA INC Airport & Desktop Regional Vice President in Asia Pacific. 

“SITA has long understood that airports need to integrate and deploy the latest technologies to improve their operations. AirportConnect integrates all critical airport applications, network, hardware, support, and offers a range of cost and efficiency benefits for airports, airlines and handling agents while simplifying the passenger journey,” said Lewis.

As a next generation solution, AirportConnect supports the deployment of airport, airline and other tenant systems over a wide variety of workstations including PCs, thin-clients, kiosks, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and cell phones.

Using a single, open standard platform, AirportConnect simultaneously provides the benefits of a dedicated (single user) environment with the flexibility and convenience of a shared (multiple user) one. The solution reduces operating costs through an advanced suite of platform services that hasten application development and shorten the time to market.
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