The current airline industry downturn has affected progress in the deployment of Information Technology (IT) as overall investment levels in IT and telecommunications have dropped to 2.3 percent of revenue, asserts the latest annual Airline IT Trends Survey, conducted by SITA and Airline Business magazine.
This sets investment back to below 1999 levels, well short of the level of three percent that investment had been climbing to over previous years. The annual study also provides a set of benchmarks for across-industry comparisons between IT leaders and IT laggards.
The results show that Middle East and Africa carriers are leading investment with 2.88 percent of revenue, followed by North America at 2.7 percent, Latin America—2.4 percent, Asia Pacific—2.2 percent and then European carriers with 1.9 percent. However 61 percent of carriers expect an increase in investment next year.
“The carriers of Africa and the Middle East have achieved a great deal by focusing on applying their IT budgets to modernizing their IT infrastructure,” said Hani Al-Assaad, SITA president Middle East and Africa.
“The results of the latest survey show that investment in IT and telecommunications is now higher in these regions than in any other and above the current industry average. This is a great opportunity for many of the airlines to become IT-enabled and it will help reduce costs, improve efficiency and support the development of a more secure aviation system.” — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
