Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) has awarded Geneva-based SITA Information Networking and Computing Inc. the .3- million contract to upgrade the check-in system for the country’s second international gateway with state-of-the-art system.
MCIAA general manager Adelberto Yap said SITA’s AirportConnect Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE) service will enable the airport and its existing terminal to handle the increasing number of domestic and international carriers.
Aside from being the country’s second international gateway, the airport also serves as a domestic hub for the Visayas region. It has an annual capacity of 2.5 million passengers.
The airport has 44 check-in counters and departure gates shared among a growing number of airlines now totalling 10 aside from other smaller domestic carriers.
"The upgrading of the check-in system will facilitate traffic at the airport as Cebu and the surrounding islands are quickly becoming the destination of choice of many passengers from North Asian countries," Yap said.
Russ Lewis, SITA Inc. Airport & Desktop Services Regional vice-president in Asia Pacific, noted that with SITA’s AirportConnect CUTE service, airlines at the MCIA can share check-in facilities, thus maximizing the use of space, reducing costs and improving the passenger experience by tackling congestion.
Lewis explained that 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.
SITA’s solutions are designed to help airports maximize security, combat congestion, improve operating efficiencies and reduce costs.
They provide airports with the technology architecture required to take advantage of a broad range of IP-based services which are vital to the future of the air transport industry.
At present, SITA manages some 30,000 CUTE workstations for 285 customers in more than 200 airport locations worldwide, checking-in an estimated 580 million passengers a year.
SITA has to main subsidiaries: OnAir, which is leading the race to bring in-flight mobile telephony to the market in 2006, and CHAMP Cargosystems, the world’s only IT company solely dedicated to air cargo.
SITA Inc. is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and recorded revenues of 2 million in 2004.(BCM)
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