SITA Partners with Moscow Firm

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. October 14, 2008

FEBRUARY 22, 2007. SITA has announced an alliance with the leading Russian IT firm, B.A.C., to modernise the country's small-to-medium sized airport sector.

SITA whose IT solutions are available in over 200 leading airports worldwide including Moscow's Domodedovo International Airport, signed an agreement today with B.A.C. which allows its state-of-the-art technology to be made available on an Applications Service Provider basis to 100 airports across Russia.

Umar Khan, SITA Vice President for Indirect Channels, said, "These are exciting times in the Russian aviation sector as it tries to catch up with the rapid pace of economic development across the country. Russian airports are ripe for development. There is a huge market opportunity for the right mix of IT solutions to improve basic services for airlines and passengers alike.

"'We are very pleased to work with B.A.C., a top Russian IT firm with considerable experience in the transportation market, and the airport sector in particular. We have today signed an agreement which will make our industry-standard, passenger and baggage management solutions available for the first time in Russia to the small and medium sized airport market at affordable prices."

B.A.C. are ranked one of the top IT companies in Russia and employ over 400 solution designers, project managers and software engineers. They have considerable knowledge of the air transport industry in Russia and are involved in major IT projects in Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo, Airports of the South and with Aeroflot.

Sorokin Svyatoslav, B.A.C. CEO, said, "This alliance will allow us together with SITA to bring tremendous innovation to the airport market in Russia. There is a huge need for modern IT technology here in order to exploit fully the capacity of the country's rich network of regional airports and to attract airlines and passengers."

"SITA products and services will be offered on an Applications Service Provider-basis which will reduce the total cost of ownership to the airports. The value of our role is that we can bring in local expertise with the language skills to provide on-site support and maintenance. Our staff will all also be trained and certified to work with SITA's airport IT portfolio."

Andrey Cheremnykh, SITA Head of Sales for Russia and the CIS, said, "The agreement will make shared-use passenger and baggage processing solutions such as baggage management, common-use terminal equipment and kiosks, more widely available in Russia and CIS where improved airport infrastructure is required to ensure that these airports and airlines can compete on the international and domestic market."

The product set which SITA will make available under the Indirect Channel label includes market leading IT applications such as AirportConnect CUTE, AirportConnect Kiosk, BagManager, BagMessage and local DCS (Departure Control System) .

SITA currently manages about 30,000 CUTE workstations used by some 285 customers in more than 200 airport locations worldwide, checking in an estimated 580 million passengers yearly. Last year SITA installed its baggage reconciliation system at Domodedovo International Airport, and is currently introducing web check-in to the Russian market with Transaero.