Comments
Global airliners are adopting a number of initiatives to enhance the flying experience of travellers.
On Thursday, SITA Labs invited airlines and developers to join trials of developer.aero, a developers’ portal featuring a growing array of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).
SITA Labs is the research technology team of SITA. The interface that SITA plans to bring to trial initially is BagTrac, used to trace a traveller’s bags. It will also be used for issuing boarding passes. The site also features forums where developers can ask questions and find solutions.
The platform is being designed to enable airlines, airports and other industry players extend existing IT processes by harnessing the application developers’ community.
SITA officials indicated that airlines and service providers have limited IT resources dedicated towards API development, as it needs to be created and shared in a secure environment.
“Increasingly, developers are finding it cheaper to shop for APIs,” officials said. They also indicated that if the platform is successful it will open the doors for application developers to access vast amount of industry data, enabling them to create applications that will be used on mobiles and tablets.
New distribution standards
Meanwhile, the Director-General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Mr Tony Tyler, announced that the global airline industry body was working on new distribution standards.
These standards are expected to improve travellers’ shopping experience. It will also enable flyers to compare what various airlines are offering, such as choice of seats on a flight , IATA officials said.
“We will complete the foundation standard definition later this year. The new distribution capability will be an open standard that can be used by any party, including global distribution systems. The new system could revolutionise distribution capabilities by bringing us up to date with online retailers,” Mr Tyler said.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.