Interview with Sergio Colella, Chairman of SITA Europe

How do you feel about developments in the airline industry?

Sergio Colella - The urge to start travelling again is there. I've just come back from two or three trips to Europe and for the first time I've seen queues at airports. I have to say that it's quite pleasing to see passengers' appetite for going to an airport, boarding planes again, and return to a more or less normal life, which means getting aroundBoth for business and tourism purposes.

The queues may also reflect difficulties in managing the administrative formalities associated with Covid...

Sergio Colella - Certainly. We can see that managing the passenger journey is more complex. In a way, I think there are similarities with the changes that were made following the attacks on 11 September. Anti-terrorist security checks were made much stricter. Similarly, following Covid, health safety checks have been tightened up. Our industry needs to adapt to ensure that these controls, which will remain in place for a long time, can be carried out in good conditions, allowing traffic to grow again and avoiding queues, which are contrary to social distancing. Passengers also need to feel that they can go to an airport and take a plane in a normal way, with a good level of security.

What is SITA's role in this unprecedented context?

Sergio Colella - SITA was created 70 years ago to serve the airline industry, but what is perhaps not sufficiently well known is that we have been working with governments, border police, for over 25 years, to check passports, identities, and so on. Incidentally, Covid is a new element, but in some countries there were already health security checks in place before this crisis. The difficulty today is that the phenomenon is massive in terms of the destinations concerned and the number of passengers.

What is the purpose of the new Aruba tool launched by SITA?

Sergio Colella - This is a multi-modal pilot project, launched on the beautiful island of the same name. The island asked us to build a blockchain-based project with the Department of Health, in partnership with Indicio. This is a highly secure technology that ensures total anonymity. This will enable us to create a multimodal travel pass. In other words, on the island of Aruba, it can be presented at the airport boarding counter, in a hotel, at the entrance to a discotheque or on a bus, without ever disclosing the traveller's private data. This trial is just the first step towards the development by SITA of a more durable and secure travel card that will make it possible to combine the documents needed for travel, such as passports, visas and other medical information. For authorities and infrastructure managers, the existence of a single card will make the reception of people and border crossings automated, and therefore faster and safer.

What makes it unique compared to other solutions that already exist?

Sergio Colella - The map developed by SITA works by decentralising data in the blockchain. So no private details are visible to others. What is visible is only the attestation via a QR code that is provided to prove that the traveller has all the necessary documents, be it a negative PCR test, a vaccination, or other security information. If this person has Covid, this documentation will indicate that the person must be quarantined. At the same time, we're working on the Health Protect dossier, which is a bit different. We've all heard of vaccination passports, or health passes, like those issued by IATA or AOK. Health protect is not a health passport. Our solution is the link that enables governments, airports and airlines to communicate on health documentation by integrating it into the PNR to ensure that we are in line with the procedures put in place in the country of arrival and in the country of departure, for airlines and for border controls. This makes it possible to set up "advance passenger processing", in other words to reassure the traveller and the airline that all the health procedures have been complied with. Whatever the health pass, we will integrate this data to check compliance with health regulations. All this should make it possible to manage the upturn in business expected in the coming weeks. This is just one step; there are many others. In particular, we believe that biometrics and automation should enable us to return to higher levels of productivity and passenger management. But this part of health management is important to us.

What is the practical difference with health passports?

Sergio Colella - They are complementary. Once you have IATA or other verification, you have the document, but you don't have the integration of this document according to local regulations, the availability of this document for the airport in advance, for early boarding, the possibility of checking this document when you get on the plane. Or making it available at the arrival airport for border control.

What will your tool look like for day-to-day travellers?

Sergio Colella - It's transparent for the traveller. We will be making this solution available to airports, airlines and governments, so that they can integrate this new documentation throughout the lifecycle of the passenger experience. The traveller won't see it, but it will be present at every stage. This is just a small part of what needs to be done in a major way to get back to acceptable levels of activity. Other measures will be put in place shortly.

Certain things that seemed impossible or unacceptable have become possible and acceptable, both to the authorities and to the passenger.

You mentioned earlier the integration of the passport. So have we reached this stage of digitalisation?

Sergio Colella - This will depend on the regulations in force in each country. We were already working on the dematerialisation of the passport before Covid in certain configurations, in particular at Miami airport where you can electronic passport on your phone. We simply store the passport data in the phone, along with the face, in a secure way. Technically, this is perfectly feasible. Each country will have to adopt such measures in more or less dispersed order. But the dematerialisation of the passport is an important element in automating the process. It will be a win-win situation for 90% regular travellers, with a really fast and fluid way of proceeding. And it allows the security forces to focus on the 5 to 10% where there is potentially a question. This is a fundamental element of automation and digitalisation. Paradoxically this crisis has been an extremely powerful agent of digitalisation. We see it in our everyday lives. Certain things that seemed impossible or unacceptable have become possible and acceptable, both to the authorities and to the passenger. Three quarters of travellers surveyed by IATA are completely in favour of putting their information in the cloud as long as the system is secure.

Your recent initiatives indicate that you are betting on a long-term need for health checks...

Sergio Colella - That's the big question. I think this will have a structural impact. Everyone is going to be paying much more attention, whether it's public opinion, governments, health organisations... We may have new crises, which I hope will be fewer, but I think we will have greater structural control over the health of people who travel from one country to another. The fact that there are variants, that other epidemics may emerge, needs to be controlled proactively and requires a higher level of vigilance.

Should we abandon the idea of an uninterrupted journey to the passenger's seat in the cabin thanks to new technologies such as biometrics?

Sergio Colella - No, there will be increased controls, but once you have your anti-Covid passport, the only difficulty is integrating this information into all the control stages that punctuate the traveller's journey, i.e. six or seven points, in a seamless way. By updating the systems, when the traveller passes through the checkpoints, it will be possible to identify that they have had their anti-covid test or vaccination, that they are not terrorists, that their passport is up to date, with health certification, and that they can therefore travel. We can hope to achieve the same level of fluidity if we integrate this digitally. There will always be exceptions, perhaps 10%, but the essential thing is that 90% of the flow is linear and seamless. What's very important is that we need to prepare by anticipating all the stages that will ensure that passengers arrive at the airport confident that they can catch their flight and be accepted on arrival. Everything must be anticipated.

The technology is ready, it's now a question of will

The crisis will have had the merit of encouraging airports to invest, in particular in contactless technologies. Are you also involved in this issue?

Sergio Colella - Yes, we do. Every year we publish an IT Survey. The latest one shows that investment in airports remains high, because it enables transformation. It's also the key to greater productivity, which is crucial these days, because we're going to have to do more with less, given the current economic climate. colossal losses that have accumulated... We are very involved in everything contactless. The entire Beijing airport has been transformed by biometrics and touchless technology. We are in the process of making all the equipment contactless, creating a link between the smartphone and the kiosks or boarding gates. Of course, this also has the advantage of being more eco-responsible, by reducing the use of paper. The technology is ready, it's now a question of will. That's why Covid has been an accelerator.

When can we expect to see a travel route without any bottlenecks?

Sergio Colella - The beauty of our industry also lies in the fact that it is highly heterogeneous, in terms of passenger types, departure and arrival points, airlines... I think that on airports that show a willingness to invest, on routes that are the backbone of air traffic, we will see this fairly quickly, from 2022-2023.Because the technology is there, and it offers major advantages in terms of both passenger experience and cost reduction. This is likely to happen all the more quickly now that so many psychological barriers have been overcome. Even I thought it was psychologically impossible to talk to a customer on Teams! Today, I want to go back to seeing customers, but I know that on certain exchanges I can have a meeting of this type. I think that tomorrow we'll be able to say that the smartphone is the remote control for our journey, and our face will become our boarding pass and passport. In two years' time, I hope we'll be seeing the most mature situations in stopovers.

We need to be able to restore an acceptable, fluid passenger experience and optimise operating costs. Especially after losing 120 billion dollars...

This fluidity also depends on standards, standardisation, or at least interoperability of systems. Are such measures being adopted by the airline industry?

Sergio Colella - It's a topical question... I think that aviation, a few decades ago, was ahead of its time thanks to this position: "we must have common standards, to recognise a customer whether he's in Beijing or New York". At the time, the aviation industry had the intelligence to create a common ecosystem. We need the same intelligence today. And those entities that are the bedrock of our sector, and of which SITA is a part, must have the mandate to create this standardisation. We hope that this crisis will give fresh impetus to the need to share and pool data, procedures and operating methods... Otherwise, the costs will add up, with no added value, and passengers will have a bad experience. I'm optimistic that this will happen naturally. The pandemic has been a wake-up call to speed things up, and the need will do the rest. We need to be able to restore an acceptable, seamless passenger experience and optimise operating costs. Especially after losing 120 billion dollars...