SITA, ARINC Work Group to Define 'Type X' Business-Class Messaging

May 22, 2006

ARINC Inc. and SITA formed an industry technical work group to define the next generation of business-to-business messaging for the air transport industry (ATI). The work group will formalize standards to complement industry Type B messaging with a new approach using XML technology and service-oriented architecture (SOA) for communications.

The work group membership includes Northwest Airlines, British Airways, Worldspan, Amadeus, Lufthansa Systems, Sabre, Galileo and Mercator.

The ATI is an integrated industry that requires millions of messages per day for reservations, passenger processing and general operations, as well as the equivalent of "e-mail" to airplanes. ARINC and SITA process an estimated 40 million Type B messages per day that are delivered across extranets to a variety of industry participants. The industry uses a broad range of modern and legacy protocols - a heritage that dates back to teletype. The move to define an XML-based approach addresses the growing demand to enable secure and robust communications, according to SITA.

Standardizing on an approach is challenging in the ATI because of the substantial population of legacy applications and the high levels of reliability and security demanded for mission-critical and highly automated operational applications. The work group will address issues of backward compatibility for legacy applications, interoperability, reliability and security - all of which pose unique challenges for the current XML-based communications frameworks, SITA said. The work group also will deal with competing frameworks, such as Web Services and XML, and draw from standards being guided by Internet standards groups such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).

According to SITA, since the Type X work group is focusing on communications infrastructure for operational messaging, its actions will complement the efforts of the Open Travel Alliance (OTA) and International Air Transport Association (IATA) XML Task Force (XMLTF).

"Adoption (of XML technology and Internet-based communications) will lower the cost of business for the airlines and application providers, and increase flexibility," said Ruth Hough, vice president of ARINC Network Solutions. "Most airlines already use the technology internally, so removing the legacy layer and using a framework like Web Services for business-to-business communications is a natural next step."

The Type X work group said it is moving rapidly to formalize industry messaging requirements and is analyzing the competing frameworks against these requirements to identify gaps. The work group intends to have specifications established by the end of second quarter 2006, and carry out live demonstration projects by the end of next year.

Source: SITA.