SITA, the airline IT specialist, announced that it has signed a seven-year contract to implement and maintain a global hybrid network solution for Syrian Arab Airlines in a major upgrade. Syrian Arab Airlines flies to 40 destinations and is now introducing one regional gateway to manage 47 IP connections in its offices worldwide. The project will bring significant cost savings and the higher bandwidth will allow use of more airline applications.

Ghaida Abdullatif, Syrian Arab Airlines CEO, said: “This migration from legacy connections worldwide is best enabled by a single network provider such as SITA. The ultimate beneficiaries will be our passengers as we improve the quality of our services.”

In addition, the new project will provide the airline’s passengers and staff with secure mobility access to their corporate applications via Wi-fi, DSL or GPRS over SITA’s network, the largest private network in the world. Project management will also be provided by SITA.

Hani El Assaad, SITA Regional Vice-President, Middle East and Turkey said: “We are very pleased to be working with Syrian Arab Airlines on this important upgrade to its global network. It is further proof of how the smart deployment of IT can pay for itself and also bring about improved services for passengers.”