2010 South Africa World Cup
Secured borders and minimized passenger delays during and after the South Africa World Cup
Over 1.5 million visitors to the 2010 South African World Cup were screened and processed using SITA border control systems.
SITA's iBorders Advance Passenger Processing (APP) electronically pre-screens and analyzes travellers' details before they board their flights. Its deployment across ten South African airports effectively pushed the border back to the passengers' points of departure, enabling airlines and the South African authorities to exchange passport details before authorising boarding.
Most passengers passed the checks, received their boarding passes and were able to catch their flight as normal. But out of the 1.5 million travellers over June and July, 350 were subjected to further examination. More than 60 people were identified as undesirable and prevented from boarding because their names appeared either on South Africa's Visa and Entry Stop List or watch lists provided by Interpol and soccer's governing body, FIFA. APP has also vastly improved immigration clearance for the innocent majority.
Mkuseli Apleni, Director General, Department of Home Affairs, South Africa, said, "SITA's APP solution has exceeded our expectations ensuring the smooth arrival of hundreds of thousands of visitors to South Africa for the FIFA World Cup. It allowed us to concentrate our efforts on those suspects who posed a real risk to the country, speeding up the entry process for the majority of passengers."
As it eliminates the fines associated with the transportation of travellers who are refused entry upon arrival, airlines flying to South Africa could expect to save millions of dollars in processing and repatriation fees.
Upgrading passenger management
It was anticipated that South Africa's airports would have to handle up to 78,000 passengers and 260 international flights every day during the World Cup.
To make passenger facilitation and management easier, SITA provided a US$ 35m programme of check-in and self-service kiosk facilities to Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), which operates 10 of the country's airports and handles 98% of South Africa's commercial air traffic.
SITA also agreed with Aviation Coordination Services (ACS), which represents the 75 airlines using South African airports, to provide continued maintenance and operation of Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE) and Common Use Self Service (CUSS) check-in environment.
While SITA previously supplied many of the airport systems in South Africa, both ACSA and ACS took the opportunity to review and upgrade services before 2010. The explicit aim to ensure that the surge of passengers travelling to the World Cup games could be handled with ease.
SITA's common use check-in technology, SITA AirportConnect Open , also ensured that all workstations across the country's airports would be available for use by over 75 different airlines handling these passengers. This shared infrastructure provided the flexibility necessary to respond quickly to the needs of individual airlines.
Taking ground-to-air communications to a new level
In addition to improving the flow of World Cup passengers through airports, SITA also helped improve the flow of communications between the air and ground by installing Africa's first VDL radio in its Johannesburg VHF station.
The world's airlines already had access to SITA's global network of 1,200 traditional VHF Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) radio stations, which provided reliable data links between ground operation centres and aircraft. However, the new VDL radio provided an International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard VHF Digital Link service, capable of delivering ten times the capacity of VHF ACARS.
This meant that bandwidth-hungry applications in modern aircraft like the Airbus A380 were fully supported in South African airspace. Airlines were able to provide real-time operational information to airborne pilots, with SITA acting as a central communications hub, reformatting messages to help integrate ACARS into the airlines' IT environments.
Among the first beneficiaries of the new service was the German football team, which arrived while the VDL station was in operational mode just prior to its official launch. SITA's global VHF/ VDL network, enables air-to-ground communications for 220 airlines, including those operating the new Airbus A380 worldwide.
Download SITA's "World Sporting Events" (0.81 MB)
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