SITA has acquired Big Blue Analytics, adding the OCC Assistant Manager disruption recovery platform to its airline operations portfolio.
The deal brings the OCCam tool to a wider airline market through SITA's existing reach across airport and airline operations.
Flight disruption remains one of the most costly operational problems for airlines, affecting aircraft schedules, crew assignments, passenger itineraries, and maintenance planning at the same time. The platform developed by Big Blue Analytics addresses those constraints together rather than in sequence, producing ranked recovery plans within minutes, according to SITA.
That differs from many systems used in operations control centres, where airlines often address aircraft availability first, then crew legality, then passenger reaccommodation. Those sequential processes can trigger further knock-on changes as each decision affects the next.
Disruption can be costly. A mid-size carrier operating just over 100 aircraft can face annual disruption costs of between USD $70 million and USD $80 million, SITA said. Airlines using OCCam in live operations have reduced those costs by up to 30%, it added, equivalent to savings of between USD $20 million and USD $30 million for an airline of that size.
SITA plans to use the acquisition as the basis for what it describes as an Intelligent Operations Control Centre. The aim is to connect planning, monitoring, and recovery in a single operating environment while using artificial intelligence to identify likely problems earlier and automate some routine responses.
Big Blue Analytics developed OCCam as an optimisation platform for airline disruption management. According to SITA, the system evaluates active operational constraints across aircraft, crew, passengers, and maintenance in one model, while showing the likely effect of each option on cost, punctuality, passenger impact, and compliance.
SITA already has a presence in airline operations control through products including SITA Mission Watch, used in more than 100 operations control centres worldwide, according to the company. It also pointed to the wider rollout of SITA OptiFlight as evidence of its ability to distribute artificial intelligence tools across airline customers at scale.
Operational pressure
Disruption management has long been one of the hardest functions to automate in aviation because controllers must make decisions quickly while balancing shifting priorities. Weather, airport congestion, crew duty limits, aircraft rotations, and passenger connections can all change over hours or even minutes.
In that environment, operations teams are often forced to choose between imperfect options. A system that can test multiple scenarios quickly may reduce manual rework and give controllers a clearer view of the trade-offs behind each decision.
"Airlines have traditionally treated disruption as a fixed cost of doing business, but there is a clear opportunity to approach it differently. In an increasingly volatile and fast-moving environment, the ability to recover with the same agility becomes critical. The airlines that act on this first will recover faster, fly more, and protect more revenue than those that wait, and AI-enabled tools like OCCam are making that possible," said David Lavorel, Chief Executive Officer, SITA.
The purchase also reflects a broader push to apply artificial intelligence in critical transport infrastructure, particularly where decisions have direct financial and operational consequences. Airlines and airports have adopted machine learning and optimisation tools in areas such as fuel efficiency, turnaround management, and passenger processing, but disruption recovery has remained harder to standardise.
SITA has also been developing large language models and agent-based systems for airline operations. By combining those efforts with the optimisation engine acquired from Big Blue Analytics, it aims to create systems that simplify how operations teams interact with complex operational data.
Yann Cabaret outlined how the acquisition fits into that strategy. "This is the first step towards a much bigger Intelligent Operations Control Centre vision, one where planning, monitoring, and recovery come together in a single system. AI allows us to handle multiple constraints at once and tailor decisions to each airline in a way that was not possible before," said Cabaret.
For Big Blue Analytics, the acquisition gives its product access to SITA's global airline customer base. That could widen adoption of a platform that has been proven in production environments but had more limited market reach as a smaller specialist company.
"With SITA, we can take what we have built further. Reaching more airlines, faster, and turning advanced optimisation into practical tools that help operations teams work smarter every day," said Pau Collellmir, Founder, Big Blue Analytics.