The AAI Chairman said "we have created a capacity for

next five years but it is not sufficient. So we have to plan now and begin expansion work to cater to the needs of passengers and airlines beyond these five years." Emphasising that India would be among the top three countries in terms of number of air travellers by 2020, El- Assaad said the fundamentals of this industry were strong as the number of passengers travelling by air would increase to 450 million from present 160 million. "SITA's long standing role in India's aviation industry continues as we move forward with this seven-year agreement to supply world class technology to at 25 AAI airports across the country," he said. SITA has also bid for AAI tender for setting up of Airport Operations Control Centre (AOCC) at ten more airports. The AOCC would provide "big solutions" like resource management and data base, flight information systems, passenger flow monitoring and all data required by the operators of these airports. "We hope that a decision will be taken in the next few weeks," El-Assaad said. The arrangement was done on profit sharing basis, in which AAI would be getting around 47 per cent of the revenue. SITA had successfully implemented passengers system at 13 airports. With this, total number of airports on which SITA would be implementing the CUPPS is 38.