SITA drops Aerospan e-commerce exchange

SITA has announced that it is dropping plans to develop Aerospan into an open e-marketplace for the buying and selling of aircraft parts and services. The company says it could not generate a sufficient payback to justify the investment, reports Air Transport World.

“We have determined that the cost and time of customer acquisition are too great to sustain a business model that returns the right level of financial contribution to our future plans for SITA,” said SITA DG John Watson in a statement.

SITA will approach its client base “to determine which customers and software service companies would like to either license or buy outright the source code for Aerospan’s applications,” according to Aerospan CEO Duncan Alexander.

Aerospan was launched with AAR Corp. in Feb. 2000 at the peak of the dot.com frenzy and at approximately the same time that United Technologies Corp. and Honeywell formed MyAircraft.com.

SITA subsequently bought AAR’s stake in the venture. Meanwhile, MyAircraft was joined by Goodrich and then late last year merged with the airline-backed AirNewCo to form Cordiem.