SITA acquires Big Blue Analytics, developer of OCC Assistant Manager (OCCam) | News
Airlines around the world will now have access to the most advanced and proven AI-enabled disruption management platform in aviation operations. Disruption is the most expensive unsolved problem in aviation, costing airlines tens of billions of dollars annually. To address this, SITA has acquired Big Blue Analytics, the team behind OCC Assistant Manager (OCCam), and will scale the platform to airlines worldwide as the foundation for a broader Intelligent Operations Control Center vision.
OCCam is an AI-powered disruption optimization platform that has been refined over the years within airline live operations. When a disruption occurs, it evaluates all active constraints together – aircraft, crew, passenger routes, maintenance – and produces one coherent recovery plan in minutes. In manufacturing, airlines using OCCam have reduced disruption costs by up to 30%. The starting point, not the ceiling.
Resolving disruptions is really difficult. Aircraft, crew, passengers and maintenance must all be optimized together, under constant change, against airline priorities that shift by the hour. For years, no system has done this well enough to deliver consistent, achievable results quickly enough.
Most tools these days work in sequence. Reassign the plane. Find legal crew. Rebook passengers. Every step leads to rework and small problems pile up. Controllers and duty managers apply that pressure in real time and make the right decision quickly, in an already overloaded system.
This drives up costs. For a mid-sized airline operating just over 100 aircraft, disruption costs could run between $70 and $80 million. A 25-30% reduction translates into $20 to $30 million. Yet most systems cannot achieve these savings, nor can they prove them.
OCCam solves both problems. First, it breaks the sequential decision-making process. Teams quickly receive sequenced, achievable recovery plans that optimize aircraft, crew and passengers together, with a clear view of costs, on-time performance, passenger impact and compliance. Secondly, it makes the impact measurable. Every decision is tracked, allowing airlines to quantify savings, evaluate operational performance and demonstrate clear returns from day one.
“Airlines have traditionally treated disruption as a fixed cost of doing business, but there is a clear opportunity to do this differently. In an increasingly volatile and rapidly changing environment, the ability to recover with the same agility becomes critical. The airlines that act first will recover faster, fly more and protect more revenue than those that wait, and AI tools like OCCam make that possible,” said David Lavorel, CEO of SITA.
SITA already provides solutions such as SITA Mission Watch to more than 100 Operations Control Centers worldwide, allowing airlines to monitor and optimize their operations.
It has also demonstrated the ability to scale AI-based products in aviation operations. Following the successful global rollout of SITA OptiFlight, the same approach will now bring OCCam to airlines around the world.
SITA has developed the next layer of AI in aviation operations, including large language models and agent-based systems. With Big Blue Analytics’ optimization engine as a foundation, SITA can now build systems that predict disruptions earlier, automate routine recovery, and enable teams to interact with complex operations in a simple, natural way.
“This is the first step toward a much larger vision of the Intelligent Operations Control Center, one where planning, monitoring and recovery come together in a single system. AI allows us to address multiple constraints at once and tailor decisions for each airline in a way that was not possible before,” said Yann Cabaret, CEO of SITA for Aircraft.
“SITA allows us to take what we’ve built forward, reaching more airlines faster and turning advanced optimization into practical tools that help operations teams work smarter every day,” said Pau Collellmir, Founder of Big Blue Analytics.
