Agreement Close on New Internet Suffix for Aviation Industry

World Airline News, April 13, 2001

Information and telecommunications giant SITA announced at the IATA Airline Financial Summit that it is very close to gaining final approval for its "dot-aero" Internet project.

The project involves the creation of the Internet address suffix .aero for use by the aviation industry instead of the more accepted .com or .org. It is expected to facilitate business-to-business and business-to-customer e- commerce, and improve branding for air transport businesses.

SITA's proposal was one of only seven Internet top level domain (TLD) names selected by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in November.

Dan Ebbinghaus, SITA's President for the Americas, said final negotiations are underway and should be completed in a matter of months. SITA will begin taking registrations from the industry by the third quarter of this year. Some companies will be able to start using the suffix by the end of the year, Ebbinghaus said, and there has been a great deal of interest in the project from the aviation industry. >TK