SITA acquires Big Blue Analytics: AI disruption recovery for airlines goes global

SITA, the air transport industry's technology provider

Born in 1949 from the pooling of airlines' telecommunications — its full name, Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques, still bears the trace — SITA is the leading technology provider to the air transport industry, serving airlines, airports, ground handlers and governments. Based in Geneva and led by David Lavorel, the organisation is present at more than 1,000 airports and connects more than 19,600 aircraft worldwide, with its solutions already serving more than 100 airline operations control centres. Its published strategy is moving towards the Intelligent Operations Control Center — planning, monitoring and recovery brought together in a single system — building on a proven ability to deploy AI at global scale, from the OptiFlight precedent to the large language models and agent systems under development.

Big Blue Analytics, the Barcelona AI company for airline operations

Based in Barcelona, Big Blue Analytics is the deeptech company specialising in artificial intelligence solutions for airline operations — the team behind OCC Assistant Manager, known as OCCam, the disruption management optimisation platform developed and proven within live airline operations. What sets it apart rests on two published proofs: when disruption strikes, OCCam evaluates all active constraints together — aircraft, crews, passenger itineraries, maintenance — and produces ranked, feasible recovery plans within minutes, where conventional tools work in sequence; and because every decision is tracked, the impact can be measured — user airlines have seen up to a 30% reduction in their disruption costs in production. Its founder, Pau Collellmir, has backed the deal with a public commitment: to take what the team has built further, to more airlines, faster — with the optimisation engine becoming the foundation of the acquirer's vision.

What the press said about the acquisition

The deal, announced on 1 June 2026 from Geneva, was covered by the official press release and the travel and aviation trade press:

Why this AI disruption recovery acquisition, and why this target

For SITA, the goal is to give its vision an engine: the organisation already serves more than 100 operations control centres, connects more than 19,600 aircraft and is developing tomorrow's AI layers — but the Intelligent Operations Control Center requires at its core a proven real-time optimiser able to handle every constraint at once. “Airlines that act first will recover faster and fly more,” says its CEO, David Lavorel: with volatility now structural, recovery capability becomes a competitive advantage, and disruption ceases to be a fixed cost to be endured. The acquisition reverses the classic industrial calculation: rather than spending years reinventing what a team has already proven in production, the acquirer buys the engine and gives it what it lacked — global distribution, as the OptiFlight precedent demonstrated.

On the target side, Big Blue Analytics held the rarest asset in aviation AI: proof in production. Where the sector abounds in demonstrators, OCCam was developed and proven within live operations, with an observed result — up to 30% lower disruption costs at user airlines, on a cost item that reaches USD 70–80m a year for a carrier with around a hundred aircraft — and, just as decisive, a measurable result, with every decision tracked and its impact quantified. Added to this are the technical depth of the engine — simultaneous optimisation of constraints that conventional tools handle in sequence, the industry's long-standing bottleneck — and the commitment of the founder, Pau Collellmir, who has publicly committed his team to the project: taking the platform further, to more airlines, faster.

Operational AI in air transport moves from pilot to scale

This deal illustrates aviation's turning point as disruption becomes structural: more frequent extreme weather events, congested airspace, lasting pressure on crews and maintenance — irregular operations cost the industry tens of billions of dollars a year, and legacy sequential tools are no longer enough. At the same time, operational AI is leaving the lab: after a decade of demonstrators, optimisation engines proven in production are becoming the assets the industry's major providers compete for — because it is faster to acquire proof than to rebuild it, and consolidation in aviation technology is organising around those who know how to deploy at the scale of a global industry.

The deal also tells a European story: a Barcelona deeptech — born in one of southern Europe's most dynamic technology ecosystems — finds its route to global scale by joining the industry's long-standing provider, owned by the industry itself and present at more than 1,000 airports. The cross-border transaction — from Geneva to Barcelona, the tenth international dimension in this collection of deals — was completed with no amount disclosed and with the founding team committed to what comes next: for client airlines, product continuity; for the team, the distribution that changes its horizon; for the sector, one more step towards the intelligent control centre where planning, monitoring and recovery will be one.

Collaboration Capital's added value on this buy-side mandate

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. A deeptech acquisition in air transport technology plays out in four stages — and the nature of the asset, an AI engine whose value lies in its proof in production, places specific demands on each of them.