SITA acquires Big Blue Analytics to scale AI disruption recovery for airlines

SITA announced on June 1, 2026 that it has acquired Big Blue Analytics, the company behind OCC Assistant Manager, or OCCam, an AI-enabled platform designed to help airlines recover from operational disruptions more quickly and at lower cost.

SITA said that disruption caused by weather, mechanical issues, crew shortages, or cascading delays is one of the most expensive problems in aviation, costing the industry tens of billions of dollars each year. The company cited as an example, a mid-size carrier operating just over 100 aircraft, disruption-related costs alone can run between US$70 million and US$80 million annually.

How OCCam works differently

According to SITA, OCCam evaluates aircraft, crew, passenger itineraries, and maintenance constraints simultaneously rather than in sequence, generating a ranked set of recovery plans within minutes. Each plan lays out the trade-offs in terms of cost, on-time performance, passenger impact, and regulatory compliance

The platform also tracks every decision, which means airlines can measure exactly how much a given recovery saved them. In live operations, airlines using OCCam have reduced disruption costs by up to 30%. For a mid-size carrier, that translates to savings of roughly US$20 million to US$30 million.

“Airlines have traditionally treated disruption as a fixed cost of doing business, but there is a clear opportunity to approach it differently,” said SITA CEO David Lavorel. “The airlines that act on this first will recover faster, fly more, and protect more revenue than those that wait.”

Scaling the platform globally

SITA already provides solutions to more than 100 airline operations control centers worldwide and has a track record of rolling out AI-enabled tools at scale. Its OptiFlight product, which optimizes fuel use during flights, went through a successful global deployment, and the company plans to follow the same approach with OCCam.

Beyond scaling the existing platform, SITA said it is developing a broader vision for what it calls an Intelligent Operations Control Center, where planning, monitoring, and disruption recovery would be handled within a single system. The company is also working on integrating large language models and agent-based AI systems that could eventually predict disruptions before they happen, automate routine recovery decisions, and allow operations teams to interact with complex data in a more natural way.

“This is the first step towards a much bigger vision, one where AI allows us to handle multiple constraints at once and tailor decisions to each airline in a way that was not possible before,” said Yann Cabaret, CEO of SITA for Aircraft.

Big Blue Analytics founder Pau Collellmir said the acquisition gives OCCam the reach it needed. 

“With SITA, we can take what we have built further — reaching more airlines, faster, and turning advanced optimization into practical tools that help operations teams work smarter every day,” he said.

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