GENEVA, 10th February, 2026 (WAM) — SITA announced the launch of its Advance Flight Delay Notification application programming interface (API), which enables airlines and airports to gain early visibility of potential flight delays, allowing operational teams to act quickly and contain their impact before escalation.
The move comes amid rising air traffic volumes and shrinking operational recovery margins, as losses resulting from delays extend beyond schedule disruption to include wasted time and effort for ground teams, blocked gates, exhausted crew duty hours, missed onward connections for passengers, additional costs, dissatisfaction, and potential reputational damage to airlines.
According to estimates by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), air traffic flow management delays in Europe alone cost airlines and passengers €16.1 billion over the past decade.
Most of these costs do not stem from the delay itself, but from the lack of timely information needed to adjust plans, reallocate resources and protect onward flight schedules before disruption intensifies.
To address this gap, SITA designed the API using the most up-to-date departure information and operational logic based on expected flight duration, enabling the anticipation of potential delays and the automatic notification of destination airports.
The new solution provides destination airports with automated early alerts and real-time updates on delayed or potentially disrupted flights, giving airline and airport teams sufficient time to adjust operational plans early and reduce cascading effects on aircraft turnaround operations, crew scheduling, gate allocation and passenger connections.
Martin Smillie, Senior Vice President of Communications and Data Exchange at SITA, said that most disruption results from delays being identified too late by the teams responsible for managing them, noting that arrival airports across the industry are still forced to react rather than intervene proactively. He added that the new API changes this model by providing reliable early signals that enable timely operational decisions, reducing negative impacts on passengers, costs and airline network performance.
The Advance Flight Delay Notification API operates using secure, encrypted HTTP communication protocols and eliminates the need for repeated schedule requests and manual updates. It sends automated alerts to passengers when a flight is expected to depart 15 minutes later than its scheduled time, allowing teams to adjust passenger processing, aircraft servicing and onward flight plans.
The Advance Flight Delay Notification API is available as a subscription service and forms part of SITA’s portfolio of flight information APIs.
