STEVE NICHOLS

Asian Aerospace is fast becoming a "dot-com" show - at least three companies are featuring new e-commerce products and many others are highlighting a WWW presence.

SITA and AAR (Stand A720) are launching aerospan.com at the show, a site that will "initially feature spare parts inventory listings services, a parts clearing house and seller and reverse auctions." The service is expected to grow quite rapidly to include all areas of aviation.

At the same time Honeywell, United Technologies (UTC) and e-commerce specialist i2 Technologies have formed a joint venture company to develop MyAircraft.com. This will be an "open e-business marketplace" to "...provide business-to-business collaboration, supply chain management, parts planning and procurement solutions." Only a few weeks ago, e-commerce start-up firm aviationX (Stand D132) announced it was launching a web-based marketplace (aviationX.com) for the aviation industry that looks similar in concept to other offerings.

A quick check of the halls will reveal even more online offerings, including Reed Aerospace's Air Transport Intelligence (Stand A401), Aviation Week's (Stand A800) AviationNow.com and AviationZone.net (Stand D402) and mermaid.com (Chalet S4).

And the chances are that every exhibitor now has a WWW site to surf as well.

If you haven't brought your laptop to Singapore, yet feel the urge to check these sites out for yourself, the Asian Aerospace 2000 Cyberstation (Stand C360) is providing a free internet and e-mail access service for all.

Source: Flight Daily News