'Apple will make NFC happen this year'

Jim Peters, CTO at SITA, told delegates at this year's Air Transport IT Summit in Brussels that they need to be prepared for the proliferation of near field communications (NFC) technology, which he predicts will become widespread before the end of the year. 'Who is thinking of the user? Apple. They don't argue about it with anybody. They came out with Passbook last week, which is an electronic wallet that they are going to start putting stuff on.' SITA is currently running a project at Toulouse airport, where it is using SIM-based NFC to allow passengers access into the car park and business lounges. It partnered with Orange and Blackberry to run the project.