Welcome

Our identity is something we spend a lot of time nurturing. Corporate identity budgets absorb millions of dollars every year, to ensure that the company is correctly presented to its stakeholders. Getting the right domain name has become a crucial element in the mix, but the availability of top level domains has become increasingly scarce, requiring increasingly creative approaches.

For anyone involved in the air transport community, the problem has been broadly resolved through the creation of the .aero top level domain. But the system is only working because of a number of simple rules that were introduced from the outset, providing guidance over natural rights to domain names.

This issue of the .aero newsletter deals with naming issues from a number of perspectives. We start by looking at the naming rules that we operate on the community's behalf. We hear something of the problems of identity theft that are largely unknown within the .aero domain – and we report on our expanding and free on-line directory service.

With little sign of an end to the growth in demand for memorable names and easily accessible websites, the value of air transport controlling its own industry-specific domain becomes increasingly important to the evolution of the industry itself. That's why SITA SC will be seeking to renew its role as sponsor for the domain. As a community-owned co-operative, we believe that SITA is best placed to deliver both the level of technical authority and serve the interests of the air transport industry as a whole in a neutral and balanced manner.

The .aero team, SITA