Dear Friends,

We are very sad to have to advise you of the passing away on May 18 of Claude Lalanne, our former Director General, following a worsening of his state of health. 

Claude Lalanne was 92 years old.

There will be no ceremony for the time being, due to the current worldwide situation and to the fact that his family lives far away in Australia.

 After a career with Air France, Claude Lalanne joined Sita in 1976 as General Manager of the Company, succeeding in this position the first General Manager, Georges Monniot, who had been instrumental in the founding of Sita.

In his career at Air France, Claude Lalanne had occupied the functions of IT Director, then Deputy General Manager, Commercial. In this role he led negotiations on the Concorde landing rights in the United States. He also represented Air France on the Board of Directors of Sita, and it was this body which later appointed him to the position of Sita General Manager.

 At SITA, his vision and his drive have been instrumental and of unique importance in the development of the company, both internationally and with the launching of new services for the airlines and in the travel industry, and last but not least, with the creation of subsidiaries such as Equant. 

We feel grateful for these achievements and for the opportunities they gave each of us   to contribute to the development of Sita during a period which, in retrospect, has been exceptional by the matching of market demand with Sita internal know-how and dynamism.

The memory of Claude Lalanne will remain associated with this critical period during which Sita has reinvented itself. 

You can send condolences to the following family members:

– his daughter Mia: mialalanne@bigpond.com

– his son Bertrand: bertrandlalanne@icloud.com.

 If you wish to share memories on Wikisita on this occasion, you can send them to kaliszewski@sunrise.ch. We will arrange with ARASITA France to also forward them to the family.

 We hope you and your families are keeping safe and well.

n.b. Unfortunaterly an update of the software used by wikisita and which took place two hours ago, is blocking  content updates on the website for the time being. I am sorry for that and I hope that it will be corrected soon. Really the worst moment for this first major incident on wikisita, but I believe that’s life.

Kind regards

Jean-Michel