The Digitization of Airlines and Airports

As a passenger, it often feels like the air travel industry has more pain points than most. In a digital age where instant gratification and simplification are our new standard, it's easy to see how airlines and airports are ripe for disruption. 

For example, most people reading this will have experienced poor customer service, long queues, cancellations, delays or been the victim to the infamous overbooking tactic. If experiences really are becoming more important than the transaction itself, something needs to change.

Veovo (formerly Blip Systems) is a sensor-agnostic company that you have probably not heard of that is already is optimizing every stage of passenger handling and improving commercial areas too. A series of 3D cameras, people counters, WiFi and Bluetooth sensors are helping airports transform their customer's experiences.

Data, from multiple sources, is enabling airports, municipalities and other high-traffic facilities to quickly and efficiently manage queue and flow, to help reduce overheads, maximize revenue and provide optimum service. The result is real-time operational decision-making, post-performance analysis, and capacity planning data analysis capabilities.

The technology is successfully employed in optimization efforts in more than 25 international airports, including Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, JFK Airport in New York, Cincinnati Airport, Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin, Brussels, Geneva, San Diego, and Edinburgh.

I spoke with Christian Bugislaus Carstens about their tech startup story. We also talked about how these Bluetooth and WiFi sensors are making a massive difference to passengers in airports all over the world without them even realizing it. 

Every touch point from the traffic on the way to the airport, check-in, and security wait times to forecasting occupancy and shopping time per flight can now more be managed more efficiently.

Paul Shaw, Customer Services Planning Analyst at Manchester Airport advised, "The solution has dramatically improved Manchester Airport’s real-time operational decision-making, post-performance analysis, and capacity planning data analysis capabilities. But, perhaps, more importantly, it has helped us give our passengers a more positive airport experience."

There is an increasing realization within the industry that old-fashioned solutions can’t solve modern problems in a new digital world. The emergence of passenger flow tech to keep people moving is only the beginning. Almost every aspect of your journey is now being transformed by technology.

Another great example is a Dublin startup called Boxever. The customer intelligence and predictive marketing company for airlines and travel retailers are already working with household names such as Air New Zealand, Emirates, and Aer Lingus. 

Dave O’Flanagan founded the company after realizing how much airlines struggled to utilize the data they had about their customers effectively. He believed that many airlines had lost their connection with their customers and they needed to invest in customer intelligence to fit for a digital age.

There was both an opportunity and need to improve conversion rates, strengthen customer retention, lower acquisition costs, improve customer experience and increase revenue. Could technology repair the broken customer/airline relationship?

On my podcast, I spoke to Dave O’Flanagan about how the airline industry can use data to bounce back in the customer’s favor. We also discussed how AI and machine learning are bringing the customer journey to life, social media’s role in the customer/airline relationship and how airlines can win over the upcoming connected generation.

British Airways, Southwest Airlines, and Delta, all have an uneasy relationship with technology. As a passenger, we only get to see the shiny new tech that provides automated check-in kiosks, real-time luggage tracking and or yet another mobile app to manage our customer experience.

However, behind the curtain, there are great examples of how technology is transforming the industry but also a few inconvenient truths too. There are reservations systems built on legacy technology that is in dire need of rebuilding. For example, many of the world's biggest carriers are still using an IBM operating system for reservations known as Transaction Processing Facility (TPF) and can be traced all the way back to the 1960s.

However, carriers are caught in a very difficult situation. Every airline is aware of what changes need to be made, but they don't have the luxury of a three-day downtime window to implement the required upgrades. Global regulatory requirements make any much-needed overhaul incredibly tricky.

These problems are largely responsible for the myriad of disjointed systems consisting of old and new technology that are heavily reliant on each other. Airline mergers also muddy the waters and have helped create an estate of legacy technology and incompatible software that is impossible to maintain in a world where downtime is not acceptable.

When looking at the tech landscape at airlines and airports, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's reminiscent of the opening of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness." But, like every industry, pain points are being eradicated one by one.

According to a recent analysis by Frost & Sullivan, airports IT spending is expected to top $4.6 billion by 2023. Airports are developing their digital transformation roadmaps and are actively addressing key performance indicators across all areas of the airport operation.

Digitalizing operations and infrastructure modernization are paving the way to the dynamic environment that we all crave as passengers. But we are still in the early stages of our digital transformational journey. What are your positive and negative examples with technology as a passenger? Please share your insights and experiences in the comments section.

Do you have a digital transformation story that you would like to share with me and the subscribers of this series? Please comment below or send me a DM.