Quick Pivots for the Airline Industry

Travel and hospitality suffered greatly during the pandemic, but things are beginning to look up. There is still a need to clarify standards and acquire agreement from the many parties involved, but there is a growing economic impetus to open up countries’ borders which cannot be ignored.

And what have airline businesses, been up to when their airplanes were grounded? This was just one of the many questions an online panel discussion sought to answer during last month’s World Aviation Festival. This online panel involved executives from a broad range of airlines.

Moderator Duncan Bureau, formerly from Etihad Airways kickstarted his preamble with an observation that airlines have diversified and are investing in different areas. For example artificial intelligence for cargo, buying up drone companies, investing in delivery companies, and even buying access to oil and gas refineries.

Table of contents

• Customer facing issues – the first phase and beyond
• “It’s safe to fly”
• Enhancing travel experiences
• Quick pivots
• Health passports
• Interoperability
• One standard to rule them all

Customer facing issues – the first phase and beyond

For Air Asia, it was all about refunds.

With automation, Air Asia got past the 'customer refunds' phase and now they are facing the challenge of bringing customers back to fly. Air Asia’s current Chief Product and Technology Officer, Pablo Sanz said, “We are in a situation where we are in lockdown both in Thailand and Malaysia, and we have a wider offering now (about 16 lines of businesses).

Pablo added, “We are trying to offer a meaningful new start for customers and venturing into things that (we have not before). So it’s about bringing customers back to fly.”

Amit Sagi, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer from EL AL Air Israel shared about his airline opening more new routes, for example from Israel to Phuket (becoming the first international airline to land there). He explained, “We are opening some new lines that we didn’t fly before, but the countries are vaccinated and they are good to go to fly to.”

Of note, was the initiative to help customers feel that it is safe to fly, and to answer questions like: is it safe to fly? Where is it safe to fly? What do they need to do in terms of PCR tests? What forms do we need to fill and what would happen on the airplane?

“Also, we want customers to feel safe and comfortable so we have features like flexible booking options or flexible cancellations and changes. For example, if something happens, you can change a booking and be constantly updated,” Amit added.

“It’s safe to fly”

Shane Hodges from American Airlines (AA) described, “The first 6 months was about trying to communicate to customers that it is actually very safe to fly on a plane, in terms of the low chance of transmitting and catching the coronavirus.

“Now, we find ourselves focusing on giving customers confidence to fly – whether a destination is open, whether it would accept vaccinated visitors, and basically the confidence that one would be able to depart to return home.”

Malaysian Airlines’ Mohd Azharuddin Mat Sah also echoed what his industry peers were saying, and he added that basically digital technologies are being used heavily to streamline a traveller’s experience at the airport, right from when they check-in, when they board the aeroplane and so on.

Singapore Airline’s Jerome Thil added, “We really make sure we cover all aspects of physical safety, and deploy every possible solution where it’s possible to replace paper, and replace ‘touch’.”

Enhancing travel experiences

Shane explained, One of his company’s goals is to be the easiest airline to do business with.

For example, AA had partnered with Sherpa, an independent travel resource online, to explain travel restrictions and guidelines and requirements to fulfil before one can travel. “Sherpa is wonderful, it can give you up-to-date guidance on what’s required to travel to certain locations,” he explained.

Besides Sherpa, Verify is another solution that would help verify execution and completion of requirement, for example testing and vaccination. “Now, we are also looking at how our digital assets can actually assist us with lots of unused tickets – customers can see what they have and be able to use it finally.”

With domestic travel bouncing back strongly in the United States, AA also found themselves partnering with 2 other airlines and having to integrate some of their relevant systems so that passengers can have a seamless experience.

Quick pivots

Azharuddin also shared about latest developments with Malaysia Airlines and their initiative to consolidate offerings under his organisation.

He shared that with board approval, MAS has launched a long-term plan, “…which moves forward the intentions of Malaysia Aviation Group, which we call ourselves now, and that is not just as an airline business.”

According to their website, MAS is now part of MAG which comprises of 3 portfolios – airlines, aviation services, and travel solutions business.

Besides wanting to offer a great ticket booking experience, MAS now sees itself as a travel company and will also integrate bookings for lodgings, F&B outlets, and even places to visit.

According to their website, MAS is now part of MAG which comprises of 3 portfolios – airlines, aviation services, and travel solutions business.

Amit shared how they enabled their customers to use their airline loyalty points on online marketplaces. “We just enabled the marketplaces on our website,” he said adding his observation that people usually start the process of buying an airplane ticket, because of a special occasion in another location.

Duncan observed a number of airlines recognising their customer base and website traffic as opportunity to monetise. Besides this, he even noted airlines offering language classes, health classes, and even leveraging their catering facilities to offer food delivery. “Airlines also want to invest in the communities that they live and work in.”

One good evidence of this may be Air Asia acquiring Gojek’s Thai business, as it moves towards being a digital business player with the Air Asia SuperApp.

Health passports

One of the main criteria for travel to restart, would have to be vaccine passports. Duncan asked, “How will you ensure your customers are aware of the specific requirements they need to meet across the network when travelling?”

Pablo noted how different organisations and governments have their own standards and requirements when it comes to vaccine passports. “We are connecting via APIs to those travel passes because there is no certainty in the market of what’s going to happen.

“We can validate that a certificate looks original to travel, but we cannot authenticate… it is outside of our domain expertise. So, we create API integrations (for now),” Pablo said.

Jerome noted that now airlines need to look beyond travel and work with the innovation community, for example in healthcare, to have an understanding of how they could “cross-fertilise” and collaborate with other industries. “Because this is a time where collaborations is needed more.”

Interoperability

Amit pointed out health passports are meant to be an easy tool for passengers to be able to do easy check-ins and easy boarding. He sees that a single global protocol works the best because it is the same for every country, and this facilitates creation and implementation of digital solutions like a health passport.

Instead, what is happening currently is different parties lobbying for governments to agree on some kind of consistency because there is more than one platform at the moment, and different types of tests and different types of vaccines are weighted differently.

Duncan pointed out there is still no clarity around for example which vaccine can you enter a country with, which PCR test to take prior to travel, and so on. Government policies around these questions are wide-ranging at the moment.

Instead, what is happening currently is different parties lobbying for governments to agree on some kind of consistency because there is more than one platform at the moment, and different types of tests and different types of vaccines are weighted differently.

“There does need to be some reliance on science and the industry all working together to ensure all governments are approaching this in the same, and science-based way,” he said.

With travel rebounding pretty quickly in the US, Shane shared about there needing to be a planned comeback for domestic travel as well as for short-haul international flights to Mexico or the Carribeans.

“There does need to be some reliance on science and the industry all working together to ensure all governments are approaching this in the same, and science-based way,”

“Of course, all those places had different places had different requirements. And from experience we had with returning (travel) demand, we realised very early on that the mobile health passport was not one application. It was not going to be just one platform.

“There was going to be multiple requirements that fall into a health passport (in terms of the types and methods of testing), that we decided very early on that we would build the ability to integrate any and all health passport requirements, whatever was needed from whichever country, from whichever customer, at whatever point in the health ecosystem that was needing to be addressed,” Shane explained.

One standard to rule them all

This means American Airlines would support any type of digital health passport. “And now we are working with multiple partners and integrating multiple partners into that passport ecosystem,” said Shane.

Azharuddin said, “A global digital health passport is key to enable a seamless travel and contactless customer journey as part of the customer experience.”

He alluded to integration between Malaysia’s MySejahtera app with IATA, to enable some kind of health passport function, as the Malaysian app will keep and display a user’s vaccination status and “maybe test results.”

“There are many applications out there, initiated by 70 separate countries, and it’s important for us to be able to integrate. We are now, and many other airlines as well, talking to IATA.” The International Air Transport Association (IATA) supports aviation with global standards for airline safety, security, efficiency and sustainability.

He alluded to integration between Malaysia’s MySejahtera app with IATA, to enable some kind of health passport function, as the Malaysian app will keep and display a user’s vaccination status and “maybe test results.”

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