Airports across the globe are getting competitive in adopting analytics and artificial intelligence in their ecosystem.

They are leveraging these technologies for many purposes — minimising the impact of disruption on the passenger experience, supporting the customers or making their services better, among others.

According to a report titled Air Transport IT Trends Insights, by SITA, 80 percent of the airlines will invest in major programs or R&D into prediction and warning systems, which rely heavily on AI.

Airports are also increasingly adopting chatbots and humanoids. The report suggested that 14 percent of airlines and nine percent of airports already use chatbots, which is likely to increase over the years. Bengaluru airport recently saw the inauguration of special robot assistant named KEMPA at Kempegowda International Airport. Completely designed and manufactured in Bangalore, KEMPA can answer flight-related queries, suggest places to visit in Karnataka, or can simply be used for entertainment purposes.

Analytics India Magazine interacted with Maneesh Jaikrishna, vice president, Indian Subcontinent, Eastern and Southern Africa, SITA, to understand why and how Indian airports are turning to artificial intelligence for better customer success.

AI And Robotics To Streamline Processes Across Airports

Jaikrishna begins with the fact that nearly every airline and airport in the world does business with SITA, and that its border management solutions are used by more than 40 governments. With a presence in more than 1,000 airports around the globe, SITA focuses extensively on the use of technology like AI and robotics to help airports and airlines better manage their businesses and operations, making air travel easier every step of the way.

“For example, we are playing a key role in equipping two of the world’s newest and biggest airports — Abu Dhabi International Airport and Istanbul New Airport — with the latest technology to make sure that they are fully future proof. In Istanbul this includes a solution that allow bags to be tracked throughout the journey, allowing the airport to meet IATA 753 tracking requirements from day one”, he said.

In Orlando airport, SITA has introduced a secure and seamless departure with new biometric boarding at the gate for British Airways passengers. He said that a quick photo is all that is needed to board an international flight — no passport, no boarding card. SITA integrated automated boarding gates with the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and airline’s IT systems to allow the necessary checks and authorise boarding.

“Similarly, here in India, we work closely with the Airports Authority of India, where our technology is present in more than 40 airports”, said Jaikrishna.

Leading India To 100 Percent Biometric Air Travel

Not just Orlando, but SITA is also introducing 100 percent biometric air travel in India as well. “With the increasing growth in domestic air traveler in recent years, India has been making steady progress with new initiatives undertaken by the government such as DigiYatra. We at SITA, see the opportunity to help the Indian government reap benefits from biometric travel,” he said.

With their Smart Path biometric solution for ID management, SITA is well-equipped to deliver a seamless, paperless travel experience for passengers. It has already shown the benefits of using biometric technology to automate passenger identity checks at airports across the world — from the US to Australia.

It has also been introduced at Australia’s Brisbane Airport which allows passengers to register their biometric details at a self-service kiosk at check-in and then, when ready to board, use an automated boarding gate to be verified using face recognition technology to access the aircraft.

“Leveraging India’s national Aadhaar biometric identity system — one of the biggest in the world — together with our proven common-use and Smart Path technology, SITA will be able to deliver a seamless biometric experience across all airlines and airports in India”, said Jaikrishna.

AI In Predictions And Warning Systems

SITA’s technology harnesses advanced ML and AI to forecast aircraft arrival times, giving the airports a 24-hour heads up to proactively manage and mitigate disruption. It has helped airlines and airports to tackle $25 billion annual cost of poor on-time performance.

“We also enable airports to leverage business intelligence to get a better view of their operation and predict where potential bottleneck could arise. For example, Orlando International Airport uses the business intelligence capabilities of SITA’s QueueAnalyzer tool to create a real-time view of the security checkpoints, which enables it to respond quickly to changing conditions at the airport”, said Jaikrishna.

He shares that Airline and airport Chief Information Officers (CIOs), including the ones in India, are turning to AI to support their customer service. Over the next three years, 52 percent of airlines plan major AI programs, with 45 percent of airports planning to invest in research and development in the next five years. 42 percent of the airports are also planning to implement AI-driven chatbot services. These will help passengers keep informed on every stage of their journey.

Apart from these technologie, SITA offers self-service kiosk as a part of a multi-channel service offering from airlines and airports. SITA’s AirportConnect Kiosk is a self-service airport kiosk that can be dedicated to a specific airline or shared as common-use by multiple airlines. It can be used for a number of self-service processes, including booking, changing a reservation and check-in. It integrates with many other SITA services, including the Airport Connect Open which uses the common use self-service platform, and Passenger iCheck, their check-in application.

Key Contributions By SITA In Indian Airports

“It is well known that India will become third-largest aviation market by 2025 and the challenge is to find digital solutions which will enable airports to offer a better service to their passengers and accommodate more passengers with the same physical infrastructure”, he said. SITA is already helping several Indian airports better manage their baggage, passenger processing as well as airport operations.

For instance, the company last month announced that they would expand their baggage management solution to 15 Indian airports. SITA’s BagManager will provide the airports with real-time information on the status of passengers’ baggage, significantly reducing the chances of baggage mishandling. AAI will also deploy SITA Airport Management Solution to two further airports — Goa and Lucknow airports — taking the total number of India airports using this technology to 12.

“We are providing key technology solutions to one of the country’s newest airports at the same time. The Multi-modal International Cargo Hub and Airport at Nagpur (MIHAN) has turned to SITA to provide passenger processing solutions for check-in and boarding, as well as baggage tracking”, said Jaikrishna.

Roadmap For 2018

“Smart use of technology can help manage the challenges of rising passenger numbers, limited infrastructure and increased complexity. We are looking at opportunities to harness technologies including biometrics, AI, ML, robotics and blockchain to transform the industry”, says Jaikrishna.

Even now, biometrics is becoming more commonplace at airports around the world and is delivering secure seamless travel from check-in to boarding. They already have biometric self-service solutions operating worldwide, including in Australia, US, Mexico and the Middle East. Autonomous vehicles and the potential use of robotics is another field of development, with particular interest shown at the event in Kansai Airport’s trial of KATE, SITA’s autonomous check-in robot.

He shares that by embracing IoT and connecting everything across the industry, they will produce more data which can be used with AI to create valuable insights and expose new ways of working. “Over the next 20 years, this use of digital technologies to improve service, operations and efficiency will have profound effects on the air transport industry”, he said, signing off.

As Indonesia’s flag-carrier, we are committed to putting passengers first

with award-winning ‘Excellent Indonesian Hospitality’. This is our core value and competitive differentiation. Four years ago, we asked Amadeus how we could adhere to this value while maximising revenue.

Ancillary services were the answer. They presented us with an opportunity to grow revenue in-line with this value. Together with Amadeus, we developed a large scale ancillary strategy that reinforced our commitment to hospitality, while enhancing the travel experience for our passengers. The implementation of Amadeus Airline Ancillary Services helped us do this. With Amadeus’ solution, we can sell any service through any channel. We can also offer our customers the right products and services at the right time throughout their journey. Plus, services are always consistent across touch points, giving our passengers the ability to customise their purchase and select the ancillary they value the most.

We’ve increased our ancillary revenue by giving customers more choice and attention far beyond ‘just’ the ticket. Today, I am proud to say that Garuda Indonesia has one of the highest ancillary adoption rates in Asia Pacific. We have seen an increase in ancillary revenue of +34% in 4 years, from $47.5M in 2012 to $63.8M in 2016.

At the same time, our customer satisfaction rating is also on a steady rise at +0.8 points year-over year to 86.1% in 2016. And the proof is in the pudding: Garuda Indonesia has been named ‘The World’s Best Cabin Crew’ for the third consecutive time and also as ‘The World’s Most Loved Airline’.

We look forward to working further with Amadeus to create better customer experiences while expanding our business. For more information, have a look at this Amadeus – Garuda Indonesia case study.

source : https://tinyurl.com/ycsjs5te

NB: This is a viewpoint from Cormac Corrigan and Mark Lenahan, independent advisors to airports, airlines, retailers, and loyalty programs.

To understand the investment in mobile, we compared mobile app downloads for a selection of the world’s largest airlines and airports. What we found is that, when we accounted for size (by passenger volume), airline apps were downloaded 14 times more often than airport apps.

Anecdotal evidence, personal usage, and experience in other verticals, such as retail, all suggested to us that airline mobile apps would be more heavily used than their airport counterparts. But what surprised us is that the gulf is much wider than we expected.

• Amongst 25 of the world’s largest airlines, the app download estimate is around 117 million downloads, compared with 1.5 billion passengers carried annually.
• However, amongst 25 of the world’s largest airports, the download rate was 7.2 million downloads, against a passenger base of 1.3 billion passengers.

The publicly available data is limited, and only allows for rough analysis. But this is an order of magnitude difference between airports and airlines.

To be fair, it would be a mistake to read too much into the ratio of downloads to passengers. Passenger numbers are not unique people, each passenger is counted every time he or she boards a plane or traverses an airport, so every return journey counts one person at least twice—both on the plane and at each airport.

Meanwhile, an app installed once may remain present for the entire trip or multiple trips.

Here, we are using download numbers to compare airlines’ and airports’ abilities to publish apps, but downloads are a poor metric for customer engagement.

According to an October 2015 study by AppsFlyer, reported by eMarketer, only 3.3% of users are still active 30 days after installing an app. This was based on 450 million installs of e-commerce, travel, and utility apps (but excluding games and social media apps).

source : https://tinyurl.com/lsep26v

March 2017 | Airlines are becoming more creative in selling ancillary services to passengers in order to increase revenues per seat. For example, many airlines today offer passengers the option to place their bids in a blind auction for an upgrade to a premium seat, while airlines such as KLM and Emirates invite passengers to contact the tablet-equipped crew if they want upgrade to another cabin at the very last minute onboard.

Selling upgrades at the gate
Lufthansa has recently trialled an innovative way to sell upgrades to Premium Economy at the departure gate. Earlier this year, the airline used virtual reality (VR) glasses at its Frankfurt Airport hub as a way to tempt Economy Class passengers to purchase an upgrade to Premium Economy right before their departure.

By inviting passengers to put on some VR glasses and take a 360 degrees view of how the Premium Economy seat and cabin looks, Lufthansa hoped passengers booked in Economy would become more interested to purchase an upgrade.

As Lufthansa put it: “Because what legroom and premium service really mean in Premium Economy can be best demonstrated in three-dimensional form.”

For two weeks flights were selected for the VR-based promotion on a daily basis, choosing those where there were still enough seats free in Premium Economy. Up until 40 minutes before departure, passengers were given the chance to virtually try out Lufthansa’s new travel class in 3D.

Passengers who decided to go for the upgrade could then pay the surcharge directly at the gate with an agent carrying a mobile payment device.

According to Lufthansa it has already achieved considerable success with upgrading passengers to Premium Economy through the use of VR in the U.S.

Lufthansa and virtual reality
Over the past few years, Lufthansa has been busy experimenting with the usage of virtual reality devices and was one of the first airlines to use 360-degree films at trade fairs such as the ITB, as well as for advertising promotions.

Furthermore, the airline last month offered passengers the chance to try out the Avegant Glyph video glasses at its Business lounge at Frankfurt Airport and has featured the same glasses onboard its Flying Lab flights to San Diego, New York and Houston.

source : https://tinyurl.com/lm5sj6a

Post demonetisation, customers seek different modes of payment and wallets are one among them. Other major benefits of this mode of transaction would be cash back offers from FreeCharge which will lead to nearly $4 saving making many purchases cheapest in region.

If the note ban was a small step for India’s economy, it was one giant leap forward for e-wallet firms. (Reuters)

Shopping at Indira Gandhi International Airport would now be completely cashless and easy. You just need your mobile and you don’t even require internet. Just download the FreeCharge app and avail cashback offers and save upto four dollars while shopping essentials at the airport. This is all the more possible because FreeCharge, digital wallet and payments firm has partnered with Delhi Duty Free Services Pvt Ltd, a duty free retail space for cashless payments option for international flyers.

On Wednesday, FreeCharge announced the tie up with DDFSPL enabling e-wallet payments for passengers traveling international destinations. The IGI airport and other paymens across 1500 brands and around 43000 products like perfumes, cosmetics, skin care, destination, fashion and exotic chocolates can be paid for through Freecharge. Brands like Hugo Boss, Armani Jeans, Swarovski, Police, Sekonda, Henleys, Godiva, Lindt amongst a plethora of others are under it banner.

To pay for these products one needs to enter his phone number at the Point of Sale machine and provide the on-the-go-pin that will ping in the FreeCharge app. Since FreeCharge sends an OTG pin, one doesn’t have to worry if your internet pack got used up suddenly.

Sudeep Tandon, chief business officer, FreeCharge said, “We want consumers across the country to experience FreeCharge payments right from the ‘kirana’ stores to shopping malls. Through the partnership, we are enabling FreeCharge as a payment option for International travellers and flyers at the IGI airport and hope to ease their payment experience across the Delhi Duty Free stores.”

Delhi Duty Free, which spreads over an area of 60,000 square feet and potentially witnesses 30,000 international passengers walking by on a daily basis has a great business potential for the partners to serve the international commuters.

Abhijit Das, head-marketing, Delhi Duty Free said, “Post demonetisation, customers seek different modes of payment and wallets are one among them. Other major benefits would be cash back offers from FreeCharge which will lead to nearly $4 saving making many purchases cheapest in region.”

source  : http://tinyurl.com/zjkgt4d

Source : http://tinyurl.com/gpycogp

Known for its highly interactive, 3D moving maps – which offer eye-catching features including a “glass plane” view that makes use of augmented reality technology – FlightPath 3D showed FTE how it can now help airlines tap into “aircraft-to-door” ancillary revenue opportunities with its new ‘In-flight Travel Planner’, which is supported by multiple patents.

As Duncan Jackson, President of FlightPath3D, demonstrated to FTE at APEX EXPO in Singapore, passengers can enter their final address (hotel, home, etc.) into the moving map in order to access myriad personalised features. For instance, rather than simply displaying the estimated time of arrival at the destination airport, the In-flight Travel Planner can draw upon historical or real-time traffic data to provide an accurate time of arrival at the passenger’s final destination. Partnerships with the likes of Uber and SuperShuttle also allow passengers to view and book ground transportation options while they are flying to help make the arrivals experience more seamless. After booking their ride in-flight, passengers receive an SMS upon landing to confirm their booking and pick-up location.

Jackson also highlighted how the next generation map takes destination guides to a new level. The concept FTE previewed included a virtual open-top bus tour of San Francisco, highlighting points of interest, which are complemented by information from the tour company, along with images and audio descriptions. If a passenger likes the look of the tour, they can book their ticket in-flight and make payment upon landing. For the airline, this provides another opportunity to generate ancillary revenue at 30,000 feet. As Jackson suggested, destination based activities, such as tours, could be added for any city, enabling airlines to provide passengers with tailored and relevant offers.

“Once a passenger is on the plane, they’ve gone to the destination and for many this is the first time they’ve thought about what they’d like to do at the destination,” Jackson explained. “When they’re on the plane, the passenger has got time to think about the destination and we’re providing them with an interactive experience that is personalised to their own journey.”

In-flight and on-ground entertainment

Interactive Mobility already counts Air France and Aéroports de Paris among its customers and one of its goals is to recreate a “Netflix-style” experience for passengers who might otherwise have limited access to in-flight entertainment.

As FTE discovered in Singapore, the company focuses on the wider travel experience, offering entertainment options both in-flight and on the ground. The app, for instance, allows passengers to download content before they travel for consumption in-flight, while the media kiosk offers an entertainment solution for passengers waiting in lounges and gate areas. Post-flight, passengers can use the service to access content such as destination guides.

As Camille Cruchaudet, Marketing Project Manager, explained to FTE, the Interactive Mobility solutions offers airlines and airports another welcome ancillary revenue generation opportunity, as it is up to them whether to give content away for free or to charge passengers for access.

Lufthansa Systems focuses on audio and ancillaries 

Audio quality is perhaps the most overlooked element of the in-flight entertainment experience, but Lufthansa Systems has taken steps to address this with the launch of the Virtual Sound module. As FTE experienced in Singapore, the new module provides cinema-like sound, regardless of the type of headphones being used.

As Norbert Müller, Senior Vice President BoardConnect at Lufthansa Systems, explained, the company is also expanding its BoardConnect partner network, enabling airlines to choose from a wide range of well-known partners in the areas of entertainment, infotainment and ancillary revenues. This flexibility, Müller stated, is possible thanks to BoardConnect’s open software architecture.

For instance, Lufthansa Systems is partnering with Napster in the area of music content and G.U.E. Tech on HTML5 games. In addition, the new GoGobot infotainment application provides individual destination-based recommendations based on a passenger’s preferences. Other Lufthansa Systems partners include PXCom and RIM, brining expertise in the areas of destination information and on-board sales.

3D apps: the key to a more exciting IFE experience?

Neutral Digital has an ambitious aim – “we’re here to revolutionise IFE,” according to company Partner Christian Grou – and in order achieve its goal, the company is offering something very different. Grou and his colleagues are keen to avoid offering “flat and boring” content and instead are focusing on 3D apps. “We’ve set out to improve the experience of IFE…passengers, especially on long-haul, want a more exciting experience,” Grou said.

Among the apps the company has developed are the Fleet Explorer, which lets passengers explore an airline’s aircraft fleet in 3D; the Cabin Explorer, which allows users to take a 3D tour of aircraft cabins; and a range of interactive games, such as Paint My Plane and Airport Dash. Each of the apps can be tailored to the exact needs of the airline in question.

The company also specialises in virtual and augmented reality, providing another layer of opportunity for airlines wishing to create unique experiences.

A modular approach to customer experience

While digEcor was rightly celebrating the news that it has been selected, in conjunction with IFPL, by Mirus Aircraft Seating to provide in-seat USB power for the new Hawk lightweight seat (for which AirAsia was recently announced as the launch customer), FTE caught up with the company’s Chief Executive, David Withers. digEcor boasts a vast portfolio – ranging from portable IFE solutions and in-seat power to lighting and cabin management systems – and Withers explained that the company’s motivation is to find the right technology to help improve the passenger experience. This, in turn, often results in the development of modular, bespoke solutions for airlines.

“Airlines differentiate with their onboard product and pretty much every airline is focusing on passenger experience now,” Withers stated. While he said he doesn’t expect to see a decrease in the number of aircraft being delivered without seatback IFE installed, Withers explained that the continued adoption of onboard Wi-Fi is allowing more airlines to explore portable IFE, which feeds the need for in-seat power.

With its broad selection of solutions, digEcor is clearly well positioned to satisfy airlines’ differing needs and the next stage of the journey is likely to focus on the addition of software and applications, to complement the impressive hardware portfolio.

Mark your diary for FTE Asia EXPO 2017 – 7-8 November 2017, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

Future Travel Experience Asia EXPO 2017 – which will host Asia’s largest exhibition of in-flight and airport products and services – will take place at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 7-8 November 2017. We are delighted to announce that the Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) is the Headline Partner and Panasonic Avionics Corporation is the Lead Sponsor. Contact us to find out more about exhibition and sponsorship opportunities.

source : http://tinyurl.com/j8kg9b8