While the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend is making waves in many corporate digital technology environments, managed crew devices still lead the market in aviation. We sat down with Job Heimerikx, chief executive officer of AirFi, a pathfinder company in this space since it was first developed in the early 2010s.
While some office workers might appreciate the ability not to cart multiple devices around with them all the time, the situation is different onboard the aircraft, given the specific requirements of aviation and the unique ways the industry works.
“I don’t think BYOD will happen in the majority of airlines,” Heimerikx says. “It’s the way that the crew is organised, and the way that crew also has a lot of union and negotiation power. First of all, BYOD means no uniformity of devices. In other words, either the airline is going to dictate that you need to bring a device of a certain specification on board, or the airline needs to have an app that works on pretty much every phone. The costs of doing that are enormous. And the crew is of the opinion that it’s a private matter.”
Right-to-disconnect laws are well-established in many key jurisdictions, while privacy, data protection and information security regulations also mean that putting potentially sensitive passenger information — has this passenger declared they require mobility assistance? Did that passenger order alcohol? Did that other passenger request a religion-compliant meal? — on crews’ own devices is fraught with difficulty.
In addition, the cost of developing, managing, supporting and updating a BYOD app is, Heimerikx says, “highly underestimated”. AirFi is, however, agnostic on the question of BYOD versus managed device models, but the industry continues to trend firmly towards managed devices as the future.
Instead of focussing on BYOD, the industry is looking to simplify onboard device management and improve the situation with upgrading and supporting multiple generations of device.
The choice of operating system “depends on who you’re talking to. So if you’re talking to a low cost carrier, then they will go for Android and not iOS. So they will go for the cheapest solution,” Heimerikx says.
Closer integration with legacy systems, including increasing the deployment and capabilities of APIs (application programming interfaces), is also a current topic.
“The technology around APIs and the standardisation of APIs is really moving very fast, to the advantage of making much simpler system integration. But the translation of an API in the app is still quite a lengthy process,” Heimerikx says. “You have the data, and then how do you present it? What do you do with it? What are you allowed to change? How do you bring it back? These kinds of things are still quite extensive. So a simple system integration like we do with ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems or with payment systems, they can be very lengthy projects.”
A further goal is to reduce the overall number of types of devices airlines need by increasing the capabilities of the principal device, usually a phone or a tablet. This is part of much wider work on the backend, which is the fundamental key to successful implementation and operations.
Here, Heimerikx explains, the key parts of the technology stack are “security, encryption, data redundancy, making sure that the data comes to the aircraft and to the tablet in the first place, mobile device management. Timeliness of information, completeness of information, making sure that payment information is processed in the right way, reconciliation, ERP model, system integration with DCSs [distributed control systems] and ERP systems, planning systems — these kinds of things are not a simple task to do.”
But returning to the device, no airline is seeking to ‘roll its own’ hardware at this point — and, indeed, most avoid even going for the end-of-line, reduced-price options that can be attractive in other contexts.
“From a management and a total cost perspective, the latest phone will always prevail, because these things are a business tool and not a private tool,” Heimerikx concludes. “The business case is calculated over a three to five year period looking forward. Now, if I use technology that’s two years old, then from a repair and from a managerial point of view, two years going forward, I make my life much more difficult than if I simply use the latest technology.”
Author: John Walton
Published: 28th November 2024
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