What do you think of when you see the words “airline IT”?
Is it a dark grey desktop computer at a cubicle desk? Or is it a flight attendant with a smartphone, an operations coordinator with a tablet, a maintenance technician with augmented reality glasses, an inflight connectivity engineer adjusting a satellite antenna — or, in the current COVID context, an airport agent scanning QR codes to check for vaccine and test certification?
“Everything that we’re doing, to some extent, involves data, technology, analytics, at some layer of the value chain,” says Peter Conrardy, senior director of integrated digital solutions at Collins Aerospace. “So we’re trying to think through: how do we continue to mature ourselves so that we don’t think of it as ‘Oh, it’s only the IT or DT group that’s doing digital, it’s only the software developers who understand what data are’?”
“There’s the stereotypical IT,” Conrardy says, “that’s focused on things like enterprise IT, SAP, Oracle, those sorts of things. And then you think about digital transformation: I think there’s a view that they’re mutually exclusive when, realistically, in Collins, we’re thinking about digital transformation — everybody in Collins needs to be digital.”
“Airline IT continues to be tightly coupled with the business of the airline,” concurs Dee Waddell, IBM’s global managing director for the travel and transportation industries. “The best CIOs and IT organisations are tightly weaved together, trust each other and collaborate closely in agile teams to deliver upon key business objectives.”
But, Waddell tells us, “CIOs and Business CxOs must also demonstrate this level of trust and partnership together when they sponsor and drive digital innovations. Digital innovation and business transformation leveraging technology continues to be on the top-level agenda of boards and CEOs, and we see this trend even accelerating after the pandemic.”
This is certainly true in aviation, where new business models, operational practices and technology have been transforming the way that airlines operate their services. The story spans early online flight booking through automated passenger processing, apps, inflight connectivity and all the way through to today’s connected ecosystems, partnering agenda, everything-as-a-service, and cloud computing infrastructure — all the way down to the cybersecurity concerns that have resulted.
Looking beyond the stereotype and reducing silos is crucial
Collins’ Conrardy emphasises the need to think wider than computers when considering and prioritising IT. The industry must “think about the way that we operate, from the way that we deal with the passengers, from our reservations or booking standpoint, how they manage their assets, whether it’s the planes, the tugs, the fuel trucks, things around the airports from an aviation standpoint — or just the way they run their operations.”
Over the past five to ten years, Conrardy says, “the biggest change is the realisation that data is important. It’s out there, and how do we gather it and then really turn it into value as opposed to just storing it somewhere?”
Within the aegis of ‘Airline IT’ sit a truly disparate range of activities, which cross-cut functions and airline organisational silos, including big data, AI, automation, biometrics, touchless, mobile, and virtual IT.
“Each of these are areas key for the industry, and each client is at different parts of the journey,” IBM’s Waddell says. “For some they need to prioritise big data, AI and automation; others already have started that digital journey. The pandemic did, however, push up the transformation agenda the replacing of manual control processes with smarter digital ones, like QR scanning, near-field communication involving 5G and IoT, biometric facial recognition and thermal scanning technologies.”
Yet, as usual, aviation’s layered historical duct-tape-and-binder-twine legacy systems can pose issues. “All of these newer technologies need to work seamlessly and enhance the passenger experience, but require skill to implement correctly and some require cooperation across the industry to get off the ground,” Waddell points out.
As an example, take biometrics, where COVID has been a truly catalytic accelerant. This area alone requires consensus and data sharing at governmental, airport and airline level, as well as substantial investment. Managing and verifying these multiple layers of data ownership, compliance across multilevel jurisdictions, disparate hardware, and high-uptime requirements is massively complex.
COVID changed spending priorities at the pointy end of innovation
COVID-19, says Waddell, “refocused IT spending priorities for airlines and airports as their revenues plunged and the industry faced new health and operational requirements needed to keep flying. But accelerated investment in automated passenger processing especially integrating digital health passes and focusing on touchless and mobile services are key areas.”
IBM is also seeing ongoing investment in artificial intelligence, especially where that provides additional information and intelligence to front-line operational and customer service employees to improve ops, the passenger experience, and indeed capture revenue opportunities.
“While many programmes halted as the industry took measures to conserve cash,” Waddell says, “some bold operators such as Delta Air Lines saw an opportunity to position themselves to take advantage of digital technologies and reorientate onto Hybrid Cloud to make sure they are set up to quickly access all data and adapt to ever-changing market conditions.”
The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on aviation has led to perhaps the greatest ever change in market conditions, and one of the fastest.
“Every CIO is now getting pressure from their CEO to accelerate digital strategies. Many of them saw this as a gamechanger during COVID-19,” Waddell concludes. “Even pre-pandemic, part of the push was for a low-touch, contactless journey to create a more enjoyable, hassle-free experience for the passenger —but the pandemic has brought about years of innovation in a matter of months.”
Every airline is at a different stage of its implementation of these initiatives, but those ahead of the curve are seeing both recognition of their efforts from passengers and the ability to use their innovations as marketing tools, particularly at a time when passengers are concerned about ensuring they have the documentation to abide by quickly changing government regulations.
Author: John Walton
Published: 24th August 2021
Join the Conversation
We are discussing this on Yocova in the ‘Challenges’ area: What do you think has been the aviation industry’s most significant digital growth over the past few years – whether that’s been pre or post pandemic?
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