As airlines look towards recovery from COVID-19, even in the face of renewed preoccupations with variants of concern and vaccination levels, digitalising operations and the passenger experience will become increasingly important.
That pressure remains in the face of slashed capital expenditure budgets, and many airlines are looking to low-cost, high-impact digitalisation solutions, including the type of rapid-deployment wifi-enabled connected boxes that combine streaming entertainment with backend crew, catering and ancillary sales systems.
We sat down with Job Heimerikx, chief executive officer at AirFi, which offers one such system and has worked with airlines from KLM to AirAsia, to learn more about how this part of the industry is iterating rapidly to expand what used to be a simple wireless inflight entertainment offering to full crew and backend digital airline integration.
Right now, says Heimerikx, “the biggest opportunities that in airline digitization that we see at AirFi are within the cabin and pertain to the passenger experience, crew operations and the critical subject of ancillary revenues.”
COVID-19 has accelerated many airlines’ plans to digitise key parts of the passenger experience like menus and inflight magazines — boosting ancillary revenues while reducing crew-passenger contact during the pandemic — as well as offering inflight entertainment, via wireless streaming solutions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FEbF0759r4
But even more so, adding backend solutions like crew reports and other digitalised processes “reduces weight and logistical complexities at turnaround time and frees up crew resource considerably, so it makes total sense,” Heimerikx explains. Integration with caterer APIs and backends and “automation of these actions and detailed reporting/analysis in real-time helps airlines optimise processes, make better decisions and fine-tune their digital experience and sales strategies constantly.”
Systems like these also enable airlines to collect passenger data to allow personalised and customised offers directly via the box’s plugins — and via travellers’ own mobile devices — rather than having to integrate with what can often be relatively elderly technology in embedded systems.
Fundamentally, this kind of wireless box-in-bin solution is attractive to airlines of many sizes — AirFi has worked with carriers from Scoot to KLM to Corendon, Air Atlantic and Aurora — but particularly to smaller airlines without dedicated digital team capacity, who need something that just works with both their internal systems and those operated by third parties like catering and onboard shopping providers.
At the same time, even larger digital-forward airlines with specific needs, like KLM’s now-retired 747-400 fleet with its outdated IFE system, find targeted deployment of this sort of system useful to offer additional modern entertainment options to passengers and digital integration for operations.
Digitalisation, Heimerikx says, “completely flips the traditional inflight model”, and he expects that “we’re going to begin to see airlines, even small ones and LCCs, unlock new business models and opportunities to drive revenue while giving passengers more of what they actually want.”
One example Heimerikx cites is an offline booking service in partnership with ground transportation marketplace Transferz, allowing the airline to offer arrival transportation options — and secure a cut of the ancillary revenue — even if the aircraft is not connected to the Internet in flight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3E3_j2niSs
On arrival, all reservations are uploaded to Transferz systems via mobile data, with confirmation and further information texted or emailed to passengers.
“Ultimately, digitisation is a culture change,” Heimerikx concludes, “but we have helped airlines large and small work through all these concerns, and our stable of partners have expertise in this as well. We’ve taken airlines out of complete ‘dark flight’ mode in less than 12 weeks and supplemented embedded systems with second screen functionality that smooths the transition to a completely wireless offering.”
Author: John Walton
Published: 22nd June 2021
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