Aviation tech innovation in 2022 – time for a new mindset?
As the global travel industry finally is exiting the grips of Covid after 2 long years it is worth taking a step back and evaluate the new landscape we now are living in – because there has been some dramatic change in several areas.
The first development might not be fully visible, but a significant number of airlines have experienced a substantial talent drain in their internal technology department while being faced with severe restrain on capital available for new IT projects and products. This sets the scene for a new mindset where airlines suddenly are strongly motivated to work with external startups who have are agile and nimble and capable of providing new solutions very quickly for a minimum fee as they are prepared to engage in “software as a service” projects with “pay as you consume” business models.
The second development is more obvious, but still worth mentioning – during the last 2 years new technologies such as DLT (aka blockchain), elastic cloud infrastructure, edge computing, NFT and not least Web3 infrastructure have evolved at an incredible pace and are now ready for primetime. The combined potential of these exciting developments is substantial for the aviation industry and will likely result in completely new solutions for distribution, ticketing, payment, capacity planning, yield management, customer service and disruption management to name a few areas.
The third development is the new operational environment with limited workforce in multiple critical areas combined with high fuel cost and shortage of products in the global supply chain combined with short notice traveler behavior change in terms of preferred destinations as well as advance booking window and price sensitivity. These changes are making it much harder for airlines to plan ahead and implement a traditional schedule and pricing forecast model and therefore require more flexible automated software to analyse the latest information and provide the right recommendations.
The fourth and final development is the sustainability wave crashing over the global travel industry – gone are the days where airlines could focus on selling seats based on the best price, best cabin class service or on-time performance. Today’s airline customers – both corporate and leisure, are increasingly focused on the sustainability performance of the airline resulting in new demands for transparent operational data such as fuel consumption, SAF blend, carbon offsets, load factor, flight path efficiency and even on the ground tarmac movement energy efficiency.
When the 4 developments listed above are added together it becomes very clear that airlines must implement a new strategy for deployment of and usage of technology services – and it is highly unlikely the internal IT department will be able to adjust accordingly and start delivering new services and solutions on a few months – or perhaps just a few weeks – notice. The good news is that the majority of the travel tech startup community actually has strengthened during the Covid hiatus and the startups who have survived now appear to be stronger, leaner and better equipped to help the airlines embark on a rapid innovation journey.
See a few of the most interesting new solution providers
Obviously it is not possible to mention all the relevant startups in this article, but here are a few of the most interesting new solution providers with a short description of the service they provide.
Pat (www.pat.ai) : Provides a AI chat based virtual agent solution designed to replace a substantial amount of the work performed in a traditional airline call center including support for complex products such as “round the world” tickets
Vendia (www.vendia.com) : Provides a blockchain based data engine designed to enable real-time access to and usage of data located in legacy systems or in different cloud environments – all without compromising data privacy and security
3Victors (www.3victors.com) : Provides a real-time analysis of global travel search data designed to provide airlines with instant alerts when search pattern changes in order to optimize yield management, capacity and schedule planning
Envest Global (www.envestglobal.com) : Provides a detailed benchmark analysis of the sustainability performance of 50+ airlines designed to provide airlines with a better understanding of their own operations compared to their competitors while also providing the investment community with better insights to the carbon resilience level of each airline
Tryp (www.tryp.com) : Provides a new type of “inspirational search engine” for leisure travel designed to generate complex package offers in seconds without asking for a fixed destination to start the search which can help an airline sell more seats on to low load factor destinations
BlackBook (https://blackbookapp.co/) : Provides a super app designed to be a digital concierge for the traveler before, during and after the trip for both corporate and leisure travel which can help airlines provide a richer service and generate increment revenue
Medical Travel Companions (www.medicaltravelcompanions.com) : Provides a human assistance concierge service for travelers who are unable to travel alone due to medical conditions which enables airlines to service this 100M+ global passenger segment better
Kyte (www.gokyte.com) : Provides a modern JSON API service designed to sit on top of the legacy airline tech stack without going through the complex and time-consuming NDC development process which enable an airline to offer true digital retailing capabilities to any online travel or ecommerce solution
Aeropaye (www.aeropaye.com) : Provides a blockchain based smart contract engine designed to automate and optimize the cancel and refund process which can reduce the overall cost of payment for airlines as well as provide a way to service travelers who don’t have credit cards and bank accounts
Spotnana (www.spotnana.com) : Provides an open innovation platform for the travel industry designed to unite suppliers, agencies and technology providers through a single cloud-based tech stack using open API’s and unbiased content to provide personalized offers directly to the traveler
These are just some examples of startups who have survived the Covid crisis and are well positioned to help the airlines around the world become more agile and take advantage of new solutions faster without having to develop them internally – hopefully we be able to look back at 2022 in the future and view this year as the beginning of a new chapter in the aviation tech world where airlines work closely together with startups to accelerate innovation and modernize the tech stack rapidly.
By Johnny Thorsen
