The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has urged aviation stakeholders to embrace data and digital transformation to help deliver a frictionless customer experience while enhancing safety and efficiency.
“We must transform paper-based and legacy processes into digital ones and use data to drive decision-making in all facets of our business. Organizational silos will need to be shed to ensure a holistic focus on the entire customer experience. And we will need to do all this while continuing to ensure the highest levels of safety, security and environmental sustainability,” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO.
In remarks delivered to the IATA Aviation Data Symposium here, De Juniac focused on three building blocks to achieving success:
Develop core data science capabilities and use data to drive safety and operational improvement, use modern data standards and technology to deliver a superior customer experience and establish robust data governance towards suppliers and providers.
“The statistics tell us that despite yearly fluctuations, the long-term trend is toward improving safety. Nevertheless, we must intensify our efforts to ensure the accident rate remains disconnected from the expected doubling in air traffic demand over the next 20 years. Greater use of data will be critical to these efforts,” said de Juniac.
He cited IATA’s Global Aviation Data Management (GDM) program as an example. “GADM captures data from more than 470 different industry participants, through accident and incident reports, ground damage occurrences and flight data. This supports a proactive data-driven approach for advanced trend analysis and predictive risk mitigation.”
De Juniac also pointed to IATA’s Turbulence Aware initiative.
“Using data already being collected by aircraft systems, Turbulence Aware will help airlines avoid turbulence, resulting in a decline in turbulence-related injuries, reduced fuel burn and improved operational efficiencies.
“Today we are on the cusp of a digital transformation with the New Distribution Capability (NDC) and ONE Order. These programs, based on modern standards, will liberate the industry from a century of accumulated legacies and deliver a much-needed modernization of distribution and back office processes. They will usher in a world of airline retailing that will drive value for the customer, airlines and the entire air travel value chain,” said De Juniac.
Additionally, often airlines do not have information about customers who do not book directly with the airline that would enable them to more easily contact these customers in the event of operational disruptions. This information resides in third-party booking systems.
The Standard Group Plc is a
multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper
print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key
influence in matters of national and international interest.
join