Co-hosted by

THE 2015 AIR TRANSPORT IT SUMMIT

2015 IT SUMMIT HIGHLIGHTS“We’re on the brink of a new era...an ever more connected aviation future in which passengers, whether on the ground or above the clouds, are expecting an ‘always-on’ travel experience.”

www.sitasummit.aero

Such was the over-arching theme of the 2015 Air Transport IT Summit hosted by SITA in partnership with Airline Business. Two days of presentations and panel discussions addressed connectivity opportunities and challenges, offering insights, case histories and different viewpoints; and underlining why, after 16 years, SITA’s Air Transport IT Summit remains the top ‘must attend’ IT event in the air transport industry’s calendar.

THE ROAD TO CONNECTIVITYAround 350 attendees joined the Summit from over 75 countries. They included CEOs, CIOs, senior IT management, IT specialists, industry analysts and consultants – together with 35 journalists from industry-focused and mainstream media. Following an opening welcome from Max Kingsley-Jones, editor of co-hosts Airline Business, SITA CEO Francesco Violante set the scene for the day, reinforcing his firm belief that “we are at the beginning of the explosion of the era of the connected traveler”.

Opening the sessions were three keynote speakers: Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future Research; Mark Schwab, CEO of Star Alliance and Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.

They were followed by sessions offering both an airport and airline experience. First were Dr Michael Kerkloh, President & CEO of Flughafen München GmbH; James Cherry, President & CEO of Aéroports de Montréal and Chairman of the Board, Airports Council International – North America (ACI-NA); and Thomas Windmuller, Senior Vice President Airport, Passenger, Cargo & Security at IATA. The airline view was offered by Peter Hammer, Managing Director, Strategy & Business Management, Information Technology at United Airlines; and Simon Lamkin, Head of Operations Systems at easyJet.

Finally, exploring how technology is increasingly offering to deliver personalized services to travelers were Dmitry Chuyko, CEO of S7 Travel Retail; John Hurley, CTO at Ryanair; and Jim Peters, CTO at SITA.

INSIGHT SESSIONSWhile the keynote and plenary presentations provided the strategic underpinning for the Summit’s themes, the opening day of Insight Sessions offered the opportunity to delve more deeply into the core issues. This year’s sessions featured expert comment and provocative thoughts through four viewpoints: • Are airlines ready to connect with travelers? A view of the

state of play based on the first results of the 2015 Airline IT Trends Survey, now in its 18th year.

• Travelers and technology – it’s an emotional journey. Human factors and emotions in IT adoption.

• Creating a sense of place – airports get personal. Giving airports a true sense of place, and de-stressing passengers, are influencing airport IT strategies.

• Contextual engagement at 30,000ft – the new personalized on-board experience. With connected aircraft, the experience in flight has the potential to be personalized.

MARK YOUR DIARY FOR THE 17TH SUMMIT Hosted by SITA in partnership with Airline Business, each year the Air Transport IT Summit follows SITA’s Annual General Assembly. In 2015, the event achieved an excellent overall satisfaction rating of 4.3 out of 5. The event took place on 17-18 June at La Hulpe, Brussels, Belgium. The 17th SITA Air Transport IT Summit will take place 24-26 May 2016 at the Hesperia Towers Hotel, Barcelona.

DOWNLOADCENTERwww.sitasummit.aero

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

SITA’s IT Summit Download Center includes:• Plenary

presentations • Insight Session

presentations• Videos and photographs• Airline IT Trends Survey

2015 resultswww.sitasummit.aero

Visit our YouTube channel, ‘SITA Online’, for more. You can see videos of speakers, delegates, customers and sponsors discussing a wide range of industry concerns and opportunities.www.youtube.com/SITAOnline

Check out our IT Summit Electronic Bag:• Sponsor downloads– Mindtree: Seamless

traveler experience in the connected world

– Oracle: Customer experience solution for airlines

– Custom: ATI printers– Cinq Technologies:

Empowering new technologies for air travel

– Interglobe: Enabling better travel

– WNS: Verifare Plus– Cobham: Aviator ‘S’ Series– NEC: Airport Display

Solutions– Riverbed: Integrated

Traffic ManagementOther sponsors included: Orange Business Services, Brussels Airport and Unisyswww.sitasummit.aero

AIRLINE IT TRENDS SURVEY 2015 The Air Transport IT Summit included the launch of the key results from the latest Airline IT Trends Survey, published by SITA and Airline Business. The 2015 Survey reflects an industry that was in fairly good shape in 2014.

In total, including IT spend inside and outside CIO budgets, 2.8% of revenue was spent on IT in 2014, of which 1.1% was capital expenditure. As a global average, our survey indicates around 39% of IT spend is not controlled by the CIO. This indicates the increasing reliance on IT across the business as power and responsibility to invest in technology and communications is devolved away from central IT departments into the business. There is strong evidence that other areas of airline operations are investing in IT to improve processes and gain efficiencies.

In 2014, the largest proportion of operating IT spend (42%) was allocated to the internal IT department, while 36% was typically spent on outsourced services. The remaining 22% was dedicated to external contractors.

CIOs are cautious about 2016 with 39% expecting the same budget and 22% planning on a decrease. The remaining 39% are predicting an increase. The need to compete by using new technologies appears to be driving some of the increase, particularly in the passenger area with mobile and tablet applications.

For highlights of SITA’s Airline, Airport, and Passenger IT Trends Surveys: www.sita.aero/surveys

INDUSTRY FACTSIN AN INSTANT

AIR TRANSPORT IT TRENDS HUBCommended by the Marketing on Mobile Awards (MOMA)Visit the award-winning Air Transport IT Trends Hub on SITA’s website for an extensive range of air transport industry trends, facts and figures. See the latest charts and videos for SITA’s surveys and reports, including: • Airline IT Trends Survey• Airport IT Trends Survey• Baggage Report• Passenger IT Trends SurveyYou can freely download material for your own use.www.sita.aero/resources/it-trends-hub

This publication uses 2D barcodes to allow you to access more content on the Web. To use, download a free app – such as Neoreader – onto your mobile device, and use it to scan the barcodes.

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

SPONSORS & EXHIBITORSDAY 2 – PLENARYWELCOME & INTRODUCTION • Max Kingsley-Jones – Editor, Airline Business

& Flightglobal’s Executive Director Content • Francesco Violante – CEO, SITA

BREAKTHROUGHS IN CONNECTED AIR TRAVEL: BEYOND THE HORIZON• Rohit Talwar – CEO, Fast Future Research

TOWARDS THE ‘JOINED UP’ JOURNEY• Mark Schwab – CEO, Star Alliance• Paul Griffiths – CEO, Dubai Airports

TAKING THE END-TO-END VIEW – AIRPORTS • Dr Michael Kerkloh – President & CEO, Flughafen

München GmbH• James Cherry – President & CEO, Aéroports de

Montréal & Chairman of the Board, Airports Council – North America (ACI-NA)

• Thomas Windmuller – Senior Vice President, Airport, Passenger, Cargo & Security, IATA

• Catherine Mayer – (Moderator), Vice President, SITA

TAKING THE END-TO-END VIEW – AIRLINES• Peter Hammer – Managing Director, Strategy & Business

Management, Information Technology, United Airlines• Simon Lamkin – Head of Operations Systems, easyJet• Rene Azoulai – (Moderator), Senior Vice President,

Products & Solutions Division, SITA

DELIVERING THE ‘ALWAYS-ON’ TRAVEL EXPERIENCE• Dmitry Chuyko – CEO, S7 Travel Retail• John Hurley – CTO, Ryanair• Jim Peters – CTO, SITA

THOUGHT LEADERSHIPAT YOUR FINGERTIPS

CHECK OUT THE LATEST ‘AIR TRANSPORT IT REVIEW’ PUBLICATIONAvailable on the new sita.aero websiteSee ‘Air Transport IT Review’ for features and insights across the technology issues that matter to the industry, including solutions and innovations that embrace the explosion of mobile devices, cloud, big data, business intelligence, analytics, new generation passenger systems, personalization and retail, eAircraft, border intelligence, wearable computing and much more.www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review

DAY 1 – INSIGHT SESSIONSIndustry speakers from across all sectors and several continents addressed a number of specifics – including the latest Airline IT Trends, technology’s impact on passenger emotions, creating a sense of place at the airport, and passenger engagement at an altitude of 30,000 feet. • Arthur Calderwood – Senior Vice President,

Marketing & Sales Operations, SITA• Max Kingsley-Jones – Editor, Airline Business &

Flightglobal’s Executive Director Content• Nigel Pickford – Director, Market Insight & Marketing

Operations, SITA• Thomas Windmuller – Senior Vice President, Airport,

Passenger, Cargo and Security, IATA (Retired August 2015)

• Ashraf Ayoub – CIO, Royal Jordanian Airlines • Allison O’Neill – Vice President, Passenger, SITA• Renaud Irminger – Director, SITA Lab• Michael Zaddach – Senior Vice President IT,

Flughafen München GmbH

• Gilles Brentini – Innovation Manager, Geneva Airport• Pearl PU Faltings – Human Computer Interaction Group

at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Head of Group.

• Catherine Mayer – (Moderator) Vice President, SITA• Robert O’Meara – Director Media & Communications,

ACI Europe• Piet Demunter – Director of Strategic Development,

Brussels Airport Company• Pedro Casimiro – Manager Business Development,

Brussels Airlines• Carlos Kaduoka – Director, Airport, SITA• Matthys Serfontein – (Moderator) Vice President, Airport, SITA• Michel Dulery – Client Service Director, Digitas• Tim Grosser – Head of Digital Transformation, IATA• Ian Dawkins – CEO, SITA OnAirSee session outlines, page 18.

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

READY FOR THE CONNECTED TRAVELER?

CONNECTIVITY is CRITICAL TO THE FUTURE OF THE AIR TRANSPORT INDUSTRY.

A CONNECTED FUTUREThe connected traveler, our connected aviation future, and all of the opportunities and challenges around those concepts, are today’s hot topics, said SITA’s CEO Francesco Violante on opening the Summit. We all have experience of this – but are we really exploiting the opportunities offered by mobile and related technologies? I believe we are just at the start of the era of the connected traveler. Think how many travel-related apps are out there – too many maybe? How many of them share a consistent database that allows everyone involved to simplify the traveling experience?

There are apps for specific parts of the journey, but is there an integrated app that smoothly manages our complete travel experience? As we know, the answer is no. And if we are uncertain that the data is right, then is the app useful? If there is a change to the gate and the airline app is not up-to-date, then is that a benefit? These are some of the questions that we as travelers are asking – and they are the questions addressed at this event.

CONNECTIVITY EVERYWHEREThe technology is there, that’s not the problem. Connectivity is everywhere – in the air and on the ground, with sufficient quality and speed. And the Internet of Things is beginning to happen – with connected airport buildings, bags, drones and so on. We need to see how we can take advantage of this technology to impact the traveler experience.

“ THE CONNECTED TRAVELER, OUR CONNECTED AVIATION FUTURE, AND ALL OF THE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES AROUND THOSE CONCEPTS, ARE TODAY’S HOT TOPICS.”

FRANCESCO VIOLANTE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SITA

There are five elements to this. First, looking over the horizon, what are the next steps in technology? What is the future and how should we react? Second, what are the opportunities for creating a seamless experience for travelers – critically through collaboration between industry stakeholders? Certainly, we need to do more in this respect.

Third, what are airports doing, end-to-end? To allow us to properly manage the travel experience, investment in digital infrastructure is needed. Airports are putting a lot of emphasis on this.

Fourth, what are airlines doing to improve the passenger journey? How can they leverage mobility, mobile devices and apps? How about permanent boarding passes, and permanent bag tags. How can we address that? Finally, how is technology transforming the way airlines and stakeholders interact with travelers? How can technology deliver personalized services?

These themes are all critical for the future of our industry – as explored in the 2015 Summit, with a range of possible answers providing a helpful guide for future initiatives.

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

We need to understand how technologies could completely change the way we do business.

HOW DO WE GET TO THE FUTURE?Right now we’re seeing a clash between two worlds. In the old planet we see the world as physical: we run airports and airlines, we make cars, we run hospitals. Technology enables what we do but it’s not our business. We have an analog way of thinking about things and we tend to look for incremental improvements.

The new planet is “born digital” - populated by people who don’t see airports, planes, cars or people; they see data. They see that every problem can be resolved by finding the right algorithm and applying the right technology. They have no bounds to their ambition and believe they can deliver 100% or more improvements.

If you understand and manage the data, everything is possible. But there’s a challenge – how do we get to the future? Play by the rules or change the game? In many sectors what we’re seeing is people moving in and saying I’m not going to do business the way you do.

We’re seeing people changing the game in sector after sector. The challenge for all of us is how quickly we have to react. We know we’re becoming a very digitized species. We’re dominated by data but most of us use it very badly. We don’t generate the kind of insights we need – and how do we use our data to really add value? We also know we’re in a world where exponentially growing technologies are going to transform the landscape in the next five to 10 years and dramatically change our understanding of what the world looks like.

OUR RESPONSE?We’re somewhat protected in the airline and the airport sectors because we haven’t had the kind of competition that drives people to go elsewhere. But we’re seeing the pace of innovation quicken and the challenge is how quickly do we have to respond or do we want to respond? What we do know is the need to understand the transformative role of IT in driving innovation.

The next wave is the use of collaborative technologies and artificial intelligence that pulls together the knowledge in our organizations to drive decision making. If we understand that likely evolution, we can make sure we’re planning for it and build platforms that will support it.

We are entering the era of wearable and embedded devices and I don’t know a single airline or airport that has a serious plan for this. We’re going to be drowning in data, so our challenge would be how are we going to use that information to enhance the way we operate and serve our customers? How do we speed up the processes inside the airport and the travel experience rather than just holding on to the data in the hope that we’ll find a strategy for using it? On top of the data challenge, how do we address the potential impact of holograms in place of retail stock on the aircraft, robots traveling in the seat next to us, or using blockchain to manage data flows inside the organization? The UK Health Service believes this ground breaking protocol might cut information technology costs by 40%.

THINK DIFFERENTLY What stops us is the analog thinking that says no we can’t do that and we’ve got all these rules and all these reasons why we shouldn’t. Whenever I talk to airlines about doing this stuff most of the conversation is about why we can’t do it, the systems we have, the rules we have, the procedures we have; not what the customer wants but why we can’t do it.

The industry really does need to understand how science and technology are moving. In particular we need to understand how these technologies could completely change the way we do business and start to think about ourselves not as physical entities but really start to think of ourselves as digital entities that happen to do something physical. You just have to give yourself permission to think differently.

“ WE ARE ENTERING THE ERA OF WEARABLE AND EMBEDDED DEVICES AND I DON’T KNOW A SINGLE AIRLINE OR AIRPORT THAT HAS A SERIOUS PLAN FOR THIS.”

ROHIT TALWAR CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, FAST FUTURE RESEARCH

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

“ WE HAVE TO BRIDGE THE SYSTEMIC DIVIDES THAT HAVE BEEN HISTORICALLY DESIGNED INTO OUR BUSINESS PROCESSES.”

MARK SCHWAB CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, STAR ALLIANCE

We need to be jointly ready to serve mobile and smart generation.

THE NEED FOR CONTINUING EVOLUTION Star Alliance has evolved the most comprehensive world-spanning network – diverse in cultures and strategies – operating to 1,321 airports in 191 countries. And we have to keep evolving. With growing knowledge and travel experience in an environment of fierce competition, customers are becoming more demanding and knowledgeable.

Modern lifestyles will involve more and more travel, if not today certainly in the future. So we need to be jointly ready to serve this mobile and smart generation. They expect self-handling capabilities and real-time information; especially when things don’t go as planned. Our owners, the airlines, also want added value and efficiencies. So we engage particularly with projects that contribute to the airline’s profitability beyond the reach of their own individual capabilities.

SIMPLIFYINGThe new Queen’s Terminal at London Heathrow is a perfect example. Previously, 23 Star Alliance members were split over four different terminals. A variety of ground-handlers used eight different departure control systems – and no two airlines had similar ground-handling procedures. Even more tellingly, our airlines were using 127 different printed paper-stickers and tags, when eight would suffice.

Today we have one check-in process across all member carriers: one agent can serve passengers from different airlines in parallel. That makes the available infrastructure of kiosks and common baggage drop facilities much more effective. We work with one set of printed boarding passes instead of 23. And we got rid of most of those 127 baggage tags.

The airport is happy: instead of 134 check-in counters, we’re managing the process with just under 90 – that’s 30% less real estate. The airlines are happy: members report up to 20% cost savings through leaner processes. And passengers are happy: the new terminal hit record approval numbers.

STANDARDS ARE ESSENTIALStandards are part of our industry and the opportunities for standardization are countless. But we can only progress as an industry if we overcome these obstacles – and I’m encouraged by a number of examples. Prominent among them is IATA’s New Distribution Capability program. We in Star Alliance have decided to fully support this effort to significantly modernize our industry’s capability to sell its services to changing customers.

GIVE CONTROL TO PASSENGERSDespite privacy concerns and competitive considerations, we must give our customers access to and control over the products and services they require for a seamless journey. If we truly believe in the benefits of this joined up journey, we have to become much more active in our joint initiatives.

We have to bridge the systemic divides that have been historically designed into our business processes. We have to foster standardization. We have to resist proprietary elements in every corner of our business. The experience of our alliance shows that win-win success can always be achieved when a give-and-take attitude is present. For such a joined up journey on the way to the next generation of technologies, we need to work together not only in the alliance but across the aviation industry as a whole.

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If you double the process flow, you double the AIRPORT’s capacity.

HUBS IN THE COMPETITIVE FUTURE In just 15 years an additional 1.8 billion people will be traveling every year from some of the world’s most vibrant emerging economies. Located in Dubai, we’re right in the middle of that growth and we recognize that hubs in the future will become hugely competitive as more and more of the markets they serve become distributed globally.

Up to now, most airport managers have been infrastructure managers. They’ve built stuff. They’ve created bigger facilities to cope with growth. But geographic limitation has led to compromises in airport design. With bigger airports, you get longer walking distances, less intimate experiences, greater difficulties in customers making connections.

Every single individual that goes through an airport has a different need because they are a human being. We may be creatures of habit at large, but individually we have very subtle and different requirements.

DOUBLING FLOW AND CAPACITYIn response, we have to find a way of using the fact that people are now putting technology into the palm of their hand. So future airports will not be developed around infrastructure containing all the intelligence and technology needed to serve the customer. That’s too expensive, and not the way the world is moving.

If you take processes out of the airport environment, you create space. And remember, the capacity of an airport is determined by the volumetric area you are deploying and the speed at which you can get people through. If you double the process flow, you double the capacity. That is far, far cheaper than having to double the area of the terminal building. And it’s what our customers want. They don’t want to have to go through queues to check-in.

They don’t want to have to present a physical piece of paper in order to arrive in a country or leave a country. They want us to be far more customer-centric than that. So our job is to turn this opportunity into something that will drive the way airports of the future look like.

In Dubai, we’re designing a completely new airport with an ultimate capacity of 240 million passengers annually. We’re going to deliberately not build enough physical capacity by today’s standards. We’re looking at a completely different model, designed around the physical limitations of a human body. We want to create hubs that are manageable, navigable, easy for people to find their way through.

SHORT HOP FROM NODE TO NODEInstead of building a massive airport for 240 million people, we’re going to build 12 airports, each of 20 million capacity. Each node will be absolutely identical and completely self-contained, enabled by technology. If you’ve got a connecting journey, and you’ve got 12 hubs to choose from, you clearly don’t want to arrive in the corner of one hub and then have to go on what will be a journey of nearly eight kilometers to a far hub. So if we apply technology to say, optimize the allocation of our flights on a dynamic daily basis, we can connect as many people as possible through the same hub. We will have dramatically improved the utilization of the airport and the connectivity. And no-one will have to walk any more than 400 meters from one plane to the next.

This has to be enabled by huge integration of technology. In a changing world where airport expansion seems to be such a hot topic and things apparently need to get bigger and bigger, we’re trying to retain and enable the intimacy of that customer journey. So every one of our customers, from wherever they come, will be able to go their own way.

“ WE’RE LOOKING AT A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MODEL, DESIGNED AROUND THE PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS OF A HUMAN BODY.”

PAUL GRIFFITHS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, DUBAI AIRPORTS

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

“ HOW DO WE INTEGRATE THE CUSTOMER’S EXISTING HOST OF CHOICES INTO OUR AIRPORT WORLD?”

DR. MICHAEL KERKLOH

PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, FLUGHAFEN MÜNCHEN GMBH

The real challenge lies in digital co-operation between partners.

THE DIGITAL QUESTION I’m an analog native, not a digital native, and we’re exploring the unknown territory of our digital world. Customer journey, end-to-end, door-to-door, what does it all mean? At Munich, all staff have to be engaged in moves to become a digital airport. But what is digital transformation? We’ve progressed among core partners such as airlines, airports and air traffic control. Using collaborative decision making, we exchange data to make processes more efficient. We will include more partners – such as ground handling companies and cleaning companies – so that we can eventually work from a common database.

The next stage is to reach the consumer through mobility at the airport. But we’re also very focused on revenue, because we have a very important KPI – spend per passenger. If we don’t control spend per passenger we’ll have a problem developing the airport. For that we need smart solutions and investment in our IT infrastructure.

INTEGRATING PARTNERSSo what new fields do we focus on? Airports have some specific services – such as meet and greet, parking and so on – that are also sometimes integrated into booking processes. But we’re always dependent on other partners, such as travel agencies or incoming tourist organizations, to share data with us. To an extent, they’re isolated as far as communication with customers is concerned. But they also have to be integrated.

We get one-third of our revenues from aviation fees – but two-thirds is service related, from non-aviation business and consulting. That’s really key for us so the way we look at retail, as well as food and beverage, will change. We already see innovations coming that will change the business model.

All elements of the journey through the terminal will require digital access. But how do we integrate the customer’s existing host of choices into our airport world? How do we integrate transportation network companies and who do we choose to partner with at the airport?

We also have to acknowledge that there is no “one size fits all”. For airports with a lot of nationalities passing through it’s a big challenge to be consistent and to have specific and tailor-made information and marketing tools to communicate with the end customer.

DATA, DATA EVERYWHEREAt Munich we’ve created a digital unit and we have convinced Lufthansa to create one focusing on our airport. We will not in the end create our own app but we will create a platform that enables other service providers to be part of this in an easy, very functional approach.

The problem is that there is a lot of data to handle. We get data from 100,000 customers every day from our Wi-Fi alone. But we can currently use only 3% of this data. Our online parking platform is growing by 20-30% per year, so the data silo is growing but we are not yet linking this with other data.

The real challenge lies in digital co-operation between partners. But data is a huge asset and many partners don’t want to share their data, because they fear that giving it away may harm their success. We have to find a manageable way to share the data, because otherwise others outside the industry will generate the additional value.

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“ TECHNOLOGY IS INCREASING PASSENGER THROUGHPUT. BUT THE REVOLUTION HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN.”

JAMES CHERRY PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, AÉROPORTS

DE MONTRÉAL & CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, AIRPORTS COUNCIL INTERNATIONAL – NORTH AMERICA

We’re building the foundations of the intelligent airport.

A SEAMLESS AND SMART JOURNEY In the early 2000s, an extensive CAN$ 2bn expansion program at Montréal Trudeau gave us the opportunity to deploy and integrate a number of advanced technologies, becoming a recognized leader in sustainable development. We were a pioneer in the technology of shared facilities. We were also one of the first Canadian airports to fully deploy automated boarder control (ABC), developed in collaboration with the Canadian Border Services Agency. ABC is now being used by the majority of eligible passengers with significant reductions in wait times.

In 2013, Automated Passport Control (APC) kiosks were added for Canadian and US passport holders headed to the US in our pre-clearance facility, reducing the processing time by more than 40%.

MORE TO COMEOf course, we’re not the only airport to be leveraging technologies and new ways of working. They’re helping airports manage increased passenger throughput without expanding the bricks and mortar. This is a major benefit and key business case. But the revolution has only just begun. We’re already witnessing the next phase of the revolution – self-service technologies moving into other areas of the airport, from parking reservations to customs integration to security clearance. And there’s more to come.

Technologies and innovations in the next few years will provide a travel experience closely tailored to the individual needs of passengers. Already being tested or on the horizon are concepts such as single passenger tokens using biometry, barcodes or other; digital bag tags, home-printed bag tags; automatic check-in at time of ticket purchase; near-field communications and wearable technologies. At the same time, sophisticated data

gathering and shared systems will facilitate location-based two-way and targeted communications with passengers through beacon or other Bluetooth applications.

The challenge is to determine which new technologies should be adopted and to work closely with all stakeholders to ensure proper integration and convergence. The overriding objective should be to give passengers more control over their passenger experience, offering a highly diversified, yet, customized menu of options.

PRIORITIESToday, most parties tend to agree that everyone wins, including passengers, if a certain level of up-to-date data gets exchanged among end-users. However, what type of data can or should be collected? How is it shared among stakeholders – including airlines and especially government agencies? Where do we draw the line in terms of personal information? Privacy issues regarding passenger data, gathering and exchange will be a major consideration in the years to come and must be dealt with properly.

Our choices of technologies and innovation should be guided by several priorities. First, passengers want to be more in control of their journey. Second, as more and more technologies are being deployed, we need to ensure that data is used in a structured way and to the benefit of passengers, airlines and other stakeholders, while respecting privacy.

And finally, we need to focus on the right changes in technologies through collaboration if we‘re to achieve our ultimate goal: continuous improvement to the passenger experience. We’re building the foundations of the intelligent airport, but robust infrastructures, integrated systems and industry standards will be essential for success.

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“ IF WE DON’T GET OUR ACT TOGETHER AND START CO-OPERATIVELY HANDLING DATA, THIRD PARTIES WILL TAKE THIS MARKET.”

THOMAS WINDMULLER SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT – AIRPORT, PASSENGER,

CARGO & SECURITY – IATA*

We can offer a better service to the passenger and at the same time learn more about their preferences, needs and expectations.

PERSONALIZED AND TAILORED Are we ready for the connected traveler? Passengers are connected – which means free from the infrastructure we provide. They’re getting information from a huge variety of sources – information about their flights, gates, departure times – without all the clutter. But it’s the provision by any party of personalized information that’s really what a growing number of passengers are after. They decide who they want to listen to, what information they want and when they’re going to consult their smartphone or tablet to get that information.

Data is an asset, but with so many independent parties having access to data, my own proprietary data is becoming a little less valuable. In other words, I know what time my flight is departing if I’m an airline. But flight tracker, flight radar, the local airport, they all think they know what time my flight is departing as well. And they think they’re just as qualified to provide that information to the passenger.

IT MAKES SENSE TO SHARE So who is the passenger going to listen to? Whatever party provides the best data. But we want to be the source providing the data. And if we don’t get our act together and start doing this cooperatively, third parties will take the market. It’s already happening.

We all think we have a monopoly on operational data. But we all only have pieces of the information, so it makes sense to share. To do that, information needs to be accurate, up-to-date and reliable. And here again, we all think we’ve got the best information, but that’s rarely true. That’s why, instead

of competing to provide our own siloed information to the passenger, we must collaborate and provide the best data we have to a common platform.

Once it’s on a common platform, we can all compete in channeling it from the platform to the passenger. And competition will include third parties wanting to take information from the trusted collaborative platform to the passenger. Competition is good – but if we’re going to serve the passenger, we need to make sure that competition is not for the most accurate information but competition for the best presented and accurate information.

LEARNING ABOUT PASSENGERSBear in mind that it’s not just us communicating information to the passenger, it’s the passenger communicating back. Every time we reach out to the passenger with information, hopefully value adding information, we’re learning something about that passenger. How he or she travels through an airport, the decisions the passenger makes.

If we’re smart about it, consistent with privacy, of course, we can use that information to offer an even better product and service to our passengers. That requires big data and the analytics that go with it. It requires investment in the infrastructure. Because if we don’t, others will put us out of business.

In a nutshell, I see a very bright future. Technology is enabling us service providers to offer a better service. Technology enables us to keep them informed, to smooth their way through the airport. We can offer a better service to the passenger and at the same time learn more about their preferences, needs and expectations. We can also provide more services and gain more revenues.

* Thomas Windmuller retired from IATA in August 2015.

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

“ IT’S ESSENTIAL WE FOCUS ON VALUE-DRIVEN INNOVATION… THAT WE SHARE INFORMATION.”

PETER HAMMER MANAGING DIRECTOR STRATEGY AND BUSINESS

MANAGEMENT, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, UNITED AIRLINES

SIGNIFICANTLY DIGITAL United Airlines is a big airline. We have a lot of moving parts and organizations within our company that, together, deliver the travel experience. Our relationship with customers starts with their travel planning and extends post-travel. The challenge to this model is that the definition of the travel experience is expanding along with customer expectations, and it is becoming less clear when the relationship actually begins or ends.

We want to make sure that our passengers stay informed at all points of the journey and that offers become more informed, more targeted, and valued by our passengers. Critical to this dialogue is to align all parts of the organization – including partners – to create a consistent and brand-aligned experience that is valued by our passengers.

BEGINNING TO ENDDigital is at the forefront of our current thinking and there are many changes we are implementing within the passenger journey. One of those is apps, including our award-winning, industry-leading app that has evolved through years of innovation and numerous updates. It supports the journey for our passengers from beginning to end – whether they’re exploring or researching travel to purchase, checking in for their flight or experiencing the United Club, looking at the status of their flight, waiting for a potential upgrade, or checking the status of their bags. It’s important that the journey is supported by our app. It’s something we have worked on aggressively over the years to drive into our passenger journey.

We’re beginning to focus on app capability across our workforce as well – empowering employees with the same

kind of real-time information and real-time capability to increase efficiency in all they do on behalf of passengers. We’ve evolved other parts of our digital platform. Our merger required a single PSS in place of two industry-leading platforms. Today we have new capabilities and new website. It’s gone from a functional transactional interface to an end-to-end informational exchange.

PARTNERS We’ve now expanded the roadmap of digital. How do we help passengers enjoy a seamless experience – not just at those points where United is directly available, but also where passengers manage the experience through self-service? Partners are key to this, they must be integrated. We’ve learned that partners bring key information, key expertise and experience, which play critical roles in the delivery of service. It is important they be co-branded with us in the sense that they understand the elements of service that United is trying to drive into the market.

It’s also important that all of our technology platforms are secure and stable. So we’re beginning to leverage relationships with others, with third parties and partners to spread knowledge and expertise so all delivery channels of the experience are secure for our passengers.

It’s vital that we figure out how to enable our people drive collaboration with our partners. It’s essential we focus on value-driven innovation, and that we share the right information. We need standard interfaces across all partners, with all participants in the travel experience able to quickly connect and exchange information. This is for the common good of improving the passenger experience.

We want to make sure that our passengers stay informed at all points of the journey and that offers become more valued by our passengers.

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

THE DIGITAL AGE IS NOW This year easyJet is 20 years old, so it’s a good time to reflect on what’s been an extraordinary period of change. Even as recently as 2009, the end-to-end passenger experience was quite short. The passenger turned up at the airport and left the airport. That was it. Now, with the digital age and the technology advances that are coming through, the end-to-end experience has become massively extended.

We’ve started thinking about how we connect with passengers. Before Christmas last year I spent three days on the terminal floor at Gatwick. I was surprised how many people don’t yet understand what’s going on in the digital space. In those three days, we had people queuing at a bag drop when they had no bag to drop. We had people coming to the wrong terminal, and four people who had come to the wrong airport! These people have a mobile boarding pass, they have a mass of information to hand, but we’re clearly not connecting with them.

Change has been a big part of our past, but it’s an even more important part of our future. It’s what we all have to deal with. We carry 65 million passengers a year. Every passenger is unique, so we have to connect with each of them and give them the experience they’re looking for.

CONNECTED PROGRAMAs an airline, I find it constantly difficult to get hold of airport information. I asked SITA if they could create an app providing a service to us with information provided by airports. We’ve been trialing the result – an app with maps that gives information about what bag drop zones you should use and how to navigate your way through the airport. This is all basic stuff that should be really easy to get hold of, but it’s incessantly hard and it’s hugely frustrating.

“ WE’RE GOING TO CONTINUE THIS JOURNEY BUT WE NEED MORE INTEGRATION AND MORE COLLABORATION.”

SIMON LAMKIN HEAD OF OPERATIONS SYSTEMS, EASYJET

Through our Connected Program, we’re also looking at an end-to-end operational view. We want to give our staff everything they need for all those questions that are going to get asked.

We all know what airports are like. We all know the scale and size of some of the facilities we’re working in. We know the difficulty of bringing that together, to communicate and make a decision. It’s about creating operational efficiency, cutting out the manual processes and trying to cut waste.

CONTINUING THE JOURNEYSo what’s happening today? We replaced paper charts with iPads in May last year. For our pilot and cabin crew communities, we created our own easyJet App Store. So far about 75% of our crew have downloaded electronic charts and electronic manuals. The ops control team also have access to a website that can push messages straight out to our own flight tracker system. Even though it’s meant to be customer-facing, we’re making it ops-facing as well – because we were finding that passengers at the back of the plane had more access to data than the pilot.

We’re going to continue this journey but we need more integration – and more collaboration. So I would ask airports, alliances, everyone, “Let’s work out how we can get this data shared.” It’s about being connected for our customers, connected for the team, focusing on doing all of that really well, and encouraging change. We have to bring the bits closer together and stay connected.

LET’s work out how we can get data shared in our industry.

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

“ HAPPINESS SHOULD BE THE FOCUS FOR EVERY PART OF THE TRAVEL LIFE CYCLE.”

DMITRY CHUYKO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, S7 TRAVEL RETAIL

‘MODERN’ THINKINGWe’re all changing our focus. We’re talking increasingly about making customers happy. That’s the key change I find compared to what we were discussing a couple of years ago. And we’re doing something about it, delivering connectivity and putting IT into action. At S7, we’re doing this with an economy and a business class product, servicing about 60 mid-size aircraft, mainly domestic but also serving a number of international destinations. We’re also a member of the oneworld alliance, which gives us worldwide reach.

We’re a young company with a young fleet and a modern way of thinking. We’re not structured like a traditional airline. We’re split into a number of companies, each responsible for a different type of business. We’re also known as a leader in the e-commerce and technology travel retail space in Russia. We offer a number of e-commerce initiatives, and we have won national and industry awards. We’re one of the top 10 Russian e-commerce sites, and our iPhone app was selected as the best airline app in Russia, with an average review score of almost five stars. We deliver this through what we call the S7 Manifesto.

INVOLVED CUSTOMERSFirst of all, we take happiness seriously – it should be the focus for every part of the travel life cycle. Delivering an always-on travel experience, available at the customer’s fingertips, is the key to success. It means one more step to happiness, and it means making customers a bit more involved and more connected.

The typical travel life cycle is full of technology, with delivery supported through technology-based marketing and big data to make customer dreams a reality. The planning stage is e-marketing through the e-commerce solution, using data and

tools to make planning less stressful and more joyful. The second and third stages are about technology as well, about reaching touch points and fulfilling the experience through the mobile boarding process, check-ins, enabled aircraft and many more.

Every stage is powered by technology, and happiness depends on whether the technology is in place and how we get information. The way we access information has changed dramatically in a short time frame.

In the last couple of years in particular, we‘ve seen what we might call a device explosion. Devices become smarter, thinner, more connected, and more integrated into our life. As a result, the hunger for information is growing.

EVERYTHING IS CHANGINGPeople also want to see creative disruption – making everyday things different through the use of enabling technologies. Think of Airbnb or Booking.com. Just remember how we booked accommodation a few years ago. Think of the 3D printer. It allows you to print almost everything at your home office.

Of course, there are opportunities and challenges we must master to satisfy and deliver an always-on travel experience. In essence, this is like ingredients and methods in cooking. The method is the platform on which we build our services and present our products, based on ever-evolving technologies. The ingredients shape our end-product. Together they’re focused on creating happiness for our customers. And, of course, that’s only possible with the right organizational set-up, emerging technologies, and the right marketing.

We’re a young company with a young fleet and a modern way of thinking.

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

TIME FOR A RETHINK Our original strategy to be Europe’s favorite airline was simple: best coverage and lowest cost. The theory was that people would keep using us, and we would grow forever. However, despite having the most customers, the best coverage, the lowest prices, the best on-time departures and the fewest cancellations, things flat-lined, with two profit warnings.

We did a rethink, and while everyone accepted we’re useful, we had to be more likable – not least because while other airlines have been making fortunes from lower fuel prices, we haven’t, because we’re as good as fully hedged. All of our profitability, all improvements, have to come from being nice to customers. So we launched our ‘Always Getting Better’ program.

GREAT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCELast November, we launched Ryanair Labs to rip up the playbook and use data to drive a better experience for customers across the whole travel sector. This is a unique opportunity to move forward with new ideas and we’re starting with a brand new website in September/ October.

We understand that the customer is the center of everything – not the airline, nor the airport. It has to be the customer. Another thing we’ve understood is that everything that’s on paper is dying. The future is your phone, the computer in your pocket delivering the right information, at the right time and in the right location.

At the same time, compared to other data-rich services, airports and airlines have been piling on more and more features. The result is a service that is bloated, clunky, heavy and slow – and potentially buggy. We need one-click to get somewhere – the Amazon model.

“ ALL OF US IN THE TRAVEL CHAIN HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER AS A COMMUNITY TO TAKE THE PAIN OUT OF TRAVEL.”

JOHN HURLEY CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, RYANAIR

The new Ryanair travel app splits the complete travel experience into five elements: discovery, day of travel, destination, return, and post trip. Let me tell you how it works.

Take a journey. You want to go somewhere with warmth and sunshine. So on your app you scan through a range of destinations. You decide and press the button. The app knows who you are, you’re integrated with Apple Pay. Click, you’re booked, you’re on your way.

Come the day of travel, it’s a different experience. There’s been an accident on the motorway. Do you get a train, a taxi? Is security going to be bad? All of these micro moments can cause panic. The future has to be to remove stress from people’s travel experience.

Get to the airport, and you’re into the next element. Do you want fast track? Where’s the gate? All those bits and pieces. And when you get to your destination, you need things like train tickets, car hire. The return journey is the exact opposite, with different worries, a different mindset and anxieties. Your travel app should give offerings, information and ancillaries that will remove the anxiety.

TAKE AWAY THE PAINAll of us in the travel chain have to work together as a community to take the pain out of travel. We have to share data, to become more integrated. We have to go back to basics. Once we get it right, everything will be tied together properly once and for all.

We can’t just be looking at what’s in it for us. We have to look at the customer and how we can make life better for them. That’s what’s coming next – making things better, easier and faster, wherever you are.

Last November, we launched Ryanair Labs to rip up the playbook.

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The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

“ IT’S NOT ONLY ABOUT GETTING THE MOST CURRENT INFORMATION, IT’S GETTING THE RIGHT INFORMATION.”

JIM PETERS CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SITA

TOO MANY APPS?We all know connected travelers want information, simple enough. But they want all kinds of information from different sources and different owners. They want it when they want it, where they want it. And they want it on their phone while they’re traveling.

But the issue is there are too many apps. If you search ‘travel’ on the iTunes App Store, there are 17,000 apps with the word ‘travel’ in them. So what if, instead of an app, you downloaded an experience? You said, “I want to download my trip experience”. And you’re asked “What trip?” to which you respond: “I’m flying on this flight, I’m staying at this hotel, I’m doing this and this” … and so on. And Apple actually said “You need this, this and this” etc, and then linked them together and said: “There’s your experience.”

This will evolve, so don’t get your brands too wrapped around your apps, because it’s going to change. You can’t have 17,000 travel apps. It’s not going to work.

DEEP-LINKING Something simpler that Apple and Google are looking at is called deep-linking. It means you can link from one app to another. Apps are like walled gardens, you can’t go outside the app. But they’re introducing a concept of deep-linking that would make it more like the web, where you’re on a web page and you can move around. This is a different level of collaboration. This is sharing eyeballs. Will the airline want to share eyeballs with some of the other providers, or will the eyeballs ever come back to my app?

Those eyeballs will come back, and they’ll stay on your stuff, as long as it’s useful to them. And if there’s stuff that’s useful elsewhere, and they use you to get to that, they’ll come back

to you. So you’ll have to give up a little bit of your brand and a level of collaboration to say, you can actually move through from app to app and back into the app via some kind of deep-linking mechanism.

Let’s say they don’t fix the apps and deep-linking doesn’t take off. Can we get the same data in all of the apps? This is an issue about the data consistency and data sharing.

We know there’s a data issue, especially around flight info. This is a challenge. You could have service providers like SITA help to aggregate and broker that information. But it’s not only about getting the most current information, it’s getting the right information.

STANDARDS FIRST AND SECONDTo set up this kind of service, we need two elements. First, standards. You have to create standards for how the data will be shared and distributed. We’re working with both IATA and ACI but I think we have some way to go.

Second, you need an API, or Application Programming Interface. SITA created an API platform called www.developer.aero. We use it as a community means of supporting the app ecosystem – including, to date, the beacon registry API, bag tracking API, flight full API, TCA compliant boarding pass API – and we’re adding queue time APIs and walk time APIs.

We can’t invent all that data, and we can’t invent these specs, so we work with committees to build the specs, and then we work with interested parties who say, “Yes, help us”. This is something that takes time, but it’s our answer to the data problem and the issues of data aggregation and data quality.

What if, instead of an app, you downloaded an experience?

Expert opinion from all sides of the air transport community came together on the first day of SITA’s 2015 Air Transport IT Summit for a set of Insight Sessions. This year the speakers concentrated on the readiness of the industry to benefit from the opportunities offered by the connected traveler. Perspectives were discussed from the point of view of airlines and airports, technologists and expert commentators. As ever, the content was informed, intense and full of imaginative leaps. The event was given context with an opening address by Arthur Calderwood, Senior VP Marketing & Sales Operations at SITA.

ARE AIRLINES READY TO CONNECT WITH TRAVELERS?How much are airline IT strategies in tune with tomorrow’s passengers’ needs and wants? Armed with the early results of the 2015 Airline IT Trends Survey, this question was explored by a number of industry specialists, including SITA’s own experts. • Nigel Pickford – Director, Market Insight

& Marketing Operations, SITA• Thomas Windmuller – Senior Vice President, Airport,

Passenger, Cargo and Security, IATA (Retired August 2015)

• Ashraf Ayoub – CIO, Royal Jordanian Airlines • Allison O’Neill – Vice President, Passenger, SITA• Max Kingsley-Jones, Editor – (Moderator) Airline Business

and Flightglobal’s Executive Director Content

Go to SITA’s IT Trends Hub for details of the Airline IT Trends Survey: www.sita.aero/resources/it-trends-hub

TRAVELERS & TECHNOLOGY: IT’S AN EMOTIONAL JOURNEYAlthough 81% of air travelers now travel with a smartphone, the uptake on services is often not as rapid as originally predicted. This session will explore the importance of human factors in technology adoption, and how they cannot be ignored if airlines and airports are to succeed in engaging effectively with the connected traveler. Travelers’ emotions are important drivers of behavior and will impact the way they use a particular technology – and every new technology raises new design and deployment considerations.• Renaud Irminger – Director, SITA Lab• Michael Zaddach – Senior Vice President IT,

Flughafen München GmbH

The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

INSIGHT SESSIONS

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• Gilles Brentini – Innovation Manager, Geneva Airport• Pearl PU Faltings – Human Computer Interaction Group

at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Head of Group

• Catherine Mayer – (Moderator) Vice President, SITA

CREATING A SENSE OF PLACE: AIRPORTS GET PERSONAL Giving an airport a true sense of place, and de-stressing passenger processes, are significantly influencing airport IT strategies – while the options for digital experiences are broadening. From way-finding, to retail, to cultural experiences and entertainment, airports are applying IT in new ways to engage with the connected traveler. This session explored how airports are seeking to leverage IT to make time spent at the airport less stressful, more enjoyable - and memorable!• Robert O’Meara – Director Media & Communications,

ACI Europe• Piet Demunter – Director of Strategic Development,

Brussels Airport Company• Pedro Casimiro – Manager Business Development,

Brussels Airlines• Carlos Kaduoka – Director, Airport, SITA• Matthys Serfontein – (Moderator) Vice President,

Airport, SITA

CONTEXTUAL ENGAGEMENT AT 30,000FT: THE NEW PERSONALIZED ON-BOARD EXPERIENCE?With entire fleets of connected aircraft now being deployed, the on-board passenger experience has the potential to be truly personalized. Passengers will be connected throughout the flight – but realizing the vision of in-flight personal service demands much more than on-board Wi-Fi. Designing digital services on-board will need to include the cabin and flight crew to ensure new heights of passenger satisfaction are achieved. And to make a difference to the passenger experience, this requires real attention to detail. • Michel Dulery – Client Service Director, Digitas• Tim Grosser – Head of Digital Transformation, IATA• Ian Dawkins – CEO, SITA OnAir• Nigel Pickford – (Moderator) Director, Market Insight

& Marketing Operations, SITA

INSIGHT SESSIONS

See the presentations in the download center at: www.sitasummit.aero

The 2015 Air Transport IT Summit | The Highlights

CALL FOR SPEAKERS FOR 2016If you’re a senior member of the air transport industry with a strong story to tell the industry’s CIOs and other IT professionals, then we’d like to hear from you. We’re looking for airlines, airports and other air transport organizations who can present case studies and experiences that would benefit our Air Transport IT Summit audience.

Please send your ideas to Terence Tucker terence.tucker@sita.aero

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24-26 MAY 2016FOR THE IT INDUSTRY EVENT OF THE YEARThe next Air Transport IT Summit will be held on 24-26 May 2016 at the Hesperia Towers Hotel, Barcelona. Details to be confirmed.

If you’re a SITA SC member you can also join us for the SITA SC 71st Annual General Assembly. SITA SC members will receive reports on SITA’s performance over the last year and hear from the SITA Board Chair and the CEO about SITA’s future.

DOWNLOADCENTERwww.sitasummit.aero

Go to the download center at www.sitasummit.aero for presentations, speeches, photographs, videos and more.

See also SITA’s online YouTube channel www.youtube.com/sitaonline as well as www.sita.aero/air-transport-it-review for features covering the Summit topics.

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