Latched onto apps
Jessica Twentyman speaks to Southwest, Malaysia Airlines and British Airways about their approaches to phone and tablet applications.
W
hat could be more convenient for an airline passenger on the move than the ability to book
tickets, look up departure times or check-in for fl ights using their mobile phone? As many can already testify, “there’s an app for that”, to borrow Apple’s iPhone marketing slogan. Mobile capabilities are, of course, not new for the airline industry. For several years, operators have offered passengers the chance to surf reduced versions of their websites from the browsers on their mobile phones. What sets the latest generation of mobile apps apart, however, is that they are downloaded to the handset itself, typically from an online library of applications or ‘app store’. Once installed, these applications can take full advantage of the powerful processors and abundant memory contained in smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and handsets running Google’s Android operating system.
The choice of mobile apps is already bewildering, with apps available to help users count calories, manage their personal fi nances and even observe Ramadan. As of June 2010, there were some 225,000 apps available in Apple’s App Store, around one in 10 is travel-related. Android Market, the storefront for the Google operating system that powers many other
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smartphones, is believed to have around 100,000 apps and is catching up fast.
These developments are opening up a world of opportunities for airlines. In the US, for example, 24% of business travellers and 15% of leisure travellers now carry a smartphone and are therefore potential users of airline mobile apps, according to Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at IT market research company Forrester Research Worldwide. He adds that airline passengers display above-average rates of smartphone adoption.
In order to meet that demand, airlines are scrambling to develop and launch apps that will help them grab passengers’ attention and their travel budgets, too. Unsurprisingly, given the hype surrounding the device and its popularity as a must-have device, Apple’s iPhone is usually the fi rst target for new, device-specifi c applications.
But what do airlines hope to achieve through these initiatives? According to Dr Amin Khan, senior general manager of commercial strategy at Malaysia Airlines, a successful mobile app will strengthen an
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