ONBOARD ENTERTAINMENT
“What can aircraft designers learn from high-speed trains in terms of convenience, comfort and a door-to-door service?” Devin Liddell, principal brand strategist
at Teague, followed with the exhortation to businesses to co-brand in order to extend their reach. With a wealth of examples of brand partnerships that had enhanced market share, from Arsenal and Emirates to Puma and Ferrari, his message was that "Partnerships are already our most powerful currency". Pointing out that the most popular
airline in the top brand list was only in 243rd place, with several banks and burger chains much higher, Liddell recommended selecting unexpected brands for co-maketing. This would move the airlines up the list into the lifestyle brands, because after all: "Air travel is amazing!" he said. Liddell also recommended re-thinking cabin classes around the passenger needs and experience rather than the seat pitch. Delta has introduced Innovation Class, where you sit with a major player in your industry. What about Connectivity Class, Cinema Class or Kid Class?
Is wifi a game changer? Ash ElDifrawi, cco of Gogo, kicked off the IFEC breakout session with results of their survey of what technology passengers are using inflight, helping to make sense of the PED/embedded IFE debate. They have now served 50 million
customers and their results showed average customers spend four to eight hours online on the ground, so inflight wifi is an important factor in choosing an airline, and more so for business than leisure trips. It also revealed that 50-99% of passengers have at least one PED on the plane and 50-81% say they like to use their own device. 38% would pay for internet access and this goes up to 53% for business travellers, though ElDifrawi conceded that actual takeup rates were lower. ElDifrawi went on to talk about Gogo's app-based ‘text and talk’ service for
mobile phones. The advantage of this being that it needs no equipment on the plane, unlike the GSM system which requires the installation of picocells. Gogo can handle up to 100 passengers online at a time. Its ATG4 technology promises to deliver four times the bandwidth and the new GTO system up to 20 times.
Connecting air to ground Southwest Airlines and Global Eagle Entertainment brought connectivity issues into a wider arena, with a session detailing their joint venture to provide flyers with a gate-to-gate wifi service. Introduced as soon as the relaxed
regulations allowed in November 2013, Angela Vargo, manager of product development at Southwest, said that it has brought about a major shift in airline and passenger behaviour. “The ku band system installed and managed by GEE was previously disabled below 10,000 feet,” she said. “But the new gate-to-gate service had led to 30% longer session times, with 30% more simultaneous users, and 25% of the data consumption on the ground.” Southwest introduced a simple
payment system of a flat $8 a day, but Vargo said that the benefits were not principally the monetising of the service, but that it made passengers more comfortable overall, as they were used to being connected. Simon McLellan, vp of engineering at
GEE, said that the main challenges on the technical side were the increase in data consumption and network costs. The system uses some blocking technology to prioritise small information packets, so that under heavy loads, your email may take longer, but browsing still works. Southwest also offers Live TV onboard, but has no embedded IFE system. Vargo added that there was a long list of ancillary revenue opportunities they were considering. She added that the success of the system was proof of the old adage: "Build it and they will come.”
PICK OF THE PEC
Jeremy Clark looks at the lighter side of this heavy weight industry
• Mehmet Büyükkaytan, svp ground operations, Turkish Airlines, extolled the virtues of hospitality via better lounges and ground services. This was not innovation but it was a demonstration of how passenger care and service has moved up in an agenda dominated in recent years by cost-cutting in F&B, in deference to IFE investment.
• The message was clear from Daniel Kerrison's, vp inflight product, flydubai: “We are new, so you suppliers can come up with something new too.” Tired of being sold out-dated technology for the cabin, flydubai set the bar higher than ever for suppliers to deliver real innovation.
• The award for the most baffling presentation goes to Blake Emery, director of differentiation strategy for Boeing, who introduced Michael Robinson, ceo and design director, ED Design in: “Triangle Paradigm Shift Model for Modern Mobility” - huh? This was billed as looking beyond the aviation sector for possible game- changing concepts. We found out that self-driving cars would be the norm by 2050, although how it will work in Mumbai, no-one knows.
• Branding is always a fun subject but when presented by Teague’s principal brand strategist Devin Liddell, it made for a pertinent session, called ‘strength through partnership’. Citing unlikely team-ups like Crock-Pot and Belkin (who produced a slow cooker you can work from an app) and Starbucks and Swiss Rail, he looked at how airlines are increasingly recognising the value of brand partnerships.
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