Is the passenger coming to or with an aircraft ?

“As the pilot checked the dashboard in front of him, I settle on my seat, attached my seat belt and look for a power plug around me. I adjust the seat pillow, listened distractedly to the pilot’s instruction, preparing for this 6 hours trip, looking at a few messages before we got disconnected. After a few minutes, the engine roared and the travel started under a beautiful sunset.”

This little narration extracted from a travel book can sound familiar for many of us.  As we look at it from a professional point of view, it can give some insight on how to approach the personalization of the travel experience.

But before we jump to subjects of targeted advertisement, passenger incentive and fidelity program approach, let’s step back and ask a question …
Is this extract a flight experience or … a simple description of a last road trip to Vegas with some friends ? The answer leads to a second question which is the subject of this tech-talk : is the traveler coming to or with an aircraft ?

This reflection emphasize the fact that, in a travel competitive market, as we look for new opportunities to catch (or retain) the passenger attention, we can miss an important point which is the main root of the passenger satisfaction. From a market point of view, the eco-system (as depicted in the extract below) is now a complex interrelation of companies that, by processing the passenger identity and activities, have complementary or opposite interest to make business with the traveler.

The Aviation, Travel and Tourism ecosystem report

 from the World Economic Forum

Even if there is still non-connected scenarios, due to regulation or technological limits, the migration from isolated aircraft to connected experience change the boundaries of each travel actor and also the paradigm of interaction with the passenger.

Face to this change, several questions are raising :

• Do we loose value if the passenger is “at home” in the aircraft instead of focusing on  the flight experience ?
• Do we need to look for experience in the aircraft (like exchanging with the surrounding) or experience outside the aircraft (like reaching out to your family) ?

As a traveler and a junior frequent flyer, my preferred approach is to answer that it will depend on who is the passenger and what is his nature.

A few years ago, flight experience was restricted to important business (most of the time for hierarchical assets of the company) or long flight to foreign countries for an annual leisure trip (or visit to the family). The population got diverse thanks to the drop of the flight cost and we live more rich experience while on the seat including connected features.
We flight now to go to a facility, a conference, to save some hours in our weekend, or because we found a good deal that trigger an impulsive travel. As an additional example, depending of our readiness for the final destination (pending hotel reservations or slides to complete), we will look to engage (for feedback) or avoid our surrounding (to focus on our tasks).

Faced to a diversity of persons, we will also experience a wide variety of expectation. This need lead us to look for passenger profiling and targeted offer … again, before jumping into technical details, let’s ask ourselves about the goal of a profiling. The answer can be seen as obvious (or obscure) but if highlight a deep question on the position that we need to take when using big data to apply it on personalization.

As we have done several decades before, with big road placards or distribution of coupons in the street, we try now to capture purchases habits and history by collecting data with a “probability to purchase” based on the passenger profile. Even if this aspect can lead to important changes like the “buy then ship” to “ship then buy” explained by Ajay Agrawal, it can not be restricted to this only

Looking from a user point of view, we will be probably concerned to have a “Big Brother” system starring at our actions that have the only goal, based on the predictability of our behavior, to find the breach in our resistance and sell us goods.

To protest privacy, regulations like the GDPR are forcing some changes in the data collection, moving from historical databases to profile approach and behavior model. Those models are refined from a simple category based algorithm (Propose a merchandise because you are between 30 to 40 years old) to more complex models including AI technologies like neuronal network that will refine the prediction of the action in regards to the stimuli.

However, to be sure not to miss an important aspect, we need to stay on the user shoes and value their interest.

As mentioned before, our travel goals can be of several types and they will influence our behavior. As a start, to understand the concepts, let’s classify travel experience into 3 big buckets :

• Business travel
• Family travel
• Leasure travel

On a business travel, the focus of the attention will be on efficiency. A time shift in the travel agenda can jeopardize the business schedule on destination, create unnecessary stress to readjust priorities and physical strain that will impact our focus during further meetings.
During the flight,  external interruptions or long waiting periods that prevent from preparing the mission will decrease the value that we see in using the service of a specific airline.
As a frequent flyer, we will also probably looks for travel accommodations like lounge, fresh food or beverage, or additional comfort.

As a father of 3 kids of diverse ages, when I am traveling with the family, my priorities will be more focused on safety and peace (Yes, let’s have a quick smile here as we love our quiet and federated kids).
If there is a young baby, the parents will probably carry inconvenient material like stroller, baby bottles and diapers. They will also need more time to settle, experience more disruption and temporary urgency or conflict (here is the smile again). 
Targeted advertisement, for example, can be then an important source of release or stress. A source of release, for example, is something (good or service) that gives us a quick solution (like extra-help for arrangement) to the stream of events that will occur during the travel. On the other side, solicitation can be an additional stress as it will increase the number of “No” that we will have to negotiate.

In this situation, the interaction will be focused on short proximity as many aircraft does not support to have 5 travelers in a layout that allow simple communication between them. Interruption for help, support to fears, question on destination or previous travel location, will inevitably occur and will need us to be prepared for a fragmented experience (or colored experience – smile)

In a leisure more, our attention is outside the aircraft. As we travel with our wife or some friends, in a similar approach than with kids, we will probably enjoy movies while waiting, but also look to contact family members that will welcome us or help in the travel arrangement, visit destination web sites or traveler sites to pick up restaurants, evaluate best possible schedules based on time tables …
If we plan to hike or walk to visit a town, we will search for charging points in and other arrangements that will allow to be ready for the next experience while flying to the destination

Of course, depending of several factors like presence of colleagues in business travel, night time while with family or willing to simply talk with our wife or friend, these modes will be influenced or mixed together.

Back to the original question of focus of the experience, those examples highlights the importance of several behavior profiles for a single person, but also the fact that the traveler is, at the same moment, following his self travel goal and is in the aircraft.

In the other tech-talk (Hi I am Red), the highlight was on the need to have technology enabling the relation between the use and the environment that surrounds him. In this context, the personalization and the use of personal information needs to concur to reduce the “frictions” encounter by the traveler in his travel experience.

Does it mean that there is no place for airline identity in an aircraft ? 
Of course not, the ability of a brand to fulfill each of the expectation is the most core value related to the brand during the flight experience.
Ability for the crew to engage the passenger without asking too much questions outside the scope of the request (like name, seat, class or loyalty status) makes a point.

As connectivity systems have removed the boundaries that were limiting the communication inside an aircraft, the engagement of the airline is also now to provide access to connected services, partners and to the open world. 
It can be challenging to preserve a brand in an open world, but, as primary provider of the access (like amazon allowing competition to sell on their portal), the airline have an important opportunity to learn from usage of the passenger expectations and services that will differentiate them from others.

For digital services, the challenge is slightly different as the perceived quality of  the services (like video streaming) will be a result of the quality of the quality of each intermediate component and its ability to fulfill its part of the contract.
For example, live streaming on a seat will accumulate quality of the original  streaming, ground network performance, stability of the satellite connection, and performance of the network inside the aircraft.

However, the fact, that the experience is no more limited to the boundary of the aircraft, allows continuity of the service from boarding gate to destination gate (and even outside the avionic world with the passenger PED).

But does it means that the solution relies on an airline application ?
Looking at our phone, with the increase of our mobility, our device have already about 300 applications from several stores to accommodate travel in different countries.

For frequent travelers that have incentive in some loyalty programs, there is a clear benefit to install a brand application. However, for the majority of the travelers, switching between airlines based on offer or country context, the benefit is not so obvious as the data collected by a single airline are often insufficient.

On the other hand, the personal device (phone, watch, tablet …) is the preferred recipient of the passenger identity that will allow fast (and secured) association with the traveler. From there, as a simple example of the 4th industry change, the airport and aircraft environment will have a wide panel of smart devices that will benefits from central coordination to better serve the passenger.

Using boarding time to inform the passenger of service availability on board, pre-selection of content are example of impact of removing boundaries between inside and outside the aircraft.
During the flight, seat, lighting, air conditioning are examples of devices that can, by a synchronized behavior, enhance the experience of night/day time, service schedule like lunch or even sickness or fear related to flight experience.

As a conclusion, the value provided by the airline have a strong and highly extensible potential if, like an IOT or grid approach, the personalization goal is focused on following the user in his travel experience more than collecting private data to “have the history”.
Of course, if we look at the recent data challenges created by information sharing (like runners of Strava), the direct privacy (personal user data) and indirect privacy (possible extended use of consolidated date from a group of users) have to be preserved by the owner of the service.

As the service prove its ability to limit the friction of the user against its environment, as a classic win-win output, the user will be willing to share more selected information to get more benefits from there.

An anticipated support of the crew to reduce the difficulty of a baby to accommodate in the noisy and stressful environment the aircraft, will provide a clear difference for the mother or the father of the child, but also for all the surrounding passengers that will value the professional behavior of the crew (and preserve their own experience away from long loud cry – smile)