Could Technology End Airline Delays?
Are you a fed up air traveler? You’re not alone. Delays and cancellations seem to have become the rule this year, but there is a better way. Technology and free markets could vastly improve air travel, if politicians will allow them to work.
It’s become popular to blame air travel woes on deregulation, just as California pundits and politicos are blaming a freer energy market for rising electric bills. In both cases, competition and free markets are unjustly taking the fall in public commentary. California eliminated some restrictions on the sale of electricity. But state government and the Feds continue to regulate energy production, while environmental groups block the creation of new power plants, which makes it difficult and costly to generate electricity. If it costs a lot to generate power, you can only squeeze so much savings out of new marketing rules.
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Do technology standards make sense for airlines’ attempts to differentiate?
GDS executives are calling for the development of technical standards for the booking and processing of airlines’ unbundled fares, ancillary revenue and other sales innovations.
Sabre chief Sam Gilliland raised the issue at November’s PhoCusWright conference.
But other industry players are saying, “Not so fast.”
“Standards are good, but let’s all keep in mind that this is about differentiation,” Suzanne Rubin, American Airlines’ managing director of merchandising and distribution strategy and president of AAVacations, said. “We don’t want something that puts us right back into the same box of commodity product.”
Gilliland has warned that the merchandising trend could become “e-ticketing 2.0.”
Electronic tickets made their debut in 1995. Many passengers resisted using them because if a flight was canceled, they had to stand in line to have a paper ticket issued and endorsed to another carrier.
The airlines quickly realized that e-ticket adoption would increase if that hurdle were removed, yet the first interline e-ticket agreement was not signed until 2002. It covered two airlines.
Early adoption of standards would have eased the transition to universal electronic ticketing, but some industry participants say merchandising is a different animal.
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne, managing partner of T2Impact, a business accelerator for travel distribution, said, “Airlines are saying that this is not a standardized service and should not be covered by standard rules that somebody mandates.”
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High Fuel Prices in Airline Industry is Causing Technology Innovation Advances
The goal of a business or corporation is to make a profit and to do so they must perform a desired service or make a needed or desired product that the customer or consumer is willing to impart a unit of trade for; a dollar or many dollars you see? When fuel prices go up in the transportation sector business must find ways to pass on these costs and streamline their operations to do more, carry more, more efficiently.
This subject came up recently when someone asked a moderator of an online think tank to explain. Here is the question; “Can we expect to see improvements in airline travel in regards to cost change or fuel-surcharges?”
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2009 Airline IT Trends Survey: Technology developments
Passengers using their mobile phones to check-in may be fairly thin on the ground today, but airlines are forecasting that people using this service will increase fivefold in the next three years and are gearing up to rapidly accelerate the availability of a whole range of mobile facilities, including check-in, to help their customers self-process their journey.
The growth and popularity of web and mobile services look set to overshadow kiosks as a check-in channel – indeed airlines in some regions that have yet to implement kiosks may simply leapfrog this evolutionary stage. However there is plenty of life left in the kiosk as a self-service channel, with an increasing number of airlines looking to evolve it further to provide other self-processing tools.
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Pondering American and jetBlue: Most Interesting
Coming on the heels of last week’s post about Southwest and being jilted by Delta and US Airways in their reworked slot exchange, this morning we get an announcement that American and jetBlue are entering into a new commercial arrangement at key east coast cities. I will probably write later on the topic but wanted to jot a few things down before I leave for meetings.
* Each SkyTeam and STAR have enhanced their positions in the New York metro market in recent months. Given the importance of New York and the key east coast cities of New York and Boston, American enhances its presence as well as that of oneworld with this announcement.
* jetBlue has a relationship with Aer Lingus. Lufthansa invested in jetBlue. Now jetBlue enters into a commercial relationship with American whereby customers of each airline can enjoy interline capabilities with the other at each Boston Logan and New York JFK on non-overlapping routes.
* Is jetBlue becoming the Alaska Airlines of the east coast? Keeping itself most relevant in its home market by code sharing with many airlines?
* American intends to transfer eight slot pairs at Ronald Reagan National Airport and one slot pair at White Plains N.Y. to jetBlue. Three more than jetBlue would receive in the DL-US proposed transaction. So for jetBlue, will it be 5, 8 or 13 slot pairs at Ronald Reagan National Airport?
* jetBlue intends to transfer 12 slot pairs at JFK to American.
* This slot transfer business is getting very interesting.
* It has been a bad week for Southwest. Between their cry of being “left out” of the US – DL slot swap; talk of being jilted by WestJet; and now American teaming with jetBlue …….
I wonder what Southwest must be thinking?