IATA World Passenger Symposium 18th Oct

L IA N C E IO 1 SP DIT UE E S IS

I N T E R N AT I O N A L DA I LY 18 OCTOBER 2016

WORLD PASSENGER SYMPOSIUM

Airlines International Daily is sponsored by:

18-20 October 2016 | Dubai

Welcome The goal of the World Passenger Symposium (WPS), now in its fifth year, is to create greater value for the air traveler. Under the theme of “Innovating better, together” stakeholders in the travel value chain come together to define a transformative vision for meeting the growing demand for air travel safely, securely, and efficiently.

The theme of innovation is ONE Order initiatives that will reflected in the activities of the transform the industry’s Simplifying the Business (StB) approach to Offer and Order Steering Group, which in recent Management. years has extended to think tanks The second goal is real-time of value chain collaborators. interaction. Providing customers “What sets the StB Steering with trusted, accurate Group apart from the rest of information from all operators Aleks Popovich throughout their journey will be IATA governance is its pure and simple focus on the customer,” vital. Here, initiatives include says Aleks Popovich, IATA’s Senior Vice Travel Communications and Customer President, Financial and Distribution Contact information.

Services. “It has seen the birth of major “The third goal is a seamless and hassleindustry innovation based on three goals free journey,” Popovich informs. that dominate the agenda of this year’s “Initiatives ranging from One Identity to WPS.” Smart Security, Baggage XML to Fast The fi rst of those goals is new airline Travel will optimize processes and reduce products that empower airline retailing and related wait times throughout the merchandizing. The WPS will examine in passenger journey.” detail the New Distribution Capability and Nick Careen, IATA’s Senior Vice

President for Airport, Passenger, Cargo and Security agrees that innovation is at the heart of WPS, and the main reason for its existence. “It allows the industry to get together on an annual basis to discuss, debate and envision the future of the endto-end passenger experience, from how passage is purchased to the selection of on-board entertainment,” he notes.

“Our surveys have indicated what the passenger expects and innovation is at the core of what we do, so a forum like WPS allows us to validate concepts and turn them into projects that ultimately become a standard,” he adds. “This not only enhances the customer experience but also often results in industry efficiencies as well.”

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From New Distribution Capability to New Distribution Reality

By Dominique El Bez HEAD OF SITA NDC COMMUNITY ENABLEMENT PROGRAMME SITA NDC is going to be the hot distribution topic at this conference and, if it’s anything like the ‘discovery’ workshops that we have already held on NDC with the airline and travel agent communities, then I’m sure we will be hearing many different viewpoints

over the next few days. The shared learnings emerging from all the players are a vital contribution to the industry-wide adoption of NDC. In response to those learnings, SITA aims to remove some of the apparent obstacles to making this happen. Our vision is to provide efficient and easy-to-use means of collaboration

irrespective of the NDC version, associated messaging and security preferences they may be using.

SITA’s purpose in NDC, as an industry leader and NDC Level 3 certified IT provider, is to help the industry turn new distribution opportunities into reality for our own airline members and the wider ATI

between airlines, sellers and other stakeholders using NDC. The objective is to deliver an intelligent hub for many-to-many NDC message exchange, through which stakeholders can interact with their NDC business partners

community as a whole.

Don’t forget to look out for the SITA NDC flyer in your delegate bag and please feel free to drop by our booth in the main exhibition area to fi nd out more. We look forward to meeting you!

Making travel simpler implifying the Business (StB) has a 12-year track record of innovation and simplifying the end-to-end passenger travel experience.

Under StB, the industry transitioned to 100% electronic ticketing and 100% bar-coded boarding passes. The initiatives dramatically simplified the purchasing process and improved the passenger flow through the airport.

But for Glenn Morgan, Head of Digital Business Transformation at the International Airlines Group (IAG), the most salient success is New Distribution Capability (NDC). “All industry

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stakeholders are aligned towards a common goal to lower costs and improve efficiency,” he says.

“I think the biggest impact will come from a business model transformation,” he continues.

“The StB ONE Order project will transform the way customers shop, order, and pay for products and services. Its implementation will allow us to move away from complex legacy processes and towards a standard retail order management solution. The project is designed to significantly speed up the time in which we can train new staff and solve problems.”

Morgan says a modern and

flexible platform will also allow third parties to innovate in an industry that has traditionally been too complex for start-ups.

This will benefit customers by creating exciting new products and services.

There is still a lot more to do though, according to Morgan.

The airline business is a complex industry with many stakeholders who have differing and sometimes opposing requirements.

“StB is committed to creating a world where shopping for airline products and services is quick, easy and simple,” Morgan suggests. “In this world, the customer is always in command and has accurate and up-to-date information. Queuing will be eliminated from the airport while safety and security will always be inherent in everything we do.

“Getting to this point means that we need to continue to run fast and stay ahead,” Morgan says.

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Supporting emerging business trends

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he Passenger Services Conference (PSC), taking place in conjunction with World

Passenger Symposium, is the culmination of a year of industry standards activities whereby all the recommendations and proposals submitted by the various committees and working groups are reviewed and formally adopted into resolutions and recommended practices.

Last year, the PSC rescinded 29 standards supporting paper processes and procedures.

“The PSC is now totally focused on ensuring automation and data exchange standards and behaviors are in place to support a 100% paperless environment while supporting major transformational change programs, such as NDC and ONE Order,” says Dave McEwen, IATA’s Head of Airline Distribution Services.

The industry demands more innovation and speed to support emerging business trends. The PSC is in the process of deploying an Airline Industry Data Model that provides a central repository of terms and defi nitions, which will enable a quicker release of data exchange standards. Combined with the deployment of a new online collaborative standards-setting tool later in 2016 and with key fi ndings from the developer portal, hackathons, and developmental releases of messages prior to formal adoption, the standards-setting capability of the PSC will be greatly improved.

“It will ensure business requirements are documented faster and standards released quicker,” says McEwen. “In summary, it is all about speed and a more architectural approach to standards innovation.”

The evolution of the WPS he fi rst WPS, held in October 2011 in Singapore, was hosted in the same hotel where the 2004 IATA AGM endorsed the launch of the Simplifying the Business (StB) program.

“The purpose of that fi rst WPS was to kick-off a new phase of the StB program, which had successfully delivered the flagship project of 100% e-ticketing, plus a few other projects,” explains Eric Leopold, IATA’s Director of Transformation for Financial and Distribution Services.

“What makes WPS unique, compared with other events, is that the Passenger Services Conference takes place at the same time and makes decisions on industry standards that will enable the transformation of the industry,” he adds. “A key innovation on the agenda this year is an invitation-only executive summit, bringing senior leaders in a room to discuss how the airline industry can be more innovative.

Leopold cites the NDC Hackathon, which took place last weekend, as an example of how the WPS is delivering positive results for the industry. “Another example is the innovation award, where dozens of new ideas or products are submitted to our jury and the winner will benefit from an incubation period in Silicon Valley,” he says.

“The outcome will be innovative solutions supporting better customer experience.”

Looking ahead, Leopold believes there are plenty of areas ripe for disruptive innovation. “There is a lot going on around loyalty programs and payment, and there are still high expectations on the security side,” he says. “On the digital side, there are fascinating developments around artificial intelligence and drones.

“The challenge is to get the industry together and align on a common objective.

WPS is the ideal forum to articulate a new vision and set the standards that will enable that vision.”

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T O S U B S C R I B E T O A I R L I N E S I N T E R N A T I O N A L F R E E O F C H A R G E , V I S I T W W W. I A T A . O R G / O P T I N

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One Identity for one traveler

Passenger processing activities can sometimes be repetitive and cumbersome for the air traveler. Typically, passengers have to identify themselves to the airline, again to border control authorities and once more at the security checkpoint. The problem is that currently the passenger’s identity is held in different silos, forcing the passenger to repeatedly enter and verify identity details.

The One Identity vision is a streamlined, friction-free airport experience that allows an air traveler to assert their identity just once. It is envisioned that much of the verification process will occur prior to travel in a secure way that protects customers’ personal information.

All relevant information is submitted, including identity and itinerary data, and in return the stakeholders validate and subsequently authorize the data. Customers then receive an assurance that all is in order and that they are ready to fly. The physical checks to assure an individual identity on the day of travel would remain to create the bond between the physical person and the authorized data. But these checks would avoid re-gathering previously provided data.

This could be achieved through the deployment of such new technologies as automated border control and realtime scanning as a passenger walks through a boarding gate, to ensure that the traveler is the same person as represented by the passport. The success and efficiency of these and similar technologies requires that all stakeholders work from a single data set. This would have the added benefits of improving safety and security—always the

industry’s top priorities—and removing some of the costs and complexity in the business.

“At any customer touchpoint, if a passenger’s identity can be confirmed, then a more personalized customer experience can be delivered, efficiencies can be realized, and the opportunity to generate ancillary revenue is enhanced,” says Pierre Charbonneau, IATA’s Director, Passenger.

The trust established between stakeholders and the passenger by this process will be further enhanced by industry data models that separate the data needed for operational contact and identification from the data needed for commercial purposes. All parties in the value stream should therefore have a greater willingness to participate.

Exactly where or how the data is stored is still being explored as is the content of that data. As a starting point, IATA is exploring collaboration possibilities with Open Identity Exchange (OIX) to provide a global standard.

The vision for One Identity is clear, however, and involves true collaboration between airlines, airports, governments and all stakeholders

Airline take-up tops NDC agenda he priority for the New Distribution Capability (NDC) program continues to be airline adoption of the XML messaging standard.

There has, however, been great traction from IT providers delivering NDC-capable solutions in recent months. There are currently 25 IT providers that are NDC certified in the IATA NDC registry. IATA is also intensifying engagement with the larger travel management companies and the corporate buyer community which are critical players in the value chain.

Future strategy will additionally evolve around the following three pillars: • Technology: Evolution of the NDC standard through releases twice a year • Engagement: Ongoing exchanges with the entire value chain through various forums, such as the Business Travel Summit and industry meetings • Innovation: Fostering innovation through IATA-led hackathons to further develop airline retailing.

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face it, there’s hardly any statistic that’s more important at a connecting hub than the ability for passengers to conveniently and easily connect between flights.

“We will be creating something that is manageable, navigable, and easy to use at Dubai World Central and it is all being enabled by technology,” he adds.

Unisys’ Vice President of Transportation for North America, Terry Hartmann, agrees that IT will play a huge role in the future. He believes new passenger facilities will be radically different to the US airports of the 1960s. “They will be green; convey a sense of space; offer calm and tranquility; have

Creating a common airport vision o accommodate increasing demand, new airport concepts are required that make air travel more efficient and make best use of emerging technologies, new processes, and architectural innovations.

IATA is investigating a common vision for the airport of the future that brings together a wide range of initiatives with innovative ideas not yet incorporated in formal projects. The vision will outline concepts across the entire airport space to provide a seamless end-to-end journey for passengers, baggage, and cargo.

“Without this common vision, we will struggle to make the changes now to shape the industry for the airports we wish to have in the future,” said Hemant Mistry, IATA’s Global Director for Airport Infrastructure and Fuel.

Certain elements are already well defined while others require fresh thinking to develop concepts that can be implemented in a modular way for both new build and existing airports.

Arguably, the passenger terminal of the

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future is being built today at Dubai World Central–Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC). According to operator Dubai Airports, it will be developed as 12 mediumsize terminals on one site rather than as one single giant hub, ultimately capable of accommodating 200 million passengers.

Under its blueprint, DWC will comprise 12 nodes, built across the airport’s vast 140km2 site. Each of the nodes will be equipped to handle 20 million passengers per annum and act as identical, selfcontained, independent facilities, effectively creating 12 different airports.

Paul Griffiths, Dubai Airports’ CEO, says that this format will make DWC one of the most “customer-centric” airports on the planet. Nobody will have to walk more than 400 meters to a connecting flight.

“In my view, we are heading in the wrong direction by building ever-bigger terminal buildings because bigger is not necessarily better,” says Griffiths. “It inevitably means longer walking distances, less intimate experiences, and greater difficulties for customers making connections. And, let’s

unobtrusive security screening; be a fun place to go, with a variety of shops and retail offerings and quality dining; boast reception lobbies that are spacious; have self-bag drop and roving assistants; be terrorist and cyber secure; and, above all, fully support the mobile passenger experience with seamless Wi-Fi and wayfinding.”

Many of the world’s leading airport architects agree that big changes are happening in airport design. Ben Lao, Managing Director at Ben Lao and Associates, says: “The technology-driven transformation of the airport check-in process means that it is time to re-think the philosophy of concentrating so much on the front-end of the terminal and focus more on making concourses less confining and more inspiring places.”

He suggests that future passenger facilities will have double-deck concourses and enlarged holdrooms, and also believes that space-intensive procedures and processes, such as baggage handling might be handled in separate buildings. This would free up huge areas for other activities or simply mean that terminals can become smaller.

“Resizing the terminal lobby footprint for the outbound function and relocating the baggage sorting areas will reduce the overall passenger terminal building by as much as 20%, if not more,” he adds.

“Furthermore, scanning luggage away from the terminal will heighten the safety index of those who at one point or another occupy the building.”

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