Driving innovation in the ATI script

Information technology has been the lifeblood of the Air Transport Industry for decades.

Our industry’s ‘IT timeline’ begins with the mainframe computers that filled data centres covering city blocks, and global data networks with over 100,000 connections, and literally millions of terminals. It was technology built by specialists and designed for the industry.

But as someone once said, ‘the past is a different place and the future is beginning to look very different indeed’. With the introduction of affordable, portable, personal computers and the invention of the World Wide Web, IT ushered in a new information age. And IT will not stand still...

We are now in an era where IT development is evolving at ever greater speeds, driven by consumer choice...

The numbers for this new technological age are truly staggering.

There are 3.3 billion mobile phone users in the world, with mobile phones outselling computers 20:1.

China Mobile alone has 317 million mobile phone subscribers...more than the entire US population. Today a 100% subscriber rate is the average for industrialised countries.

The story of the Internet is every bit as breathtaking. There are 1.4 billion of us now using the Internet.

We upload one Gigabyte of videos on to YouTube every second. We have created over 10 million pages of content, in more than 250 languages, on Wikipedia. We can access and share information over the Internet from televisions, laptops, mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants, from almost anywhere in the world.

We are seeing a new breed of traveller – the digital traveller. Digital travellers make up the 90% of people who carry a mobile device when they travel by air. They expect information to be available on their mobile device; information that is directly relevant to them and their journey.

We are standing on the threshold of an incredible future. A future marked by the arrival of wireless broadband such as 3G and wiMax, and new powerful mobile devices like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform.

This is a future that will be centred around a whole new kind of user experience. We will see a “mobile web” that converges with customer applications, to distribute products and to provide new services for consumers.

One thing is for certain, this will be an environment where innovators will thrive.

There are opportunities to innovate at every point along the journey.

New and improved ways to surf one-stop travel shopping portals and airline websites to plan and book our trips. Mobile devices as personal travel folders and e-wallets– to pay for everything from excess baggage to airport taxes and duty free shopping.

The ability to check in any time before the flight, from almost anywhere, using a mobile or other connected device.

Near Field Communication and Bluetooth technology to ease boarding, so that travellers can consult their mobiles for flight information, such as gate closure times and how to get there; and context aware mobile applications to guide travellers to rescheduled flights and new gates in times of disruption.

Digital travellers will expect the same level of mobile and PC connectivity in-flight as on the ground, connecting to the plane’s entertainment system; and viewing and interacting with information from multiple sources. If there’s a problem with a flight connection, they’ll expect their context aware device to provide information about automatically rebooked flights.

And when the flight is over, travellers will demand intelligent location-aware mobile applications to help guide them through the airport. With biometric technologies such as iris scanning and fingerprint reading available throughout their journey, the travel process will be simplified and streamlined, reducing the queues for border and security checks, and delivering the passenger to their destination, faster.

IT and wireless broadband communication based on common standards have the potential to put all parties at the airport in touch with each other, constantly, and in real time. IT will enable new ways of working between airport authorities and operators, ground handlers, airlines, aircraft and suppliers.

As flying data centres, next generation aircraft will move massive volumes of data between the plane and ground systems. Aircraft and supply chain data from on and off the airport will be collected, assimilated and distributed within the air transport and aerospace industry. That means improved on-time performance, aircraft turnaround, flight safety and airworthiness.

IT and communications will play a critical role in our industry’s response to the environment. Offering advanced tools for more fuel efficient flight planning; making sure airlines, airports and air traffic management organisations interact in the most efficient way. As our community focuses on reducing its carbon footprint, innovative technologies will be imperative to our business strategies.

And if we fast forward to the future, what then? … Within the next ten years, what capabilities will we hold in the palm of our hand? Devices more powerful than today’s most advanced workstations - exploiting ubiquitous broadband wireless networks, and fundamentally changing how people work and interact with each other. Context-aware applications will combine our personal preferences and social networks. With the knowledge of where we are and where we are going, our devices will automatically generate and push dynamic workflows to us – so we can complete the tasks we need to accomplish while on the move. These rich mobile interactive environments will become second nature as the next wave of IT arrives, creating a wealth of innovation opportunities.

But while innovation promises many answers, it also poses important questions. How do we get these new systems to work seamlessly with our current ones? With so many different digital touch points with customers, how do we deliver a consistent product and service?

Innovation doesn’t come free from challenges. And within a tough economic environment, our industry needs to think differently, to consider how to work effectively as one community.

Nowhere are the challenges more apparent than in our own IT departments. We have learnt that a simple interface is often supported by a complex infrastructure – one that takes time to build. We know this through our experiences with the industry’s move to e-ticketing.

As we travel further into this digital future, we need to work together on common goals, for common standards and practices. We need to address the industry-wide issues faced by everyone whose job involves the movement of passengers and cargo. We need to transform the way we work as an industry.

Rising to the challenges - as a community committed to a vision with the digital traveller at the centre, we must be driven by a passion for innovation – innovation that will transform our industry.