5 Trends for the Global Airlines Industry -- A WNS Perspective

Key Points

Trend 1: It's a new passenger out there; airlines will need to build 'social' pace to create brand equity
Trend 2: The customer's world is online and offline – maneuvering between both holds the key to success
Trend 3: Analytics – an 'altimeter' for the airline business
Trend 4: Changing the course in revenue generation
Trend 5: Increased focus on the regulatory and standardization route

The trajectory of the global airline industry is pretty much like that of an aircraft. At times it takes off for the high skies and at times, it dips to ground levels. In between these highs and lows, lies the story of the industry – of its survival, of the new and emerging trends that fuel its growth. What are the 5 trends that are driving and will continue to drive the airlines story in the future?

Trend 1: It's a New Passenger Out There; Airlines will need to build 'Social' Pace to Create Brand Equity
A number of leading global airlines have taken off on their 'social' flight and some are indulging in novel ways to engage with customers to build lasting relationships with them. Yes, it does mean stepping out of the corporate comfort zone and engaging real-time with the customer, but that's a feat airlines will have to achieve if they want to enhance brand equity and get a mind share of today's customer.

While some airlines have taken a lead in engaging with customers on social media and social media management, others are still wetting their feet. Among the recent innovative airline social media campaigns and initiatives are Virgin Atlantic's (VA) 'Looking for Linda', an interactive contest that got customers hooked with its unique concept; KLM's 'Meet & Seat' service where fliers can select seats alongside fellow passengers based on mutual interests in their social media profiles; and British Airways' Facebook application called 'Perfect Days' that encourages travelers to share a travel wish list and itinerary via a Facebook.

As social media takes precedence in the overall customer relationship management pie, airlines will need to look at building a large and robust resource pool that can respond to customer queries, complaints, posts and tweets round the clock.

Emirates adds augmented reality touch to its Economy Class amenity kits

By Raymond Kollau, airlinetrends.com

In an effort to have passengers take their amenity kit with them after their flight as a branded souvenir, airlines increasingly come up with innovative designs. Think amenity kits that can be re-used as a branded tablet case, while for example SWISS offers passengers in Business a ‘winter edition’ of its amenity kit that includes a beanie hat and a neck warmer.

Sign of the timesWell timed to coincide with the current Pokémon Go craze, Emirates has launched the world’s first interactive amenity kit in Economy Class that utilizes augmented reality (AR) technology to unlock content on mobile devices.

The kit bags come in six designs inspired by the colors and patterns of six regions in Emirates’ global network – Australasia, Latin America, Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Far East.

BlipparBy downloading the Blippar AR mobile phone app (iOS, Android), and using it to scan the patterns on the bags, passengers can unlock content including activities and health tips for a more comfortable and relaxing travel experience. The content will be refreshed every six months.

The Blippar app is a ‘visual browser’ which enables customers to discover more about the world around them. Customers can point at thousands of objects already recognised by Blippar (ranging from laptops to clothing and food to pets) to get additional information on those items. The content explains the object, the context and other useful and interesting facts – and is sourced from Blippar’s knowledge graph called Blipparsphere.

The amenity kits will be distributed in Economy Class on selected Emirates long-haul routes and on all ultra-long haul services starting from August.

The kits contain an eye mask, earplugs, toothbrush and toothpaste, and socks – each tailored to the style of the kit bag. The multipurpose pouches are made of Neoprene material – a water resistant fabric – and are designed to be reused after the flight to store anything from devices to cosmetics or stationery.

SWISS’s new Bombardier CS100 aircraft brings passenger-friendly cabin to regional jets

By Marisa Garcia, FlightChic

20 August 2016 | Aircraft manufacturers are creating new passenger-friendly cabin environments by re-thinking the fuselage structure and introducing more spacious cabins with larger windows and improved cabin pressurisation, among other innovations.

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner and Airbus’ A350 cabins, as well as Airbus’ new AirSpace cabin exemplify this new design thinking for widebody aircraft. On narrowbody aircraft, Boeing’s SkyInterior cabin delivers cabin improvements, as does Zodiac Aerospace’s ISIS (Innovative Space Interior System) cabin featured on Delta’s A320-family aircraft.

Now these cabin improvements found on Boeing and Airbus aircraft are coming to regional aircraft with Bombardier’s new CSeries regional jet.

SWISS CSeries 100In mid-July, the first CSeries 100 aircraft entered service with SWISS, and won the hearts of passengers and industry watchers alike.

As Aviation Week put it nicely: “Aerospace is driven by innovation” is a timeworn slogan used by industry executives and enthusiasts. Yet there hasn’t been a clean-sheet aircraft in the single-aisle segment for 28 years. To an outsider, this would seem odd—particularly as single-aisles comprise 70 percent of mainline jetliner production. Bombardier corrected that anomaly this month when the C-Series entered service with Swiss. After flying in the C Series and digging deeper into its design and systems, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is bringing significant value-creating technology into the market.”

Larger windows, wider middle seat, mood lighting

Delta raises the bar in Business Class with new enclosed ‘Delta One Suites’

This article first appeared on TheDesignAir

26 August 2016 | When airlines such as Qatar Airways have announced recently they are working on brand new Business Class seats and Emirates is working on new First Class suites, it was a surprising twist to see Delta, a US carrier, to leap-frog the Gulf-based competition with an adapted Thomson Aero Seating product by UK-based design agency Factorydesign.

Business Class ‘Suite’
The new Delta One Suite is the first Business Class cabin in the world to feature a sliding door for each suite – a feature normally saved for First Class passengers. The doors are a key part of Delta and Factorydesign’s collaborative efforts to improve customer comfort and privacy. The industrial design consultancy worked in close partnership with Delta and seat manufacturer Thompson Aero Seating throughout the design, development and engineering process to achieve this.

The word “cabin” is important in this announcement, as JetBlue’s Mint product offers 4 mini-suites on their aircraft featuring sliding doors, however, the rest of the seats don’t offer this level of privacy.

The seat may look familiar, and follows the traditional 1 x 2 x 1 staggered forward facing design that Delta has already adopted in many of its long-haul aircraft. In fact the product has more in common with SAS’ new Thomson Vantage XL seats that the London based design firm also worked on.

Privacy
The ability to add doors was driven by the A350’s extra width, explains Factory design’s senior designer Ryan Graham. “The high degree of customization possible with Thompson’s seating platform enabled us to

Alaska Airlines adds new routes to New York Newark

Alaska Airlines announced today a significant expansion to the New York City area with multiple new routes to Newark Liberty International Airport.

The new service comes as the Federal Aviation Administration approved Alaska Airlines’ request to operate four additional daily flights to Newark. New service from Newark, New Jersey to Portland, Oregon and San Diego, California will start in November 2016, with new service to San Jose, California beginning in March 2017. A third daily departure from Seattle, Washington to Newark, New Jersey will be added in May 2017.

“We thank the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for their efforts to increase competition in the New York metro area,” said John Kirby, Alaska Airlines’ vice president of capacity planning.

“Since 2015, Alaska has launched 28 new routes from our West Coast hubs and focus cities. With our new expanded service to Newark, we continue to grow our West Coast footprint by offering our valued customers more nonstop flights to popular business and leisure destinations.”

Alaska’s new Portland-Newark service continues the airline’s expansion of its Portland hub which includes other recently added destinations such as Minneapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Orlando; Omaha, Nebraska; and Atlanta. The newly added Newark service will be the only daytime nonstop from Portland to the Garden State.

The new San Diego-Newark service is the third East Coast destination from the airline’s Southern California focus city, which will give San Diego travelers access to one of the largest business markets in the world.


The new San Jose-Newark service marks the first nonstop flight between the two cities and provides Silicon Valley customers a convenient new option for travel to the New York City area.

In the spring, the airline will also add a third flight between Seattle and Newark, complementing the two existing daily nonstop flights from the Emerald City.

Airbus and Boeing are bailing Iran out of a huge problem

Iran’s beleaguered national airline is finally getting some relief.

On Wednesday, news emerged from Tehran, the Iran Air has reportedly reached an agreement with Boeing for 100 airliners.

Should the rumored Boeing deal reach completion, it would be Iran Air’s second multibillion airplane acquisition this year.

In January, Iran Air and Airbusagreed to a historic deal for 118 airliners with a list value topping $25 billion.

On Thursday, Iran Air got even more good news.

The European Commission announced that it will allow the airline to once again fly into European airspace.

“Following my visit to Iran in April, a technical assessment was successfully carried out in May,” EU transport commissioner Violeta Bulc said in a statement.

“Based on this I am happy to announce that we are now also able to allow most aircraft from Iran Air back into European skies.”

Since the Revolution of 1979, the country has suffered through decades of severe economic sanctions that have had a devastating effect on the country’s commercial aviation industry and its national airline.

Iran Air, once one of the region’s most respected airlines, has fallen on hard times.

For much of the past 30 years, trade sanctions have prevented the airline from acquiring new planes directly from western airplane makers.

As a result, Iran Air have been forced to make do with an aging fleet of early generation Airbus aircraft and pre-revolution Boeing jumbo jets. According to Airfleets.net, Iran Air’s fleet of 46 jets have an average age of 27 years with its fleet of Boeing 747s pushing 40 years of service.

And what planes they do have, the airline often struggles to find adequate spare parts to keep them running properly.

Accidents resulting for mechanical failures became increasingly common, leading the EU to ban most of Iran Air’s planes in 2010.

NORTH AMERICA UPS, Pilots Reach Tentative Agreement On New Labor Contract

The Independent Pilots Association (IPA) and UPS Airlines today announced a tentative agreement on a new five-year labor contract.

The comprehensive agreement provides for improvements across all sections of the contract. Specific details of the agreement will not be disclosed before the IPA presents the proposed contract to all UPS pilots.

The contract must be ratified by a majority of UPS’s 2,600 pilots. The vote by the pilots will be completed on Aug. 31. If ratified, the new contract will become effective on Sep. 1, 2016, and become amendable on Sep. 1, 2021.

“This tentative agreement has been unanimously approved and endorsed by both the IPA Executive Board and our Negotiating Committee. Over the next month we will present it to our members with an unqualified recommendation for ratification,” said IPA President Captain Robert Travis.

“This is an excellent offer and we are pleased to have reached this agreement,” said Brendan Canavan, UPS Airlines president. “This contract rewards our crewmembers for their outstanding contributions and contains provisions that protect UPS’s ability to deliver competitive service to our global customers.”

The tentative agreement was signed yesterday by the IPA and UPS in the presence of Nicholas Geale, Chairman of the National Mediation Board (NMB). The parties entered mediation in March 2014. Both Travis and Canavan said they “commend the NMB for its guidance and resources over the last 27 months and thank our mediator, Gerry McGuckin, for his oversight and efforts.”

The IPA is the collective bargaining unit representing the more than 2,600 professional pilots who fly for United Parcel Service, the world’s largest transportation company. The IPA is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky.

Delta plane with 130 passengers lands at the wrong airport

The National Transport Safety Board is investigating the landing of a Delta A320 at Ellsworth AFB instead of its intended destination of Rapid City, 7 miles away.

Delta Air Lines confirmed that the flight crew of Delta Flight 2845 on the evening of July 7 conducted a safe landing at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota mistakenly rather than the flight’s intended destination of Rapid City.

The Airbus A320 aircraft, registered N333NW, had 130 passengers on board and was in-bound from Minneapolis/St. Paul. The flight re-departed for Rapid City Thursday night after coordinating with officials.



“Delta has contacted the customers of this flight and offered a gesture of apology for the inconvenience”, the airline said in a statement.

The crew has been taken off-duty while an investigation commences by the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Delta will fully cooperate with that investigation and has already begun an internal review of its own”, the airline added.

Ellsworth Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force base located approximately 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Rapid City, South Dakota. The host unit at Ellsworth is the 28th Bomb Wing (28 BW) assigned to the Global Strike Command’s Eighth Air Force.

Ellsworth Air Force Base has one runway available:
Runway 13/31 (concrete): 13,497 feet/4.114 meters

Rapid City Airport has two runways available:
Runway 14/32 (concrete): 8,701 feet/2.652 meters
Runway 05/23 (asphalt): 3,601 feet/1.098 meters

Tibet Airlines receives its first A330

Lhasa based Tibet Airlines has received its first widebody aircraft, an A330-200 with increased 242 tonne maximum take-off-weight (MTOW), following a handover in Toulouse, France.

The increased MTOW, the first A330-200 in China, allows airlines to operate from the most demanding high altitude airports where take off performance, additional range and improved operating costs are key.

The aircraft is configured in a three-class cabin layout (12 business, 32 premium economy, 235 economy) and deployed to open up new international routes.

Bai Weisan, President of Tibet Airlines said: “We are extremely excited to receive our first widebody airliner – an enhanced A330 from Airbus and are very confident at its high-altitude performance. The A330 Family will become our core widebody to be deployed on our new international routes thanks to its flexibility, comfort and efficiency. With the A330, we are looking forward more passengers from all over the world to flying with Tibet Airlines and visiting Tibet.”

Eric Chen, President of Airbus China said: “We congratulate Tibet Airlines on receiving its first A330 and we express our gratitude for the confidence demonstrated in our leading A330. With an operating base at high altitude Lhasa Airport and routes covering all of Tibet’s civil airports, the airline already benefits from the unrivalled performance of Airbus single-aisle aircraft. We are proud the A330 is Tibet Airline’s backbone for international route expansion.”

Tibet Airlines currently operates an all-Airbus fleet comprising of 14 A319s and 2 A320s. The airline is famous for its high-altitude operations with its operating base at Lhasa Airport which is at over 3,500 metres altitude. With the proven performance of Airbus narrow body, especially the A319 in high-altitude airports, Tibet Airlines has been successfully connecting Tibet with more domestic cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The A330 is the first widebody equipped with the Required Navigation Performance with Authorisation Required (RNP-AR) and the only widebody airliner today flying over Tibet’s sky. It will exceed the airlines’ expectation on high-altitude performance also offer unrivalled efficiency, also greater comfort to the passengers.

Boeing made a ‘major mistake’ 12 years ago that left its customers in the lurch

The 757 was always a bit of an odd duck for Boeing.

It’s a twin-engine narrow-body airliner that’s larger than the run-of-the-mill 737, but smaller than wide-body jets like the 787 Dreamliner.

It’s a true tweener in Boeing’s lineup.

Though the Renton, Washington-based plane maker booked more than 1,000 orders for the jets over its two decades in production, it was never a hot seller.

By the early 2000s, sales of the 757 had all but dried up, and Boeing put the plane out to pasture in 2004.

But a decade later, airlines have come to understand that the 757’s odd-ball tweener nature has translated into incredible flexibility. It generates profits both in short-range domestic flights and on long-haul trans-Atlantic ones.

“It is the most effective and best single-aisle airplane around,” La Compagnie founder and CEO Frantz Yvelin told Business Insider. “In the business, we used to call it the workhorse.”

The startup boutique French airline operates a pair of the planes, each decked out with 74 business-class seats.

However, as the 757s grow older, airlines are looking for an effective way to replace them, and right now they don’t seem to have any they like.

Boeing ‘made a mistake’

Last year at the Paris Air Show, rumors of a 757 replacement known as a “middle of market” jet became one of the big stories to emerge from the show. Boeing, though, doesn’t have concrete plans yet for a new middle-of-market jet. Despite the apparent need from airlines, the carrier says the economic case doesn’t exist yet.

In statement to Business Insider, the company said:

The Rolls-Royce and Airbus A350 jet engine up close for the first time

Fuel efficiency is good for the environment, but it also saves airlines money. That doesn’t mean the price of travel is falling. But it does mean a lot energy goes into advancing jet engine technology.

The British car and engine maker, Rolls-Royce, is proud of its new Trent XWB jet engine. They say it’s the most fuel efficient engine in the world. It was designed specifically for the Airbus A350 passenger plane and uses light materials to reduce weight and increase fuel efficiency.

Engineers describe it with four words, saying it “sucks, squeezes, bangs, and blows.”

The Trent XWB sucks in about 1.3 tonnes of air per second. The air is compressed, or “squeezed,” and then in the combustion chamber, it is heated to about half the surface temperature of the sun. Finally, “bang” – and the engine blows the air back out, creating a thrust of 97,000lbs.

It was on show for the first time at the 2016 Hanover Fair.

When Aircraft Crash And Pilot Mistakes

One of the most disturbing statistics about general aviation accidents is that more than 75% of them are made because of pilot error. Considering that it’s unlikely that pilots are going away anytime soon, the solution comes in the form of prevention. Saying this is easy, but actually making progress toward this goal is rather problematic. The first step toward eliminating pilot error is to examine the enemy. Just what types of errors are pilots committing and why? Then, armed with this information, pilots can make a concerted effort to avoid such mistakes through a fusion of training, planning and keen attention.

1 Weather. The more a pilot knows about it, the better. While thunderstorms, icing and winds claim their share of airplanes, the real weather gadfly are those serene, innocent-looking clouds and their cousin, fog. Clouds and fog aren’t inherently dangerous; it’s just that when pilots fly into them, they don’t know how to fly on instruments. They fly into a cloud, lose control and crash. Accident gurus call this flying “VFR into IFR.” Well over 80% of such accidents are fatal.

Even though these accidents are referred to as “inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC),” only 24% of them are inadvertent. The remaining cases show pilots who continue into poor weather. Why is this? Overconfidence is one. Some believe that they don’t need to stay current or that their hour under the hood is good enough. Social pressure also plays a role. Passengers want to get there and pressure the pilot to continue. Last, there’s “get-there-itis.” Pilots are mission-oriented, sometimes too much so.

2 CFIT. Another common pilot error that often involves weather is controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). A simplified definition of CFIT is “flying a perfectly good airplane into the ground.” If a pilot is in a cloud or in fog, he or she can’t see the ground. If the pilot isn’t doing a good job of keeping up with the terrain, an unpleasant meeting with the ground is more likely. Another time when CFIT can be a factor independent of weather is at night. Pilots seem to have a knack of flying into trees and hills after the sun goes down. Again, if pilots allow themselves to be lulled into neglecting to constantly compare their present altitude to that of surrounding terrain, the outcome is likely to be nasty. If you can’t see the terrain, you must be able to point to your position on a sectional, en route chart, approach plate, etc., or you shouldn’t be flying.

A serving airline captain reveals what’s REALLY happening in the cockpit as a plane hurtles down the runway for take-off and comes in for landing

If you were a fly on the wall in the cockpit of your holiday flight to the sun as it hurtles down the runway and takes to the air, these are the words you’d hear from the pilots.

If you’re a nervous flier, hearing ‘V1’ is when your heart would probably leap because, as Captain Richard Brown, CEO of Atlantic Star Airlines, explains, this is ‘take-off decision speed’. Beyond this velocity, the aircraft cannot be safely stopped on the ground and must become airborne.

Captain Brown, a pilot with 20 years’ aviation experience with Boeing 777s, 787s and 747s, came to MailOnline Travel’s headquarters to reveal exactly what happens behind the flight deck door for a series of insider video guides.

In this, the first, he talks about the two most crucial phases of a flight – take-off and landing.

We gave him two flight deck videos to comment on and as they played he provided fascinating insight into exactly what the pilots are doing and thinking and what it feels like to be in the driving seat.