Air Transport
Article | July 15, 2022
The UK government has announced that from 11th February, fully vaccinated passengers arriving into the country will no longer have to take COVID-19 tests on arrival. The news follows the removal of pre-departure testing for fully vaccinated UK-bound passengers this month.
The relaxation of testing measures is something the aviation industry has been actively campaigning for, as it removes barriers to travel. Just today, IATA distributed a press release advocating for similar moves to be made by further governments. It cited a study focused on the UK carried out by Oxera and Edge Health which found that because Omicron is now highly prevalent in the UK, “if all travel testing requirements were removed there would be no impact on Omicron case numbers or hospitalizations.”
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Aviation Technology
Article | June 2, 2022
This week, the GE Gas Power team launched season five of Cutting Carbon, their award-winning podcast that focuses on climate change, the basics of what decarbonization is and the technologies behind it. In season five, the team is focused on decarbonization closer to home and invited Arjan Hegeman, GE Aviation’s general manger for advanced technologies, to talk about the future of flight.
Learn more about the role of GE Aviation’s technologies available today and in development for tomorrow to make aircraft engines more fuel efficient and reduce carbon emissions. Open fan, hybrid electric and hydrogen combustion are all discussed by Hegeman and the hosts. Over two episodes, Hegeman also explains the importance of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), along with the new engine technologies, to help the aviation industry reach its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The Future of Flight is a two-part episode, and can be found as Episode 27 and Episode 28 under Cutting Carbon. You can listen to the podcast here or on your favorite streaming platform!
The aviation industry is at an inflection point for new technology introduction and acceleration of technology development, Hegeman says. GE Aviation is currently developing its next-generation suite of engine technologies, including open fan engine architecture, hybrid-electric propulsion, and advanced thermal management concepts. GE Aviation is also supporting industry initiatives to approve and adopt 100% SAF and is partnering on a new flight demonstration program to test zero-carbon hydrogen fuel combustion.
GE’s ambition is to be a net zero company by 2050, including the Scope 3 emissions from the use of sold products. GE is also committed to being carbon neutral by 2030 in its own facilities and operations, including Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
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Business Aviation
Article | December 28, 2021
When operating aircraft above the Arctic Circle (66.5° N latitude) there are certain hazards to be aware of. We decided to take a look at what aircraft are best suited for Arctic flight.A huge problem with flying in the Arctic is not just icing, but the visual restrictions that are placed on pilots. During the spring and fall, whiteout or flat light can distort what a pilot sees. The horizon can suddenly disappear making objects appear as if they are floating in the air. This can make things like mountain ranges extremely difficult to judge.
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Business Aviation
Article | August 31, 2021
The unprecedented wave of Covid 19 created significant turbulence in the aviation industry that made the industry face daunting new challenges. However, as airlines continue to respond to the challenges, the marketers remain focused on paving the way for quick recovery.
Whereas, aviation experts admitted that this black swan event impacted the airline industry roughly. The impact of COVID-19 on airlines was forced to face bankruptcy, destruction of financial packages, and complete changes in the airline industry in terms of security. Therefore, while keeping the fact that COVID-19 will have longer-term repercussions, it’s imperative the airline industry would quickly reduce the impact on its stakeholders and operations. And for this, airlines need to go beyond conventional thinking and come forward in using technology to dig in for the long haul.
Airline Industry: Riddled with Challenges Amid COVID-19
Given the airline market behavior during the Covid-19 crisis, it has many opportunities to target different marketing segments through direct and indirect channels. However, some complexities that challenged building an effective marketing strategy were:
Drop-in Revenues
According to KPMG, commercial revenue has been a rich source of income in airline businesses; it contributed more than 50% of inclusive revenues in the airline industry. However, a large share of revenue is generated by marketing which has completely dried up with minimum footfalls. Reduced economic growth, absence of remote work arrangements, and loss of operational models have been some of the fallen parts of the airline industry to deal with this new reality.
IATA, at first, stated that airline revenues could fall by $314 billion in 2020 owing to COVID-19, which is a fall of 55% compared to 2019. However, further analysis revealed that it fell $419 billion more in the same year. Also, the second quarter of 2020 saw a nearby decline to $43.5 billion in revenues compared to the projected baseline, a reduction of more than 1%.
Impact on Future Investments
The impact of COVID-19 on airlines was much on the plan for future investments and asset building. These areas posed significant challenges for airline businesses and investors to monetize assets or repurpose them to create shareholder value. In other ways, competition from newer asset-light businesses also posed an additional challenge on asset building and profitability.
How has Airline Industry Retorted to the Pandemic?
Most businesses have reduced all new investments, freezing shares, maintenance, and partnership costs. These have been the extreme response expected in the war—COVID-19, which is even gimmer than war.
But, despite all the impact of COVID-19 on airlines, airlines have responded with alacrity. The crisis made them stand by quickly developing new business processes and operations, research models. In a longer time, changes in the airline industry weren’t so significant. Airlines are also witnessing a radical shift in their development priorities and unique opportunities to conduct research. The desire to provide additional pressure on revenue management systems to predict demand more accurately has also been the core force of development. Let’s understand more under the following points:
Technology Makeover
In a progressively evolving digital-only landscape, the technology carries more value if used well. Investing in the right tools and technology can help monetize assets better and significantly improve operating efficiency and customer experience.
Refocus on Cost-line
Innovations in marketing strategies, technology can suggestively change the cost of providing services for both airlines and airports. It can help give more pressure on both affordability and profitability. This area of transformation can stimulate significant savings in operating costs and could become the norm for the best performance of marketing.
Innovate
COVID-19 has spawned the best inventions and innovations. The value of data and technology that you have access to today cannot be overstated. Yet, the aviation industry has shown the resilience to come back stronger and smarter. Therefore, there is a necessity for a thoughtful, analytical, and consistent approach to reforms to help the industry function at a newer and higher altitude and redefine its new normal. The changing geopolitical marketing scenario and impending operational shifts globally demand a swift and nimble approach. Advantageous changes in airline industrial policy in COVID-19 will be required to feat the opportunity, with accrete marketing strategic gains and create a better future.
In a nutshell, airlines had to reinvent how they looked at bookings, employee management, and revenue management, as the previous curves were no longer relevant, and the training data used for machine learning algorithms were no longer valid. Now, airline businesses are exploring novel ways to shorten the old methods used in forecasting, pick up on trends more quickly, and incorporate demand adjustments made by manual revenue management users.
Finally, the writing is evident on the wall—as airline stocks continue to falter (by 16 to 20%), the industry needs to go beyond conventional thinking and use technology to dig in for the long haul.
Airline Marketing: Path to Recovery with 3 Important Tech-Strategies
Inclusion of Advanced Analytics
In the next five years, airline businesses will proceed to develop their ability to install advanced analytics. Although the industry has been using advanced data and analytics, there are expectations that marketing leaders will expand the entire value chain of analytics more progressively. Data-backed analytics will render insights to pinpoint geo-specific interventions for maximum ROI.
While traditional sources of competitive advantage for airlines such as products, networks, technology will continue to gain importance, it is believed that increased usage of data science and advanced analytics will help the industry to augment these sources to deliver notable performance improvement.
Rapid Adoption of Data Science
The aviation industry is part of the change, too, in terms of technology development. Airline Technologies in Covid is radically varying the way businesses connect with their customers. The data required is allowing businesses to take informed steps towards operational efficiency. While embracing new technologies, changes in the airline industry are witnessing the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) to the maximum so that businesses can operate in the post-COVID-19 scenario.
Control of Digital Solutions
As airline market behavior during the Covid-19 crisis has incurred changes in the airline industry, the control of digital solutions has come to the rescue. The solutions are in need to shift resources and efficiently scale to maintain operations. Digital tools can help with a wide range of business efficiency, sales and revenue management, marketing, and network planning.
Opportunities to Reimagine in Post COVID-19 Era
Here are the significant ways in which it could be done.
Operating Model
Airlines today need a data-driven operating model with a mindset that pushes accountability across each touchpoint in the business journey. Marketing teams should be organized around journey stages keeping technological aspects on board. The operating model should be accompanied by KPIs that should be measured across the customer journey and regularly shared with every team member.
Digital Transformation
The airline industry could consider stepping up IT, digital, and automation investment now. The crucial strategies for digital transformation are driving data-driven platforms and personalization. Tracking business interaction at every touchpoint with the brands and their products enables better predictive analytics. This means integrating digital solutions with enterprise systems and making the data available at the point-of-sale for sales associates to view, interpret and recommend products accordingly will enhance the convenience of operations. In the case of point, airlines businesses can respond to the faster recovery of short-haul flights by investing in direct sales, owning the customer relationship.
Also, relationships with IT and its providers could be re-considered and explore from a technologically perspective. Beyond this, other initiatives which involve efforts like using data in smarter ways to enhance decision making, requiring some investment to yield significant payoffs, are in the line of digital investments.
Virtual Reality
Gone are the days with COVID-19, when customers were physically involved in the airline business and running it successfully. Unfortunately, the panic of the pandemic is here to stay as a part of our life. So, companies will need to think out of the box. Several tools are available in the market today to avoid physical interactions. Brands have introduced their own ‘Virtual test and try’ tools for marketing and sales purposes.
For instance, Guerlain invested in gamification and launched a mobile game called ‘WeChat’ to promote its sales deck. Similarly, to enhance the operational desk, Lancôme introduced ‘Virtual Mirror’ - an augmented reality virtual makeover app.12 ‘Modiface’- a Canadian AR and AI company, was purchased. Its product performs virtual try-on simulations and is enabled to support live video for all airline operations.
So, the crisis and issues the airline industry facing in the Covid‑19 on revenue generation will still be intensely felt in 2021-2022, as it was earlier. But it is expected that the coming quarter of 2021 will show improvements compared to the previous. This means the industry, which was moving from a decline of 7% in the first quarter of 2021, will see a decline of 35.2% in the fourth quarter compared to the projected baseline.
How to Plan a Marketing Strategy for your Airline Company?
Being in the market already, you can understand where the roots of a marketing campaign come from. Nearly all the airline businesses arise their marketing activities from their vital target group or according to the demand to promote a new product.
There is no solitary way to create a marketing campaign because it involves many company-specific details. Here, you will need to understand how you can stay ahead of your competitors in the marketing field to yield revenue.
Here is a brief sum-up of some valuable points that can help you.
Stick with your Customer Segment: Business or corporate travelers differ in their travel behavior and priorities. So, while you run a marketing campaign, it should highlight this factor as a prime concern.
Focus on the Product you will Market: This point covers that you need to consider that all the product dimensions (digital, physical, service) to market should consider on parameters like how do you want it to market, what are your secondary aims, and how can you benefit from customer actions.
Foster Interaction: So, try to keep as much interaction with your customers as possible. It does help to build loyalty, establish relations with your brand, and source valuable data about your customers. By doing this, you will be able to create a personalized experience for them in the future.
Be loyal: As long as you are not an ultra-low-cost airline operator, you will perhaps have to reward the loyalty your frequent customers give you. Special offers, discounts, and loyalty programs make your brand a company to stick with forever.
Keep an Eye on Competitors: As the airline market has high competition and competitors, your team creating a marketing strategy must include two key elements: your market position and your competitors.
And the last, you must maintain a balance between competition and customer loyalty at any cost.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the top three issues the airline industry is facing in the Covid‑19?
Although the airline industry faced several challenges, the worse challenges were:
Sluggishness in travel/travel bans
Loss of revenue
Data loss
Which airlines have been most affected by coronavirus?
The list of airlines worst affected by covid-19 goes as:
China Southern
Hainan Airlines
Singapore airlines
Japan airlines
Korean Air & Asiana
Middle Asia
British Airways
United Airlines
What is the future of the aviation industry after covid-19?
From the perspective of the COVID-19 scenario, the aviation industry needs to pick itself up and begin rebuilding. From hygiene and health standards to aircraft data management to monitor an aircraft’s components and onboard equipment can transform airline operations.
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