Airlines plan higher investments for passenger data collection

A significant number of carriers, including from India, plan to ramp up their investments in collection of data and business intelligence activities as they look to provide personalised solutions to passengers, according to a new survey released here today.
Eighty-two per cent of the carriers are investing in programmes to improve personalisation over the next three years, showed the SITA 2015 Airline IT Trends Survey.
SITA, which provides IT solutions to air transport sector, covered top 200 airlines worldwide including those from India in the survey.
Eighty-six per cent of the airlines expect investments in 'Internet of Things' (IoT) would fetch them clear benefits in the next three years.

IoT refers to physical objects being connected to Internet which in turn would enable tracking, data collection, analysis and control.
IoT investments would be focused in the areas of check-in, bag drop and bag collection, the survey said.

"All these things -- objects, passengers and staff -- that are being connected will create immense amounts of data and both business intelligence (BI) and data centres are vital to extract the data's value," it said.
About 94 per cent of the carriers surveyed are investing in BI and 74 per cent of them are planning "major investment programmes by 2018".
"While 68 per cent have a major investment programme planned for data centres in the next three years, with a further 14 per cent investing in R&D or a pilot programme," it added.

SITA's Chief Technology Officer Jim Peters said airlines recognise that investment would be needed to harness the benefits of IoT efficiently.
"This year airlines are beefing up their investments in both business intelligence and data centres, which are key foundations required for the IoT," he said.
With regard to wearable technology that can be used by airlines, the survey said the carriers continue to be cautious in looking at its potential.
"Uncertainty over the market and products makes it difficult for airlines to plan and so it is no surprise that the vast majority of airlines are taking a wait and see approach to this technology. Those that do have plans are mostly only going to evaluate wearables as an R&D project," it noted.