Dohop, CEO, David Gunnarsson at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit, Airlines in Transition 2026

Transcript

David Gunnarsson:So the model has evolved. I mean, the model has come from being a very sort of bare-bones model of hooking together 2 flights that otherwise don't connect. Now, for us, it's all about partnerships. It's all about building real partnerships, but they are tech-enabled, so they don't need anything except And they don't really share anything except a passenger that wants to get somewhere and using 2 airlines to do that. So, and I think what's driving airline interest today is really more about the simplicity of setting up a partnership and running that partnership without having the legacy constraints around codeshare or interline. So I was on an alliance panel earlier, and I think the question is sometimes, you know, alliance or no alliance. I don't think it's a Boolean choice anymore. I don't think it's something that you have to do or you— if or when you choose not to, you don't have any options because alliances are probably from the past more about governance rather than the partnerships of today. They are just tech-enabled partnerships that are about APIs and technology. And the cost and the commitment of entering an alliance is much more significant than entering a simple partnership with another airline for the sole purpose of extending your network to serve your customers. So I think the simplicity, the low cost, and the speed at which an airline can enter a partnership through somebody like us versus the sort of slow, cumbersome way of doing it the old-fashioned way, I think that is the, that is the commercial benefit of being able to offer that to customers in a matter of weeks and not years. Straight out of the box, it is always about who is the selling airline, who's the selling carrier, right? So you know if it's an EasyJet to Emirates relationship, then an EasyJet is the selling carrier. They don't really care because the customer goes on Emirates following their flight. So it's no big deal. When you've got it the other way around, it becomes a big deal because different airlines care about different customer experiences in different ways. So I think there's always it's not only the logistics of. How much can I carry on and how much can I check? And you know what, what rights do I have across the entire journey? And can I earn miles and blah blah blah? But it's really about setting the customer up with the right expectations. You know, if they book, like I said, if they book a flight on an Emirates website and that turns out they end up on Jetstar, that's going to be a jarring experience if they don't know. So I think those are always the challenges that you can only do. You can only sort of. Get through those challenges with complete transparency and just allow the customer to make the choice as long as they understand what the operating carrier that sits behind is doing. So it's really interesting when this started for us in 2012, 2013 with airports, in fact, and it's kind of coming full circle now. I feel like, you know, these 12, 13 years later in that started with airports, became airlines wanting to do this and sort of piling on. That's all about airline partnerships. Now back to airports, and it's more about how can the airport be a facilitator of that experience? How can they elevate that experience? And of course, like I was speaking to Berlin Airport earlier, then it's about what can we do on intermodal travel? So air plus rail, air plus bus, all of these things. I think the airport is a key facilitator. They are the they are the meeting point, obviously. But it's really interesting how that's kind of coming full circle. We think a lot about this because the customer experience matters. We're not just trying to get people from A to B in the shortest amount of time. We also want to make sure that you're comfortable on your connection, you know, and you really understand what you're going to have to do at the connecting airport. So obviously part of that is taking the virtual out of virtual interline and making it a real interline where your bag follows you and you can stay airside. Now, that's an innovation that we've been working on for a couple of years and is coming. But I think, I think the big thing is that many legacy carriers at their hubs drive very short connections. But I, you know, countless times I've been on a flight and the passengers around me have started worrying, am I going to make the connection because it's 45 minutes or half an hour? And that's just not really a good feeling. So we think a lot about this. So we have different minimum connect times at different airports. We try to be very clear on what the customer expectation should be. And then we are looking to be your guardian angel. So when you're traveling, you know we're there. Even if nothing happens, we're there watching over your trip, right? But if something happens, we step in and we pick you up. It's all about creating an experience that's right for that customer. For me, if I can— I travel a lot, so I can easily navigate airports. I can do a 40-minute connection, that's no problem. But for somebody with 3 children and all of the bags and all of the things, that's not going to be viable. So you want to just create as much customer choice as possible and allow people to have their own bespoke experience in some ways. I think there's going to be a lot of evolution over the next 5 to 10 years. You know, we've started with NDC, which has been around for 15 years, but it's kind of that, that is almost going a little bit backwards on NDC and You've got the whole offer-order transformation, of which we can be or are a facilitator of how connecting, how sort of connectivity for airlines is driven through the offer-order transformation. And then in the future of an offer-order world where almost everything becomes unbundled, that's really where we already play. And I think that's going to shape the experiences of the future from our perspective. Obviously, you've got AI on top of this driving kind of technology innovation much, much faster. But I don't have the answer to that more than anyone else, what kind of role that's going to play in this. I think for me, CAPA events are probably the best place to meet the right people in the right frame of mind at the right times throughout the year. So we have a longstanding big partnership with CAPA for multiple conferences, and that really sets us up for success when we show up Again and again, you see the same people in the same environment, and you start to get— you start to be legitimate. People start, you know, you start to have something to say. And I think that's really important for us.

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