Revolutionising the Passenger Experience Through Technology

Transcript

Ingrid Picard:So today we've got 4 or 5 questions around tech in airport airline, and I'm going to set the scene with the recent removal of the paper incoming card. It's replaced by the ATD, which is the Australia Travel Declaration. It's been on trial for 18 months in some major airports in Australia, mainly with Qantas through their app. And what it is doing now is that everybody will benefit from border web form and QR code to enter Australia instead of the ugly yellow card. It's only taken 9 years 9 years for inbound removal card after the outbound removal card in 2017. 9 years. We're all hoping that we can have digitalized border forces and airport and a bit of more seamlessly passenger journey before the Olympics, we were saying. Apparently you've got the figures, Margy. You will tell us exactly what it is, but how many people in Australia believe that we should be really seamless when it comes to the passenger experience incoming and outgoing out of Australia? So I think we've done progresses definitely with the outbound. Why is it that we are lagging so much from the inbound standpoint?

Margy Osmond:What a fabulous question. I wish I could answer that one. I think possibly the more important piece is that we are now seeing progress, and I think it is way more than the card. Essentially, the removal of the card qualifies as a signal. What we said to government was we need to have a seamless border. We need to have Hong Kong, Singapore, Bali, who have a seamless border on arrivals. But I think ultimately the decision and the thing that pushed this over the line in terms of an outcome, and what we pitched to government is from the removal of the paper arrivals card, all the way through to combined international and domestic gates within the terminals, a fairly radical new biosecurity system with a new baggage system, and of course the removal of the kiosks at the airport. So this is actually a holistic change. It is the seamless border. The digital part is really just part of it. I think from the responses I keep getting now from complete strangers who are so thrilled they'll no longer have to fill in the yellow card, or at least within the next 12 months, And I think, as we were discussing before, the only downside is you won't have the opportunity to make all those new friends when you can't find a pen and you have to ask the person next to you, can I borrow yours? It's a really important part of Brand Australia too. You don't want the first experience of Australia to be some sort of retrograde piece. So in the end run, the decision was made on this from a government point of view, because we said to them, you know, do you want the airports to keep building bigger sheds for people to queue in, or do you actually want, you know, a 21st century border that says the right things and is safer and is more biosecure? That, in the end run, is what changed the government's mind, and this first tranche of cash is just a signal. It is the removal of the card. It is a trial to remove kiosks in some airports, so no more little tickets. And very critically, there will be a trial for the cruise industry, because the cruise industry uses the border as well and has— And the airlines. the same problems that aviation has without necessarily the prominence associated with it. Very long answer, sorry about that, Ingrid, but you can tell I'm excited.

Ingrid Picard:And we are too, and I think we've got some lessons to learn from South America, you were telling me, Paul. Do you want to share some examples?

Paul Doherty:So it's interesting going and travelling, and I suppose everybody in this room's done a fair bit of travelling, certainly some of the faces I've seen here that I know. I know they get out and about. And it's interesting watching different people go. So I took my wife with me to South America and then Antarctica earlier this year. And she doesn't travel as much as she used to, so it was interesting watching her as things interface because all of the South American airlines are all fully integrated through the border experience. So you're literally doing up your, you know, day before or 2 days before, it pops up on your app and says, hey, could you fill in these details?

Evan Edwards:Yeah.

Paul Doherty:Here's a few things we need to know, and it does everything across the border interface. So the hardest part's going through the security section. That's it. And it makes life quicker, easier, simpler. People are less, you know, angry, engaged. There's nothing worse than trying to drag a family— and my girls are in their 20s— through the experience and trying to get them to actually answer that little questionnaire. And they say, what's this question mean? What's that mean? What's this mean? It's all done seamless. You get the little prompts that come back to you and say—

William Wang:That's great.

Paul Doherty:Just make sure you're not carrying anything from Buenos Aires, and away you go. That's great. It simplifies your life, and it makes it a bit better experience.

Margy Osmond:And I think the really critical thing here in Australia is from the moment we started working with Border Force 12, 18 months ago— and I know my colleague Simon Westaway would have been talking about this yesterday— is it was an amazingly collaborative approach, because agriculture were involved in it from day one. So they were part of the planning and the structuring of what these solutions will look like.

Ingrid Picard:Collaboration is definitely key. So that's the first word of the day, collaboration. The second one I really liked was seamless. Seamless passenger experience is the key to success as well. So first you collaborate, then you give your passengers a seamless experience. Evan, what are the kind of seamless behind-the-scenes experience that GE has been bringing to market that has Simplified the way travelers can go through airport and have a new experience.

Evan Edwards:So yeah, thanks for that. So yeah, a lot of the behind-the-scenes things that are being done by companies like GE Aerospace, we have a software-as-a-service division, which a lot of people don't realize. A lot of people ask me questions about hybrid engines. I don't know much about engines. Surprising for someone from GE Aerospace. I'm a software engineer. So we do things like help airlines, and a lot of this collaboration that we talk about— so our product basically takes flight data, flight analytics, and we can enable airlines to make significant safety gains in terms of operation. Things like fuel analytics also. The bean counters got a hold of our black box data, so to speak, and went, hang on, there's a—

Paul Doherty:That's a good term.

Evan Edwards:And there's a fair bit of money to be made here. So we help airlines realize almost in real time, you know, significant changes, significant efficiency gains just from small, seemingly small changes they make to the operation. So if I gave one example for a Middle Eastern customer of ours, they reduced their crew Baggage allowance from 30 to 20 kilos on certain flights, and they saved over $1 million a year. So all of these small incremental changes that you can make add up to some significant savings. And also this, I think talking to you, William, you know, we're talking about things being so razor thin in aviation. You know, this sort of thing of stuff will help, you know, China Southern, for example, switch from seasonal daily maybe to Adelaide. I'm from Adelaide, so, you know, maybe they can then, you know, capitalise on that and improve their service offering to customers.

Ingrid Picard:So we took— thanks for that. That's a good example. And if you add millions and millions and millions, you quickly get to trillions of savings. So let's have that as a target. Speaking of targets and data, very much linked to airport and airline collaboration, how can airport and airline collaborate more efficiently, specifically around data sharing? Because we've identified this as being really key in bringing a better customer journey, so reducing things like reducing congestion, maximizing OTP, on-time arrival, and, and of course diminishing the passenger discomfort, especially for long-haul flights. So the question is really around airport-airline collaboration and how can we use this data to bring that effectiveness. And I'll start with you, William, because you haven't had an opportunity to speak yet. But I guess being Um, representing a Chinese carrier here on stage, what can we learn from that airport-airline collaboration, data collaboration that can bring both down under?

William Wang:Yeah, so from my perspective, both airports and airlines, we have one ultimate common goal, is to make the passengers' experience as smooth as possible, as convenient as possible. And I want to start with the aerial connectivity, or we normally call the intermodal transportation China. We're the largest carrier not only in China but also in Asia with almost 1,000 aircraft. But even with scale like that, our largest competitor is not other Chinese airlines. Our largest competitor is actually the high-speed railway. So simply put, if you now take a high-speed railway from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, it takes roughly 1.5 hours. And even 10 years ago, the timing took is about like 4 or 5 hours if you take a normal train. So you can easily imagine how the construction speed, how the development of infrastructure in China is now becoming. The reason I'm raising the air-rail connectivity is because now in major airports in China, like Beijing Daxing Airport, airport is actually co-located with high-speed railway. So it's It's all in a vertical framework. It's like the level 1 and level 2 belongs to the high-speed railway station, and if passengers, they want to take flights, they can just take a lift up to level 4 or level 5 to make the check-in and go through the security check line. Always making the passenger experience as smooth as possible. Chinese airlines are more than happy to support that. It's mainly because within the range of 800 kilometres, High-speed railway actually have absolute advantage over airlines. So ironically, even as airline staff, I would prefer using high-speed railway in China for travel. Since normally every high-speed railway station is located at a central place in big cities in China, and each major city in China, they have not only one high-speed railway station, they normally have 4 or 5. One is definitely included in the airport. Yeah, so within the range of 800 kilometres, we would definitely like to let high-speed railway carry the passengers going to the airport, and we further carry these passengers further to the overseas destinations. Yeah, so that's what we normally call the air-rail connectivity. Yeah, and the second one I want to mention is we just recently released out a new brand service which we call Express Boarding. So simply put, we just reduce the lead time between the flight takeoff and the passenger boarding from 30 minutes to a mere 15 minutes for passengers without checked baggage. So just easily imagine how convenient that could be. So if passengers— they would definitely encounter roadblocks, they would definitely encounter traffic jams in the big-tier cities in China. So even in our hub, Guangzhou, Guangzhou has 30 million people, even more than the entire Australia's population. So you can easily imagine how cramped that would be on the road. It's highly likely that passengers, they would not arrive on time if the weather is so bad. So thanks to strong support from the Guangzhou Airport and also other major airports in China, they designed this special lane for the late arrival passengers to go through the security check. We were able to just narrow down the lead time from 30 minutes to 15 minutes. I also think it as a win-win for both airport and China Southern Airlines.

Ingrid Picard:Right. I love your example about the railway, and to your point earlier on about the cruise, I don't think we can see the industry as just airline and airport and reduce it to airport-airline collaboration. Margy, I know you're a big supporter of that. What do you think it takes for better collaboration as an industry in general? Is it the data? Is it the capacity to go to a government and say, look, we need this data, you need the data as a government, you need the data as an airline, you need the data as a cruise operator, as a rail operator? And what do you think can bring it together? Is it the data? Is it the better collaboration? Is it a body like TTF? What could improve it?

Margy Osmond:Look, it's probably a combination of all of those things, but I would say to you that it has been an act of impressive, and I'm very grateful for, discipline on the part of the industry over the last 18 months. to stay on message, with one message to the government about why this was required and what it would look like, and to be joined at the hip with a government agency to do the planning in this space. There's a committee called the National Passenger Facilitation Committee. I can see people dropping off all over the room as soon as I mention that, but nevertheless, it's a very important group of government operators and the industry itself. That became the platform that allowed us to argue for this, plus we took on the responsibility of convincing Treasury. And I think this is the other thing that traditionally government agencies are not always great at convincing their own Treasury to spend money on change and innovation. That's really where industry has to lean into the exercise, and there is a requirement, difficult as it can be from a commercial point of view, to be absolutely disciplined about one message, No hiving off in different directions for individual benefit. Stay on the pathway. That is the only way we've managed to achieve this. And I, you know, I mean, there's another $330 million which the government will commit to for the rest of the border activity. And I think it's pretty much the first time in a very long time we've seen this level of collaboration. So the data is critical, but it is the industry willing itself into a position of success by sticking with the game and sticking with the strategy.

Ingrid Picard:Right. Alignment.

Margy Osmond:Alignment.

Ingrid Picard:Evan, any lesson learned from the US? You shared with me around your disruption recovery solver. Is that something that came from the US that was a lesson learned as well?

Evan Edwards:Yeah, so there's about 3 major airlines in the US that use our network recovery solver for their disruption recovery. So basically it takes an entire very, very large operator, like 900 planes. It can analyze— and this is not a hub-and-spoke operator. I'm probably going to single it out by describing it point-to-point, low-cost operator of about 500— yeah, 900 planes. So it's able to take in all of the crewing data, all of the flight information, flight data, all of the hotel data, everything. And if they have a major disrupt, which I'm sure any of you that read the United States news see there's disrupts over there quite a bit, they can choose to let the, the solver go on its own accord and replan cancellations, use op spares, plan which crews to use, which crews to stand down, flying ferry planes across the country to try to pick up Point-to-point recovery. So these are the things going on in the background that airlines are already doing and going forward. And just to pick up something you mentioned there, like change management, one of the things I find very challenging selling software to airlines is often— I have a saying, I love sayings. So we offer them a Ferrari garage and they want to rebuild the Toyota Corolla that they're replacing.

Margy Osmond:Yeah.

Evan Edwards:So, because it's very hard for a lot of airline execs to see something different and embrace change, and it's a little bit of leaning forward and putting your neck on the line. And it's just like a bit of a trust needed there to fully embrace this software and use it.

William Wang:Yeah.

Ingrid Picard:And recovery management is so important. The efficiencies in there are just bigger and larger than we can even imagine. And it affects all points. So within the airline, but then rippling effects into the airport and then on the ground. So to your point, if there's a disruption in the air, if there's a disruption in the airport, the rippling effect on cruise, rail, you know, road is impacted as well. So it's very important to have The right data, the right connectivity. And if you are given a Ferrari, drive it, because you're going to get there faster, don't you? Moving on a bit from disruption and collaboration, one of the panels earlier on was around sustainability, and that's another area where we need to make progresses. The technology often is there, it's the change management, the adoption, the government. I'm just back from 15 months in Europe, and Europe is giving money right, left, and center for sustainability projects, developing the technology that will give better SAF aviation fuel, and so on and so forth. I'm wondering if So government is important, the policies, the money. What about rewarding the passengers themselves for having the right behavior when it comes to sustainability? Is loyalty underused and loyalty technology is underused maybe to drive behavior change? to drive the passenger and reward the passenger for better behavior. And then that's for the discretion of the airline or the airport or the whole ecosystem to decide what is good behavior. But are we underutilizing that technology and the reward mechanism? What do you think? Yeah, I think—

Paul Doherty:William? I think that's for William.

William Wang:Go for it. So, so miles can definitely be an effective leverage airlines can use to encourage customers, to encourage passengers to adopt a more sustainable travel way. So we have this kind of product we call Flying Green Options, which simply means that if passengers, they choose to waive their in-flight meals, that can exchange for extra miles. So we— so actually, China Southern Airlines owns and operates more than 100 cafe stores back in China. Just to enable our corporate customers more scenarios to redeem our miles, especially our high-value members. Because if miles, they have too few scenarios to redeem, then your miles just become valueless. So we're always exploring new scenarios to consume those miles. It's like passengers and members, they can also use our miles to consume in grocery stores, in gas stations, and even for online shopping. Yeah, so we just give them another way to accumulate our miles by waiving their in-flight meals. And just considering our scale, almost 1,000 aircraft, it's very convenient for us to imagine how much carbon can we offset using this method.

Evan Edwards:Yeah.

William Wang:And secondly, we also have this kind of carbon offset service, which means passengers they can see the exact figure of the carbon emissions of their flight about to take. So our app will accurately calculate for them, and they can use their miles to offset that carbon. So it's not actually offsetting the carbon, but it's actually they donate their miles, the equivalent miles to China Southern Airlines, and we will collect all the miles and redeem for the carbon credits. And in China, carbon credits can be used for the forestry project and also used for building the solar panel. All these projects beneficial for reducing greenhouse gas. Yeah, so I think that that's really an innovative way for us to consider how can we encourage the passengers to adopt a more friendly, more environmentally friendly way to travel.

Ingrid Picard:So using miles is a good mechanism. What about status? You had an example, Paul, around status?

Paul Doherty:I think everybody here is trying to design a voyage or journey for their people that, you know, represents their value to them and also, you know, the loyalty that they show to your respective organizations, airlines, airports even. I mean, talking to some of the airports, it's all designed around how do we make it seamless, just in time, minimize the impact. I think Dermot was talking about that yesterday through the panels. We've seen mechanisms that used to be relevant, like APEC cards. If you remember those old APEC cards, you used to go and have to get it, and it gave you a few countries you could go to, separate lane. But now it's more aligned to status and how people see themselves, how they travel. Quite a lot of executives, as all the people running loyalty programs here would know, they run their entire year, they get points galore, 1,000 planes generating them as they go through. In China Southern, and they want to take those points and make them benefit for them and their family. And they want to do that once or twice a year and make that journey really simple and straightforward. And that's the best way to show status, is to say, look, here's a separate way of doing it. Everybody uses their phones these days. It's a completely connected world. I mean, everybody I've seen that's getting to the front of this market is using their phone to give the best benefit to the people involved. And that just gives you the opportunity to actually drive through. And it's— I've seen it done in a few countries, and it's very seamless, very smooth, and it just gives a much better experience as you get through the terminal. It makes you arrive in a much better state than if you have to race through, just get to the check-in counter at the last minute as they're trying to close, and then try to get through security, and it's a mess. So it's all about trying to enhance the journey for the passenger, and how do you do that? You actually recognise those people that do use you a lot.

Ingrid Picard:Yeah, I can relate to that, having been a road warrior for 20 years. There's the efficiency you want because you've got your next business meeting, you want to, you know, fly through the airport almost. But also when you've got your kids with you, you want to show off a bit. Why is Mummy leaving every single Why is Dad leaving every single week? Well, you know, now you can understand the pain that we are all going through as a family has a bit of perks and benefit because, you know, we go through, through those lines. Well, we don't queue. Speaking of which, really nice segue, and, and Margy, I'd like to come to you on that one again, touching on traveler ID and digital identity, we can learn. And I wanted to create this panel with lessons learned from different airports and cities and airlines around the world. I have had some really good experience with digital identity, passenger identity, biometrics in airports like Manchester, Changi Airport, Tokyo Airport. All of those airports are very digitalized. The adoption of those technologies has been fairly smooth. There's best practices, and I know that you have done a lot of work with our friend from Brisbane Airport. So I'd like to ask you what it takes to have that traveler identity and biometric seamless experience? How long is the trial? Give us through the process.

Margy Osmond:Do I get to do world peace afterwards? Okay, so essentially the trials have been going on now for over 18 months. I notice on the list of questions here somebody's asked about adaptive technology and the declaration form and people who might be a bit older. I'd just say to you that in terms of the digital take-up on the Qantas trials, it's been an over 80% take-up of people on the flight. So the acceptance level is incredibly high. That doesn't mean you abandon everybody else who's not quite so comfortable with it, and there will be a range of other options associated with it in the customs hall. But I think probably the most important thing is that you can do it a couple of days before you travel. And this has amazing benefits. Number one, you can do it at your leisure. There's no stress, whatever. It means from Border Force's point of view, they're getting data that much earlier, they can think about it that much earlier, and critically from the Department of Agriculture's point of view, in whatever country you're in, they're getting the opportunity to send you a note to say, don't put that banana in your handbag. Just be a bit more sensible about how you manage the biosecurity issues. I think in the larger sense with this, the trial will transmute into a kind of white folder product like Singapore. So at the moment it's an app with Qantas, but it will move into a larger, more universal piece over the next 12 months. There is no doubt though that that part and all of the other associated pieces that take you through to combined gates— airports need to be able to plan for this level of capital investment and construction. It can't be a surprise from government to suddenly give us guidance, and that's why this initial announcement is so important, because it is a signal. Anywhere this has worked in other parts of the world, it has been a collaboration between the airport, the government, the airlines, the Border Force. And I think the other thing from our perspective is that people really understand the practicality of, do you really want ABF officers doing manual card collection, or do you want them keeping the borders safe and checking it? You know, I mean, are they there to manage queues, or are they there to keep—

William Wang:Border security.

Margy Osmond:you as an Australian safe and our border the way it should be. And I think that's the headset that's applied to an awful lot of other places around the world. Hong Kong is currently the best immigration airport in the world by technology, but places like Singapore, Doha, Dubai, all of these places are impressive. And yet, there are still places in the world doing unusual things. I don't— has anybody been to Italy recently through Milan Airport? Yes, thank you, there's a hand. So they've just had the Olympics. You would have thought they would have gone straight for the best Is that the best outcome option?

Ingrid Picard:No.

Margy Osmond:There's now about 3 extra steps. It's all very shiny new equipment, but you've now got to do about 3 extra steps at Milan Airport. Absolutely not necessarily the way to do it. I think, if I can give any word of comfort on this, is that as an industry, you should feel like your interests are being really well represented in this space, in the sense of government is not making these decisions in isolation from you. And airports aren't making them in isolation from airlines. And I think that has always been a stumbling block in the past. So everywhere it's worked, it's been a collaborative model. We will definitely have to have this before the Olympics. Off the back of surveying we've done just recently, 84% of Australians think that we absolutely have to have a seamless border before 2032. Gosh, 2030 would be nice. But yeah, there is a groundswell of support now out there in traveller land, and more importantly, voter land.

Ingrid Picard:Right, and even for airports that are advanced, so if I take the example of Changi, there's still 2 gates. So even though it's digital, you still have to go first through the security gate and then through immigration gate, whereas in an ideal world you would have one gate that does it all. So technology is there and I'm going to come to you, Paul, about technology. But just before we, we talk about that, can we put the Slido QR code back up as well? So we might have time for one or two questions from the audience.

Margy Osmond:I mean, it's important to remember that Bali has a seamless border. You know, you get off the plane, pick up your bag, and keep walking.

Ingrid Picard:Yeah, agree. I agree. So if you have any question, put them— put the question in Slido. One thing that is, um, that we haven't touched on, but you and I, Paul, we, we compare the app we developed. Uh, um, show me yours, I'll show you mine. Yeah, it was a fun session over breakfast. Um, so Paul and I love to code a bit, or, or prompt, I should say. What are, um, the kind of, um, AI and generative technology that could improve all of this passenger experience that we can do as tech individuals within our organisation and not necessarily wait for, you know, the technology providers to develop, because you and I have done it. So clearly, if I've done it, everyone can do it. Do you want to talk us through that?

Paul Doherty:Yeah, sure. Look, you know, AI is I know it's one of those buzzwords, and I know we've talked about it yesterday and everything else, but it is quite surprising how it can take proprietary knowledge that most people in this room have and develop it quite quickly into something that's actually usable, whether it be in your own space, whether it be for yourself, whether it be for a team. I've got a couple of ones I've done for my teams, and it just enables them. So all you're trying to do is just take time off people and just give them their time back. But it's also quite amazing what it is capable on the backend, and the data that Evan's talking about. And realistically, 10 years ago, there was so much aircraft data coming off the frame, but we couldn't really do much with it because there was so much, and there wasn't the actual ability to crunch the numbers and integrate. Now there is, and you're seeing it very quickly change and mold itself to a completely new world of looking at how that data is and what it means. So that's why, for example, Border Force is quite happy because they can actually take that data and quickly assess people, whereas previously it would just be someone assessing you at the actual— which much of the American setup sort of still is, but it's really designed on actually taking out all that data and actually working out what are the issues. So similarly, we did show apps together, all that type of stuff, so I'll probably have to explain that to my wife later. But the reality is The thing is that if you've got the time to learn and understand and just basically come up with concepts, because previously a concept that you would float with something like an IT department, having dealt with quite a few in my time, there would be many reasons why you can't. And nowadays there's many reasons why you can. It's just the control of the data and how you actually do the asset. What are you actually trying to achieve? Is there a pain point? I think I've been able to sort of describe many pain points with what we've come across, and there are solutions to it. It's just a matter of commitment by people to actually do it, because the processes are there to enable you to do it. It's really down to what you're happy to do and prepared to use. And as an organization, what you want to do. You can do the status quo, but status quo— great '70s rock band— but not really going to get you very far in business. So, You need to actually step out a bit, think about it. What do the customers really want? What does make a real difference to people's journey? And that's exactly what Margy's talking about.

Ingrid Picard:100%. And if I, if I look at what we've done at Mobility Futures over the last months, we've built 15 agents working for us during the night. So the only lesson learned from that is if you're slack in your prompting in defining your scope, Claude or whatever agent you're using to code will learn very quickly that you are not putting the right safeguard rails. You're not— you're a bit lazy, you're a bit slack, whatever you want to use, but it will train itself to become that way as well. So it's very, very important. I know that in AI we talk a lot about data security, there's another area where we have to be super, super careful is what is the quality of input we're putting into, into what we're prompting our agents to do. So collaboration is key, streamlining is key, having buying from and maybe a bit of funding as well from government is key, but also quality of Any question from the audience for our panel? We've got about a minute to go. No? We're right on time. Speaking of quality, amazing panel this morning. Thank you very much for the quality of your input, all of you today. And it's a wrap-up on technology. Thank you. Thank you.

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