Technology Rundown - How digitalisation and innovation are transforming the passenger experience

Transcript

John Hurley:See you later.

Rich Maslen:Hi everybody, thank you for still being here. There's a lot of you out there, that's really kind that you're sticking with us. We've got some really good sessions now on, on a technology rundown where we're going to discuss the advent and development of technology in the sector. This first session we're going to concentrate on digitalisation and innovation and how they're changing the passenger experience. So if my panel would like to come and join me on stage, that would be great. So what we're going to do is we, you know, passengers are, they see changes in technology and an opportunity. It's an essential element of that onboard experience, the booking experience, even post-event. We've got the constant surveys, we've got opportunities for more information. So it's becoming a more and more important part of the experience. So what we're going to do is—

Rohan Karnick:These are clean?

Rich Maslen:Guide through the experience. From pre-travel, during travel, and after travel. We're really lucky that we've got a couple of great airline representatives here, Ryanair and Lufthansa Group. We've also got some providers from CAE and from Bluebox as well. So we'll learn more about what they're offering and how we can collaborate together as an industry to better deliver for passengers. So I think, you know, we need to start before, before we're traveling. Booking a flight, you know, it should be an easy experience. It should be quite straightforward. And I think, you know, it's perfect to start with, with, with, with John here from, from Ryanair in that sometimes when you're booking flights, especially with low-cost carriers, but even more so now with full-service carriers as well, the number of clicks that you need to actually buy that ticket can sometimes get to a really high level. You know, you pick your fare, you pick your baggage, you pick, you know, print your boarding pass. Do I want skis? Do I want insurance? It's all part of the element. It's important for airlines. Ancillaries are so much more important, but it's not the best experience for the passenger. So from Ryanair's perspective, you know, you're the biggest airline in Europe. You know, the growth that you've had is unbelievable. How do you ensure that that booking process works with, you know, that on your, you know, you are a digital-first airline, you know, even more so now with check-in as well being something that's going to be, you know, fully done online. You know, how do you make that work?

John Hurley:Well, start at the beginning. So 10 years ago when I joined Ryanair, the objective was to fix the booking flow and make it better. At the time, we were notorious with over 19 clicks to make a booking. People had to find a country called Do Not Insure Me right below Denmark in a dropdown list to stop people paying for insurance. And it was a pretty bad experience. So year 1, we launched a brand new website, went from 17 clicks down to 3 to make a booking, and it wasn't good. It turns out it went very badly, impacted ancillaries, impacted customer complaints. We did research, did a lot of A/B testing. We're back up to 15, 16 clicks now. And what we discovered was, and you won't experience this, but you're all seasoned travelers. A seasoned traveler knows exactly what a bag is and knows exactly what Priority boarding is, they know what seat, they understand. But a lot of our passengers fly with us once a year and they're nervous and they're afraid to make a mistake. And unless they're getting shown a seat allocation, how that works, it was just, it was causing chaos, was upsetting everybody. So we put it back in. What we've seen is the experienced travelers like yourselves, you just go straight through the website, it's ding ding ding, you don't even read what's popping up. But to everybody else, the think time is quite slow, it's quite ponderous, and people want to revise their decisions. Something as simple as a 10 kg bag versus a 20 kg bag. Experienced travelers know exactly what they want. A family doesn't. They might sometimes stop and have a discussion going, what are we going to do here? It's quite expensive. And that's where we've seen we've evolved back. The other thing you've seen quite a lot is actually, it was back then, it'd be 90-95% being the website, very small on mobile. Well, actually back then, 10 years ago, we charged you to install the mobile app on your phone and it didn't work. So it was a bad start. I think about 50-55% of bookings are all coming through mobile.

Rohan Karnick:Wow.

John Hurley:And that trend is going only one direction. I think next year or 2 it'll be, it'll be 80-90%.

Rich Maslen:Okay, so, you know, I think as a sort of new airline with the model, everyone knows what to expect when they book and travel with Ryanair. But for Lufthansa Group, Samir, and through the different ventures you have within that group, you know, the product has changed in terms of booking for full-service carriers. In, you know, my generation when I was booking, everything is there, you know what you're getting. You know, now sometimes when you're booking, you're not quite sure exactly, do I get one bag, do I get 2 bags, what, you know, what am I allowed? You know, how are you making sure that those messages get across so the passenger is fully aware of what is happening? And how are you looking to innovate to make that whole process of the booking system better for the passenger?

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:Yeah, I think we have come a long way and we learned it probably the hard way over a couple of summers where operations didn't go that well, and particularly when disruption is happening, I think It's important you're there for the customer. And I think that has improved tremendously with much more self-servicing functionalities. Also, what is important, we introduced the Travel ID where now the passengers are accompanied all the way during the service process, getting updates about gates, getting updates about disruptions, etc. Where's my luggage? That's happening. So when you have it for the booking process, I don't think that Ryanair is less successful because they have a number more clicks than Lufthansa has currently. But definitely transparency and communication is key. So I think also there it has improved tremendously so that the customers know what's in, what's not in, that the customer knows with which wet lease carrier is he flying. The customer gets this information, I think. But in the end, this is still the old system. And what now has been working on is really something that is dramatically different. And it starts with the new offers and orders world.

Rich Maslen:Yeah.

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:It has— the train has left the station. First carriers have signed contracts there. So we will see a new connection to the backbone for the front end. And I think that will dramatically change. It will take a number of years to improve on that side, but you will see it now step by step also coming. That will help tremendously all along the journey. And it starts already, by the way, way before I do the booking. It starts at the inspiration phase. So I think there the question is, how do I engage? Can I establish a relationship with the customer early on and then accompany them through the process, through the booking, and then the actual physical travel and the post-flight engagement and the loyalty? I think that whole value chain you have to look at. It's not just the physical experience or booking your flight in advance. It's really a holistic view on how I engage a customer. So this is still, I would say, work in progress. Bits and pieces are coming. Not everything is there, but I think the industry has understood that this is absolutely needed because other industries are doing it.

Rich Maslen:Tamara, I want to carry on with you in terms of once you're at the airport, you touched on a few things of that there. You lose a bit of control of your passengers when they're in the airport environment. How do you make sure? Because as an airline, you're the one that's seen if there are any delays, oh, it's the airline's fault. It's nothing to do with ATC. It's nothing to do with, you know, the airport thing. How do you ensure that you keep that contact with the customer and how do you use your, you know, your digital channels to do that?

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:Yeah, it's absolutely important that here you get the digital journey in line with the actual behind what's happening in the physical journey and what's happening behind the curtain. So take the example, a flight is late, estimated time of departure is changing. Often the customer sees that somewhere at the board there that the flight is delayed, but his app has not shown him that. So this needs to be triggered from the hub control centres who give that information then to the digital platform and there it can be processed in time. So that's something we have improved a lot, that the customer knows at any point in time, wherever he is in the journey, what's happening. What's my gate change? Where is my luggage? Maybe is it actually boarded? And also, is my flight now delayed? How much is it delayed? Also, what you don't like is kicking the can down the road. You get creeping delay codes, 10 minutes more, 10 minutes more, 15 minutes more. So being a bit more proactive and ahead is also something you can program. On the one hand, you can digitalise that. In the end, you still have supervision also in hub control centres that are also controlling that this is working well. So you still need that combination of human supervision plus the digital automation and holistic kind of—

Rohan Karnick:Yeah.

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:Digital services, yeah.

Rich Maslen:So I'm going to jump to onboard because obviously where we have Bluebox here and CAE as well. So, you know, the onboard experience, you've got the passenger trapped in their seat, you know, it's a captive audience there. Digital channels can be used really well to be able to deliver on them. And we're, you know, we're seeing experience change quite a lot in travel in the past with your small little screen. You know, you had very limited content on board. Now it's amazing what you can get. You can bring your own devices on. You know, when I flew out here on Wednesday night, I was able to stream the Champions League match on my phone on board the flight, which perhaps I regret now after the result, especially as it was flying with Air France. But it was a, you know, it's that opportunity now to be able to do that.

Rohan Karnick:From—

Rich Maslen:I want to touch first on that side of things, and then I'll come to the, you know, the sort of catering and from sort of how Ryanair can do something like that. So first of all, you know, Kevin, you've got a product that, you know, trends, develops what we see on board and everything. But there are others that are offering various different other opportunities. How do we as an industry make sure? Because the last thing we want is to say, well, actually, we're going to take this, we're going to take that, we're going to take this, we're going to take that. We've suddenly got 7 or 8 different providers. Nothing's all joined up. How do you collaborate better in the industry to benefit Bluebox, but also to benefit the passenger experience?

Kevin Birchmore:I guess, first of all, I wanted to say, Rich, that I think we're at a really exciting kind of change in the industry. I personally have been talking about kind of personalisation for I don't know, 6 or 8 years in the kind of IFE world, and it really does feel like there's a sort of tipping point and we're really starting to kind of do that. From our perspective, we have, I guess, 2 different modes that we're talking about. One is around that kind of enhancing that passenger experience and providing, you know, increasing NPS, you know, doing all those sorts of things. And that's really around the kind of in-flight entertainment, you know, kind of services, making sure that you're recommending the right things to those passengers, getting the right things in front of them. And that's more a kind of full-service carrier, you know, that's supplying that content and, you know, wants to drive up that NPS and really using that sort of entertainment to increase their sort of brand loyalty and all those sorts of things. The other options are, the other side of it is more based around kind of low-cost carriers and ultra-low-cost carriers. And that's really about that personalisation journey to do with food and beverage and retail services. And I know you said you'll come back to that in a minute, but let me perhaps just introduce very briefly. So I've got a real vision, and we're not doing it in the industry, and we really need to. And I've talked about this at other CAPA events. We, you know, I'm really passionate about it. We can have dynamic menus, we can have dynamic bundles. So by that I mean, you know, you log in in the morning, And, you know, what you see as a menu is very different from what you log into when you log in in the evening. And that user experience and that journey is going to be very different, and it damn well should be. We shouldn't be kind of, you know, taking the old-school, you know, kind of menu card and saying, oh well, let's digitise that. That is not what we should be doing. We should be really— and as I say, I've been talking about this for quite a while, but it does feel like there's a sort of tipping point. Yeah.

John Hurley:point.

Kevin Birchmore:And there's a number of airlines that I've got conversations with, both on the IFE side and on the retail side, that say, yeah, we really want to take advantage of that technology, be that technology that's installed in the aircraft, as Bluebox has a number of solutions, either partners or our own box, but also other solutions like the kind of always-on connectivity, the Starlink type, but, you know, there's others, but always-on connectivity and saying, well, actually, We're going to host this stuff on the ground. We don't need hardware anymore in the aircraft. We can host this on the ground and you can still, you know, do that order to seat. You can still have all that technology function. And there are advantages of doing that around credit card fraud and, you know, all of those sorts of things. So it's really exciting, I think, genuinely.

Rich Maslen:And Rowan, you know, CAE are involved with, you know, systems for IFE, systems for onboard catering as well. How do you see with what Bluebox is doing opportunities to help benefit what you're offering as well? Because as I say, we don't collaborate enough. We're very much in silos in what we're offering. How can you make that work for the benefit of the airline? Because ultimately, that's what they want. They want something that's a good price, that's what the passenger requires.

Rohan Karnick:That's a very good, valid point. As we were talking about this earlier as well, I think for a long time, in aviation, in airlines, particularly, everybody has sort of worked in their little silos. It hasn't been a cohesive platform anywhere, where across, whether it's navigation systems, airlines, air traffic control, all of these are in their little silos. So we have these little solo acts of brilliance. But what we need is more like an orchestra of brilliance, you know, something that has to come together, where all of these systems work interoperatively, so that there is an exchange of data across.

John Hurley:Yeah.

Rohan Karnick:So whether it is, you know, us changing schedules, sending this information to the airlines, having this updated, or it is whether it is collaborating with, with, you know, Kevin there and getting them information about in-flight entertainment. So as we have everything across, whether it is flight operations, whether it's airport management or in-flight, we can partner with other, whether it's airlines or other ground service providers where we can provide this information, have this information shared. We are opening up as a company, as an organisation, we are pretty open to integrating with others as well. I think that's the key where you have to be able to open to integrate with others because I think for a long time, like I said, being closed does not help us in any way. As I was reading last year, airlines, spent about close to $37 billion on airline IT, and that's been the highest since 2019, I believe, which is enormous. Having been with airline operations the last 2 decades, I haven't seen so much of transformation come through. This is a great time for us to really partner together, whether it's airlines or others, to work together and make it better.

Rich Maslen:John, onboard your planes, a big part of what makes Ryanair successful is ancillary sales, You know, it's the key thing of keeping fares low for you. And, you know, Michael O'Leary regularly said in the past, you know, I can have free flights operating, but I'll still make money because of what we sell on board. So, you know, digital channels have given you a great, better opportunity to be able to maximise that. You know, how have you incorporated that and how do you see now moving forward to the next stage that you can use Digitalisation, technology to be able to maximise those revenues you're making?

John Hurley:Yeah, great question. So everything Ryanair is simple and complex at the same time. So every solution we have has to work on 600 aircraft. It's got to work in every 34 different countries. It was over 3,500 flights a day. So it's very— the scale is huge. It has to be a very, very simple solution. So the idea of having customised menus is not an option because how would you get certain food, certain locations at certain times? And I'd love for $10 airports or city centres. Well, they're not, so you have to deal with what you have. So our menu is fixed. What we've— what we do is we change our packing plans and we use algorithms overnight to run through ones that predict what we should have. Where our favourite food is our panini sandwich, ham and cheese. I recommend it to everybody. I hope to get it on the flight home. And we call the tool the Panini Predictor because we're very good at catchy names. And that predicts our packing plan and we pack in advance. And the theory there would be if we can determine there could be a stag on the aircraft or it could be very family-friendly, we will increase the beer or decrease the beer based on that because we have very limited space on the actual aircraft. From technology perspective then, it always has been on the trolley, good old-fashioned, cheap and simple, up and down and people get there. And half the time on the aircraft you could be, if it's a 1.5-hour flight, you might not even get food. So that was a problem, a sticking point for us. So we trialled, we built ourselves internally using the Bluetooth technology on a customer's phone They talk to the cabin crew on their BlueBleep devices, just do simple things like have a ham and cheese panini. It's very, very simple. We rolled it out about a year ago. It has gone phenomenally well. It's really, really surprised us, the impact it's had from people. And it's actually changed our view on this. But back then we were very skeptical that people need it. You said it already, you have Spotify, you have Netflix, you can download everything. So your inflight entertainment is in your mobile phone, no hassle for us, and the trolley will serve you food. We're starting to change our minds. It's been really eye-opening how much people want that. And the new challenge you want is to be able to have 2-way communication. And the current device, the Bluetooth, works, it will receive information, but cabin crew can't send. So, you know, 40 minutes before landing, do you want a can of beer before, you know, you're on your weekend?

Rohan Karnick:Can you—

John Hurley:we can't do those customer service. That's something we're looking at.

Kevin Birchmore:We can solve that for you.

John Hurley:Oh, you can? Yeah, we can't afford it. We're still a low-cost carrier. Everything we do comes on what is the cost to the end user. So if the solution is simple and cheap, we'll go at it 100 miles an hour. If it's not, it takes a lot of due diligence. But interestingly enough, you learn from these— I don't want to call them hacks, but simple solutions— and then actually builds a business case for you. And we could be— I could be here sitting here next year laughing at, remember I said we'd never have it on board? It could happen. It surprises big time how customers actually want a better interaction with us.

Rich Maslen:I think it's learned.

Kevin Birchmore:Can I just come back on the menu piece? So to clarify, what I kind of meant was you have a trolley, maybe that's different per region, maybe it's the same, you know, different airlines kind of operate different models. But what I more meant was in the morning, you know, this is an easy example and the algorithm would tell you the answer, but in the morning, you know, you want a coffee and, you know, you want a croissant or something. In the evening, you are more— passengers are more geared towards— depends on the routes, depends on, you know, all those things. But in the evening, you're more geared towards a different set. So I wasn't trying to suggest that you have customized menus.

John Hurley:No.

Kevin Birchmore:Per flight based around you would change your, change your trolley. You, you carry the trolley that you carry, that's fine, but the, the way you market to those passengers changes. So instead of a passenger having to go and find a deal that says, you know, here's your crisps and here's your glass, you know, bottle of wine, it's the first thing that pops up. But, but popping that up in the morning wouldn't have the same sort of attraction. So it's about changing the shopfront to kind of gear it around the passenger expectation. Not around the logistics of the kind of trolley piece.

John Hurley:That's fair.

Rich Maslen:So, Timur, I'd like to come on to you now about personalisation a little bit, because for John, okay, you know, the Ryanair passenger can be from a business traveller all the way to a family, but, you know, they are paying low fares. In some ways, they perhaps have slightly lower expectations. And also you have the belief, I'm flying Ryanair, everybody automatically is like, well, I don't want to be flying Ryanair, I'm just doing it. So The expectation level is not there, but with your brands very well respected in the industry, you know, how do you ensure that you're offering that product that works for the passenger up the front? You know, we spoke to Heike yesterday on Swiss with the first-class cabins there, to the economy passenger with Eurowings that's flying on holiday, and how does that work?

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:Yeah, first of all, we talk about personalisation, I think, since 10 years or so. And everybody's saying, yeah, it's coming. And how do we actually do it? And yes, digitalisation helps a lot now. I mentioned Travel ID where it accompanies you and gives you updates. That's on the digital side when you have servicing our value chain. So personalisation means also I can choose my food now pre-flight. So are we used to choose our food before the flight as much as we are used to choose our seat? No, we are not. Culturally, we're not yet there, but it's also on us to communicate accordingly, to give that choice earlier in the communication that we're doing, and that should be done personalised. This morning I got a personalised email, a newsletter from Austrian. So depending on my last trip to Copenhagen, it sent me a personalised newsletter. So that's there, but it's not coherently everywhere in every step yet on the journey. And I think we still have some way to go there, but it will dramatically and is dramatically changing now. So basically every week I see something happening in the industry. And of course, large language models and AI is changing the story there because you see around you in your daily usage, and that's different to some other technologies we have seen which have not succeeded in the past to support personalisation. We see now that you in your daily usage, when you use Perplexity, when you do that, you actually get more and more direct contact with a large language model that can, of course, and will be and is actually being used now also in the travel section. So you see that already in destination guides. You know, your trip for the next week can be personalized and is happening already with the first use cases. You can see it in the booking process now. And the most crazy thing I saw last week was that somebody was designing a personalized website, a website.

John Hurley:A website?

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:In 5 minutes with a link to an inventory with a booking process in 5 minutes. So it was not a traditional website, I go to an app, it was personalised in 5 minutes and with a link to the inventory. So that is happening these days. We don't have that yet in our offer, but that shows you only what's coming now and what is dramatically changing. And we need to still catch up and fill the holes in the process. But this new technology will change the world. It's a revolution.

Rich Maslen:I think the thing that we're all interested in is, you know, we're so connected now. We, you know, we can't escape. Younger generations especially, you know, my daughter's phone is never out of her hand. You know, how she would ever survive on a flight that you didn't have Wi-Fi, I really don't know. So it is becoming a much more important thing. But then there's that question mark of, you know, it's an expensive investment for airlines to put this equipment on board. And who pays for it? Should it be free? Should you pay a premium? Should you get a certain level free that you can use maybe social media apps and you pay more to use emails and download content as well? So we've got a couple of questions about that as well. So I think, Tomur, just to start with you as well, across various brands, would you have a different strategy for the different airlines in terms of Wi-Fi or would you have a blanket offer?

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:No, I think we have introduced now free communication in terms of free messaging. So that started with Swiss, come to Lufthansa. So that's going to be the broad offer. But I think ultimately free Wi-Fi is a human right. So it's going to be free for sure for everybody. And you need to think, because it's expensive with the new broadband offers there is, how you finance that. But this offers— and first carriers already have communicated what they do about it— again, a whole new universe of how you commercialise or service your customer. It is completely changing the world because you have people sitting there, captive time, broadband internet coming, and there you can do a lot, a lot. Take the example of data commercialisation, take the example of media retailing. So if we as airlines become media retailers, and it's already starting, our first trials are done, this offers a whole new revenue pool of potential business model adjustments. It's not just the ticket. So this is something where first carriers have started, and I think this is going to come very quickly as soon as the broadband internet— and now there are some, you know, of course, players spearheading the industry, but we will see that quite in the next couple of years coming. And that is a super chance for the airlines also to be in contact with the customer in a different way. during the flight, of course, before and after as well. I think this is again another quite a game changer.

Rohan Karnick:Yeah.

Rich Maslen:And so we've got some questions we'll get on to from you, so thank you for sending them. I think, John, you know, it's been said there that Wi-Fi is a, you know, human right. We have to have it. I think I know the answer to this question anyway. Would Ryanair ever have Wi-Fi on board?

John Hurley:So what's the answer?

Rich Maslen:I think it should be, but hey.

John Hurley:I'm sorry, just Something we look at all the time. We always get pitches and good ideas. The biggest challenge we have is we're a low-cost carrier and our core principle to our customers is value. We're not going to spend willy-nilly money to be cool and to be, hey, look at us, we have Wi-Fi. And that'd be a core principle for all decisions. The biggest challenge you currently have with Wi-Fi is the antennas and the dishes. That's 1-2% drag. That's tens of millions in fuel every year, and it's carbon and CO2 emissions. We've targets to So the business case can't just be, it'd be nice to have. There would have to be a sense. Our average flight time is an hour and a half. Can people cope an hour and a half without Wi-Fi? I personally would love to have it, but I'm an IT person. Other people can find a digital detox. When the right provider comes out with the right solution where the drag is reduced dramatically, and there's some very interesting products out there at the moment, that conversation will change. But how would you get the revenue back? What is the business model? I would love to be able to sell ancillaries in-flight. to your destination, it'd be a great product there, but can I go to Michael Leary and say this will guarantee us €50 million revenue next year? I'd lose my job in 4 seconds. So that's the problem with Wi-Fi, a challenge we have at the moment.

Rich Maslen:Rohan, you have a comment to make?

Rohan Karnick:There was a question to John. Don't you think that the lines between LCCs and full-service carriers are kind of blurring out nowadays? Because I find that the service offering is pretty much in line with that, at least in Europe, right? So the lines are really blurring out. So where do you really see this changing? Like you said, they're a low-cost carrier at heart, and offering Wi-Fi on board basically adding more cost to it. But with the lines blurring, you know, your service offering obviously has to be kind of in line with what the others are offering. So do you see that changing as time goes?

John Hurley:I do. I see other carriers doing everything to kind of copy us. And they'll all be premium carriers in a few years' time. Sorry, it's a tricky one. Sorry, back to the Wi-Fi. The challenge we currently have there too is we fly over a lot of water, we fly to North Africa, we fly to other regions, and air-to-ground is not an option. We have to use a satellite. And that's— sorry, that's where the fuel drag comes from. I do see the lines blurring, yes. I do think it should be experience for a passenger if you're flying with Lufthansa, you're flying with Ryanair or BA, it should be exact same experience. You should be— every bag should be all the same size. There should be no baggage sizes. Everyone knows what a 10 kg bag looks like and they're sold for legitimate and we should harmonise that across Europe completely. And I also think that the question came up about disruptions. I think we all handle that poorly as an aviation. We need to get better at this and how we handle it and digitalisation will fix this. Absolutely. We can contact customers' mobile phone. Where's your hotel? Where's your transfer? And how are we reconnecting you? And no need for phone call, no need to be missing and giant queues. And that's where I see it will harmonise, and harmonise quite a lot in that space. And it'll become the first airline that does it well will get a huge advantage over everybody else. We're faced into a summer of ATC not working again. You all heard the presentations this morning, and it's going to cause disruptions, that's going to annoy people, and it's definitely an opportunity we have to fix. And there will be lots of communications disasters, unfortunately, this summer, and we have to get better at it as an airline industry.

Rich Maslen:Kevin, did you want to say something there?

Kevin Birchmore:Yeah, I was just going to say we're talking about Wi-Fi here. I think, you know, some in the room, you know, are probably more familiar than others, but we talk about Wi-Fi, but there's kind of different options and different varieties. So that might just be in the cabin. So, you know, like the system that you've got that's Bluetooth, you know, that's at least a wireless, you know, technology kind of set. So you can have Wi-Fi that's just in the cabin, or you can— and/or you can have connectivity to the ground. And even with the connectivity, there are different options that you can pursue. And again, I think from a passenger experience perspective, having, you know, being able to kind of do messaging and those sorts of things, I think is becoming more important to different people. But it depends on the value proposition, doesn't it, that you're offering. But there are some things that airlines can do as a sort of stepping stone, if you like, towards that. So there are Iridium technologies, for example, that are low Earth orbit, very tiny antennas, kind of the size of like an ice hockey puck, to kind of give it, you know, some sort of perspective. And they allow you to do— it doesn't necessarily allow a passenger to be able to surf the internet, but it would allow you to do some technology services that enhance that passenger experience, or potentially kind of get rid of credit card fraud, for example.

John Hurley:Mm-hmm.

Kevin Birchmore:So imagine as an airline being able to justify, well, you know, the cost of doing that, but actually I can save, you know, I don't know what the numbers are, but potentially multiple millions across the, across the Ryanair fleet. And there's many fleets, you know, LCC fleets that are large enough to say actually the justification allows that, that type of thing. So there are different options, I guess, on that, on that, on that scale.

Rich Maslen:So I'm going to pick some of the questions here from the audience. I think I quite like, why doesn't our industry need such a long time to develop digital solutions? We're not agile. It takes too long to roll out. Sorry, did this one come back?

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:Yeah, I think the 2 questions are basically hinting in the same direction. And yeah, we are too slow, definitely, because there's also a cultural element in there that we're coming from a traditional safety and security— by the way, Gen Z loves it, as we learned yesterday— environment. So we maybe can play the card as well on the commercial side. We should never play the card on the operational side. This is a absolute must-have and nothing to be negotiated. But when we come from that environment, you don't— you're open to technology, but on the, let's say, media or a modern era in retailing, what other industries are doing in retailing, you're not coming necessarily there from the front, but you're actually catching up. So then you have the second one that in the '60s we were leading digitally with the backend, and that backend is still there. It's still there for all the airlines, it's still there. And that means whatever you have on the frontend, you need to connect it and This is something where as long as the backend is there with the traditional PSS, etc., you will have always— you will hit the hard rock at some point. So as I said before, the offers and orders now train has started. It will take years. It goes module by module. It's an architecture that will come over the next years that will bring a big improvement. And that's the missing step that we still have because some of those offers can only be fully serviced and fully distributed when you have solved that issue. So nevertheless, it doesn't mean that you stop now. And many things we just discussed about personalisation, etc., you can do now already in this time, and particularly when you're not touching the inventory. So as much as you need to touch the inventory, of course you have the linkage that you need to do. There are ways to do it, but it's more cumbersome. And that's one of the reasons maybe also that we take longer, but eventually we'll get there, I think.

Rich Maslen:And from the tech provider's point of view, you know, bringing products to market takes a lot of time. You know, if there's an innovative solution that comes available, what's holding us back from getting it into airlines as fast as possible? Kevin, perhaps?

Kevin Birchmore:Thanks, Rich. I guess we're ready to support. We do many integrations to airlines using kind of APIs. There are different barriers to this. We work really hard to try and make sure that all of our products are very robust. You know, that does take time and that does take iteration to do that. But we try really hard to make sure that that doesn't hold us back and doesn't hold our airline customers back. And as I said earlier, you know, when I first mentioned, I genuinely think this is a really exciting time for this change in personalisation. I'm having more and more of these conversations with airlines. where it's becoming a kind of key thing.

Rich Maslen:So, okay, we've got a couple of minutes left, so I just want to quickly go down the panel with a few things. So very, very short answers, please. What would you say is the biggest technology innovation that you've seen in the passenger experience space? So we'll start at that end with Rohan.

Rohan Karnick:Okay, interesting question. Well, from my end, at least from CAE FlightScale perspective, I think We've been known as a simulation company here on, but things are changing. What we are looking at is how we can simulate, predict, and optimise, right? To me, the way I see it, coming from an airline operations background, I think operations is the backbone for the passenger experience. So for us to be able to provide that, that I think enhances the passenger experience. So I'm just trying to keep it short here.

Rich Maslen:Tarek?

Tamur Goudarzi Pour:Yeah, I would say the breakthrough that has now happened on offers and orders, I think is hugely important for the whole industry. On the short notice, we all talk about AI, I mean, different things. For years we talk about it, but I think the LLM change with large language models is now quite a dramatic change also for everything that happens on early part of the process in terms of inspiration, booking. I think that, that is disrupting fairly quickly now. And I think in the last 18 months, this is the biggest change I've seen.

John Hurley:John? I would agree. LLMs are huge. What they've done for customer services, what they've done for I saw some of the examples before with prototyping. Any member of the business now can come up with an idea themselves, 5, 10 minutes, and present a working prototype to which we can build and work on. It's mind-boggling. And we're getting better understanding, better interaction with our customers, and it's going from strength to strength. I see a future— we didn't get there yet, but potentially there may not even be websites in 2 or 3 years' time. You'll probably have an assistant on your phone. It'll be Google, or it'll be Apple, or it'll be Alexa, and it'll book me a flight. And all the work we've done for the last 10, 15 years will be gone. You'll just get it. You'll get a ticket. You'll arrive at the airport. And that's when Gen Zs will take over, and that's when I'll have to have Wi-Fi on the aircraft or we'll be out of business. But it's very, very exciting. I've never seen anything this dramatic before. We've been using AI for years in Ryanair, but that's all optimisations and predictions. This is just next level because democratised completely. Everybody in Ryanair is now suddenly an IT genius, which is a nightmare because everybody now is fighting this war. How come you haven't got live yet?

Rich Maslen:And Kevin, you've got 10 seconds.

Rohan Karnick:10 seconds.

Kevin Birchmore:So I'm going to choose something slightly different there and say I love the potential opportunity of the low-cost connectivity. So, and it's an enabler that allows us to be able to do many more things, you know, be that personalisation or be that other things. And that's, yeah, that's what I'm going to go with.

Rich Maslen:Brilliant. Well, there's so much we can talk about, but we're out of time now. So if you can give me a round of applause for the panellists.

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