Easyjet and Virgin Atlantic IT chiefs urge airlines to collaborate

Airlines and airports should work together to create 'rich app'

There needs to be more collaboration within the airline industry to combat the stranglehold of global distribution system (GDS) providers, according to the IT chiefs of EasyJet and Virgin Atlantic.

GDSs have been used as a single point of access for reserving airline seats and other travel items that are provided by travel agents and online travel sites.

But Virgin Atlantic Airways IT director David Bulman told Computing that GDSs have restrictions as they were not built for the role that they are now fulfilling.

"The GDSs as they exist today are an absolute barrier to innovation. We cannot today sell value-added services through the GDSs.

"How you try to sell ancillary sales through it is really complicated; they were not built to do this, they were built to sell airline tickets," he argued.

EasyJet CIO Trevor Didcock agreed that airlines had to move away from GDS but told Computing that he is sceptical about the timeframe that the likes of EasyJet and Virgin Atlantic have to make such a move.

"The way forward is to get away from VDI-based technology. The challenge is that the GDS players have a bit of a stranglehold on the industry and so for [a move] to really be effective would mean that GDS providers can move with the airlines.

"The airlines can try to circumvent the GDS players but when there are tens of thousands of travel agents with the vast majority of them using GDS systems it is going to take a very long time to move away from that. So ideally the likes of [airline IT providers] Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport should work closely with the airlines to find ways of bringing the technology they use up to date. EasyJet are having these conversations with GDS players at the moment," he said.

In addition to co-operating with GDS vendors, airlines should be co-operating with each other, according to Bulman.

"Every airline currently has its own application. We need to interconnect these things, we have to come up with open-source standards so that [the technology] can take a little bit of [the functionality] of an app from Heathrow, from Gatwick, from JFK Airport and make a very rich app that provides information about where my customers are going next time. And airports need their own app to flow that information too," he said.

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Easyjet and Virgin Atlantic IT chiefs urge airlines to collaborate

Airlines and airports should work together to create 'rich app'

Didcock agreed with Bulman that airlines should be working together along with airports, especially as this could yield significant cost-savings.

"There is not as much collaboration in the airline industry as other industries. That is between airlines and among the value chain, and there should be more. It is difficult because clearly there are anti-competitive concerns about airlines collaborating but if it means that we can cut back-office costs and offer lower fares to customers then that sort of collaboration should be possible.

"Typically it's a cost-base discussion between airports and airlines and there's very little collaboration and we need to see much more," he said.

In May, then Heathrow CIO Philip Langsdale said that an Airport Collaborative Decision Making (ACDM) system was being deployed at the airport. The system was touted as a single active airfield management system and operations centre, and a joint initiative with airline operators, ground handlers, the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) and the Central Flow Management Unit.

But Didcock said the level of data-sharing between airlines and airports was still unsatisfactory.

"Wouldn't it be great if the airport and airlines all had visibility of the passengers through the airport infrastructure, from check-in to arrival at the gate," he said.

Didcock mentioned Gatwick airport trialling the use of facial recognition systems to track passengers through the airport and acknowledged that there had to be sufficient benefits for airlines to buy into such a system, but said that retail stores within the airport could also benefit from such a system.

"It could allow retailers to understand what sort of shops passengers are walking into. We could then collaborate with the retail outlets, perhaps with the delivery of retail purchases to the gate or to the seat," he suggested.

• Additional reporting Peter Gothard