Last week Air India’s CEO Campbell Wilson was in California, USA to visit the Apple HQ. One of the things on agenda was to see what technological collaboration is possible and how Air India can leverage on the technology side. This visit was within a week of India’s IT majors declaring their Q1 results. TCS, also from the house of Tata’s, reported a revenue of INR 59381 crore; Infosys bagged INR 37,933 crore while Wipro recorded a revenue of INR 22,831 in Q1 of FY24. This may have been below expectations but the revenue numbers are growing and Indian companies with development centres in India are building IT systems for the world.
Even as the major IT giants talk about AI, ML and other emerging buzzwords, Indian airlines have been laggards in the technology space. The general argument has always been that the margins are too thin to invest in something which is a value add and not a necessity. Yet, IndiGo – often the most profitable airline in India, has made continuous investments in hardware like Q-busters at airports, backed up by necessary software. IndiGo, with a target of 100 million passengers in this fiscal, launched a vernacular website – in Hindi, the national language of the country, but that is no longer accessible. Vistara – the Tata SIA JV had launched a robot named “RADA” at Delhi airport. The robot was restricted to the lounge and would guide the passengers with gate information (already present on FIDS) and also help with weather at destination. A longer development plan with the robot was possibly buried since the robot made a quick disappearance.
Globally, airlines make periodic news with what new is on offer. Emirates for example gives you a glimpse of what view you would have from the seat which you select; KLM’s mobile app lets you point to your bag to help you know if the bag specifies to cabin baggage size or not; United Airlines lets you know which aircraft is deployed for your flight and its current flight. Compare that to the regular complaints at airports where airlines often announce the delay at the last minute and at times do not tell the true extent of the delay, we have a long way to go.
We keep calling ourselves a technology hub, but there has been little technology that has made way to the consumer side of airlines in India. We have definitely crossed the “Will people use it?” stage and it is time that airlines invest in a robust native mobile app and not merely direct you to a webpage within the mobile app – the current pet peeve for many.
Will it be part of the Vihaan.AI initiative of Air India? Going by Vistara’s consumer facing IT infrastructure, I would not have hopes of world-class experience but the amount of attention that Air India is getting, I would be happy to be proven wrong. It would then push IndiGo to invest in as well. Until then, we will keep reading the increasing revenues of Indian IT majors and news of new tech being incorporated by global airlines.
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