Mobile technology vital for African air travel!

Mobile technology has a vital role to play in the growth of African airlines, according to Paul Murphy, Vice President of airline information technology company, SITA.

He was speaking during the 44th Annual General Assembly of the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre on November 19.

He said Africa, with its already huge penetration of mobile phones and services, was an ideal platform for airlines and airports to adopt and deploy mobile applications with ease.

“The number of passengers with smartphones worldwide has risen dramatically over the past year, from 54% to 70%. We are already seeing the impact at airports with mobile check-in increasing by one-third during this period and as many as 21% of passengers have now used a mobile boarding pass. We’re currently at the tipping point of explosive growth in the mobile services offered to passengers, which will give them more control over their journey as well as do much to reduce stress.”

According to SITA’s 2012 Airline IT Trends survey, mobile services for passengers are currently a top investment priority for airlines.

“Mobile apps are already being used on other continents to improve the passenger experience, reduce operating costs and generate revenue, and are being adopted across sales, customer services and passenger processing.”

However, he said cost was a key consideration, and explained how packaged community solutions would serve to spearhead development within the African airline industry.

“SITA has been working with AFRAA on a number of packaged community solutions that can be adopted by groups of airlines for shared benefits. One of these is cloud computing, which will dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership for airlines.”

He added that SITA was also investigating the opportunity, jointly with AFRAA, of the viability of a shared African airlines contact centre.

“With human interaction still forming a vital role on the African continent, we will be examining ways to centralise data storage and customer interaction, thereby serving to reduce these costs for individual airlines.”

Another factor hampering development is the lack of collaboration between the different stakeholders. However Murphy said he was confident SITA could assist in creating a crossroads solution between separate entities such as government agencies, airports and airlines.