Bad Tech Will Kill Airlines

Airlines need to up their tech game if they want to thrive or even survive…

It’s pretty clear that I’m back to travelling a lot more than I did during the first two years of our viral twenties, and thus discovering a lot more of the gaping cracks in our worldwide technology. Last time I landed back from the skies I unleashed a rant about our overhyped 5G networks, which while don’t kill any birds, they do more harm to connectivity than good.

This time, a bit on the coattails of that, I must touch on a topic that increasingly frustrates not just the tech nerds like me, but the average Janes and Joes, the mums, the dads, the grandparents, and teenagers, literally anyone and everyone who owns a smartphone and wants to fly — airlines and their apps.

Perhaps you’re still one of the remaining few who go to a travel agent to get a trip booked, then shows up at the airport with a big folio of various dead-tree documents. Sure, you do you. The rest of the world, however, has moved on, and from anecdotal experience in Europe, my estimation is that 70–80% of travellers now use digital tickets. The actual figures may vary, but one fact remains. The adoption of digital tools for dealing with airlines has exponentially grown over the last few years. So much so that apps like Flightradar24 and others are now the opposite of novelty, and people who you would have never expected to whip their phones out and show you how far the incoming flight you’re waiting for is, will do so like it’s part of the day-to-day dealings with airlines.

When Flightradar24 humiliates every airline…

An app that tracks flights in real time, in reality, should not have to be a popular tool. Never have I imagined it would become interesting to anyone but airplane and air traffic nerds like myself, yet somehow while waiting for a flight back from Lisbon to Dublin, I realised that either I stumbled upon a flight packed with Air Crash Investigation fans, or Flightradar24 is now more popular than the actual airline apps. Spoiler, it’s the latter, and there’s a reason.

Airline apps are so bad, they’re a disgrace to every App Store out there.

Perhaps the only worse apps are banking apps, but they’ll get my angry fingerpointing in another article. The airline industry is a big one, and we know just how big thanks to a virus that landed — pun intended — a gazillion pilots and flight attendants into jobs packing shelves in supermarkets, driving grocery trucks and joining sanitation crews. All perfectly respectable jobs, don’t get me wrong, but we can all agree not one person out of the tens and hundreds of thousands imagined having to join a more “down to earth” job. Sorry for the pun. It’s hard not to go there... 🙂

The fact of the matter is, as soon as we saw LinkedIn light up with #lookingForWork rings everywhere, we all knew how massively important airlines are and just how much we enjoy travelling. In 2018–2019, airlines were at their peak in terms of revenue, popularity and positive outlook on the future. Yet somehow all that never translated to their digital experiences. Sure, one could argue that advancements have been made, and I would not disagree with that. What I will disagree with though, is the pace. While planes are flying 900 km/h, airline app tech seems to be getting developed at taxiing speeds.

Information as basic as flight status and gate number are still features either entirely missing or wildly inaccurate on apps.

I think we can all agree that getting an update on which gate to go to, and whether a flight is delayed, is something one should be able to reliably get on their apps instead of having to try to find the nearest airport screen to ogle at in anticipation.

The reason all the airline and even airport app inadequacies are mind-boggling is because we know that the data is there, and it can be updated instantaneously.

On my last flight from Lisbon to Dublin, both the airline app, and the airport screens kept claiming the flight was on time with no delays. Myself and many of my fellow passengers knew that couldn’t possibly be true because on Flightradar24 the plane was still 76 minutes away when boarding was supposed to begin! Add to that the absolute minimum of 30 minutes for getting people off and on the airplane, refuelling, and you know it’s simply impossible to not have at the very least an hour’s delay. Yet, everything, up to the minute past the actual takeoff time, kept claiming the flight was still on time. Only at that moment was posted on the airport screens the additional 60-minute delay. The app at this point updated the status to delayed, but failed to give any other extra information like the length of time.

Build a real app or go bankrupt

Perhaps there was a time when airline and airport apps were a novelty that only the tech nerds and some of the business folks used. Those days are long gone. Smartphones are so ubiquitous, you can buy them from vending machines. People run their personal lives and even their businesses on a few square inches of technology, and it’s more the norm than ever before.

Airlines that have an inadequate app will lose out to those with stellar digital offerings.

Travellers have a lot more options than back in the Pan Am days. If a customer finds an airline with a fantastic, reliable app that acts as his travel assistant, they’ll go out of their way to book all their next flights with that airline. What airline app product owners need to understand is that buying a ticket and checking in is just the beginning of the journey. These apps are, in fact, less about the sales experience and much more about the post-purchase experience, so here’s just some of what I think every airline should include as the bare minimum in their apps. You’re more than welcome to add some to the list in the comments. 💬👇

• Accurate, instant flight information and notification up to the point of takeoff: gate changes, flight status, gate boarding order.
• Smartwatch integration for boarding passes and important notifications.
• Offline in-flight magazine upon check-in, with dedicated barcodes for each product (shouting into the ears of a flight-attendant is very archaic).
• The option of automatic online check-in.
• Automatic issuing of airport vouchers in case of longer delays and cancellations that don’t require booking accommodation.
• Historical data on how often the flight is on time or delayed with an automatic score.
• Ticket transfer. Just like with concert tickets, one should be able to just post the ticket on the app, and let someone grab it for 90% of its original value.
• Airport live map integration to know where you are, where you can find things and more importantly how far you are from your gate.

I, of course, don’t want any airline to go bankrupt. When one of them does, it always leads to people being let go, and that is never a good story. As it stands, however, with current digital trends, airlines that do not up their technology game will inevitably fail to deliver to modern customer expectations.

When customers with very basic digital literacy find technical workarounds to get the information they need for their travel and flight, you know the world has changed, and basic expectations have gone up.

So, what else do you think airline apps should do better?

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe and/or become a member for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility!