The International Air Transport Association (IATA) in its 2017 Global Passenger Survey (GPS) shows passengers expect technology to give them more personal control over their travel experience. Based on 10,675 responses from around the globe, the survey provided insight into what passengers want, which included automation of more airport processes, a single identity token for all travel processes using biometric identification, real-time information sent directly to personal devices and seamless border control.

Going digital-first
Passengers expect more digital travel processes, with 82% travellers wanting to be able to use a digital passport on their smartphones for as many travel activities as possible – from booking flights to passing through the airport. Biometric identification systems emerged victorious, too, as 64% favored it as their preferred travel token.

Taking control
Digital self-service options make passengers happy as they want to be able to do more of the airport processes themselves. Baggage was the top activity that passengers wanted more control over, with 68% of those surveyed wanting to self-tag their bags with electronic bag-tags. In addition to this, 48% of passengers wanted to self-drop their bag. (Here’s what passengers want from airports)

More information
Passengers expect to get up-to-date information on all aspects of their journey with minimum effort, through their preferred channel. The survey found that 85% of passengers want to be able to check the status of their flight, while 50% want to track their bag throughout the trip. They also expect more information to help then plan their passage through the airport, with 51% wanting to know wait times at security and border control. While SMS messaging remains the preferred option, the onset of digital is reversing this trend, with 28% preferring communication through smartphone apps as well.

Other pain points
Like all years, airport security and border control processes emerged as two of the biggest pain points of travel, with intrusiveness of having to remove personal items (60%), inconvenience of having to unpack electronic devices in carry-on bags (52%) and the variation in security screening procedures at different airports (47%) taking to spots.

Commenting on the results of the survey, Pierre Charbonneau, IATA’s Director Passenger and Facilitation, said, “Passengers have never been as empowered as they are today. Smartphone- and tablet-toting, passengers want to use these mobile devices to control their travel experience. They expect easy access to the information they want, exactly when they need it in the travel process. Airlines and airports that make the most use of technological innovations will be giving a better travel experience to their customers.”

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Only recently BMW announced its vision of the future of autonomous vehicles. While announcing a partnership with Intel and Mobileye, they announced a platform inviting automobile manufacturers and tech companies. Each one of them has made progress in some way or the other and if they collaborate to create common technology standards, the dream can be realised much sooner than expected. This will also help in advancing the safety aspect of it which is a very crucial element.

Taking another step in the same direction, Japanese government and the European Union plan to connect their global positioning systems. This would help speed up the developments with autonomous driving technologies. The outline of this development is that Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System and EU’s Galileo will be connected by 2018 by using a common digital language that the system will be using to transmit location data.

The advantage? Japanese are known to make some of the most technologically advanced vehicles and their cars are sold all over the world. With this new development, the manufacturers and component manufacturers will be able to ship the products developed for the local market to be used outside Japan. Discussions are launched on integrating the systems with Mitsubishi Electric, Hitachi Zosen and NTT Data from Japan and Thales, an electronics company from France taking part. The group will create an outline of the plan by the end of this year.

The navigation systems we use have an uncertainty of few metres however that won’t cut it for driverless cars. QZSS used by Japan adjusts the information provided by GPS and has an accuracy up to a few centimetres. However it uses satellite that hovers directly above Japan and can’t be used outside the region. Galileo however has a network of 30 satellites but with lower accuracy. The collaboration would try to leverage the advantages of both standards to improve both coverage and accuracy to provide a suitable GPS network for driverless cars.

Source: Nikkei

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