December 17, 1903: The day the first flight took off. That day was revolutionary not only for the aviation industry but for the humanity as a whole. It literally added the sky dimension to the existing road, sea and railways.
At that time, Airlines science i.e. aerospace engineering was synonymous to a complex unfathomable technology. Aerospace Engineers (or Rocket scientists as they were popularly known) were worshiped for the ability to conquer the third dimension of the earth. Aviation Industry was the pioneer of technological advancements. Any new technology used to be first adopted by this industry and would later be made available for mainstream.
This constant innovation era continued till 1980’s. Then the gap started diminishing between aviation and other sectors. Aviation industry was still innovating and becoming more technologically advanced, but so were other sectors and that too at a much faster rate.
Slowly, by 2010 almost every conventional industry has been disrupted by technology.
Mobiles saw the advent of touchscreens, high computing power, cameras, Internet, Navigation, Storage, Music etc.
Transport witnessed Uber, Ola, riding on the wave of billions of smartphones, making commute easier and faster
3D printing disrupted the manufacturing industry
Airbnb made the hotels and conventional real estate industry run for their money.
Industrial IoT made the conventional maintenance industry almost extinct.
Aviation industry, however, is yet to witness the AI-driven new age technology disruption. It failed to keep in pace with the rapid technological advancement in general and data + AI revolution in particular
During my productive stint with aviation industry, at both academic level and Industrial level, I got a lot of opportunities to witness the Industry from inside. Having worked with some of best minds of country in aerospace research and Indian aviation industry helped me in gaining the perspective to analyse the situation in a very holistic manner.
Aviation industry is lagging behind in the AI adoption curve. Before looking at the potential of AI and technology to drive management and operational aspects of aviation industry, we need to first understand the existing gaps, causes and conseqeunces.
The reason for the gap is five-fold.
1. Data Exists in Silos
More data can not enable more insights unless it can be brought together. Lack of data integration is the single biggest problem in enabling the enterprise to leverage the power of data to make data-driven decisions.
Silos separate departments from departments, groups from groups and ultimately data from data.
Inability of data to flow seamlessly makes it impossible for data products to provide cross-functionality KPI’s. In most of the cases, Artificial intelligence and Machine learning systems typically aims at mapping multiple features to a single target variable. The target variable can be anything from estimating CASK to D check schedule. More number of features typically improves the model accuracy. Deep learning methods are capable of feature extractions too. However, when the data is not connected, model suffers due to lack of number of features, lesser number of data points and bad quality of data.
2. Legacy IT system
Last year, Delta Airline had to cancel 2300 flights because of a technical glitch! This is just one case where legacy IT systems were diluting the service standards of an airline company.
Legacy systems were developed in a pre-data, pre-mobile era. Data was miniscule and computation power was expensive. Customer interactions were mainly offline. Today situation is different. Data generation rate is at all time high and following the Moore’s law, computation power is getting cheaper. IT systems are clearly not able to fulfil their role in present world. Moreover, Old legacy IT makes the company vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Cost of maintenance is higher compared to cloud based solutions and often lacks scalability and robustness.
3. Absence of tech driven Innovation
Little intersection between Tech and Business Operations.
The kind of technology, existing Airlines use lacks integration capabilities. Different operations, depending on the functional area they lie in, are performed by separate IT solutions. This prevents seamless flow of information in the orgndiaztion and results in loss of crucial insights that may potentially save (or earn) MILLIONS for the organization.
To be responsive and offer brilliant customer experiences, it is essential to have a unified technology platform, which is possible only with a tech driven innovation mindset.
AI and tech need to be viewed as a central component of the platform rather than an addon or supplementary feature
Tech @ Core mindset will bring in quick efficiencies and bring in a paradigm shift in aviation industry
4. Lack of Talent
As The father of flights said- "It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.”
Like data, even the talent exists in silos in Aviation Industry.
Aviation industry experts have zero knowledge about aerospace Engineering and Data Science. Aerospace Engineers lack the perspective of aviation experts to look at the business side of the industry. AI and Machine Learning are useless without domain knowledge and AI experts are helpless when they are unable to communicate with Industry veterans.
The closest we came in having the right combination was Rakesh Gangwal
Industry Experience of over 30 years
Mechanical Engineer from IIT
And the result is Indigo - the largest Airline of India
We can only imagine the results when industry experience, business acumen with Artificial Intelligence.
5. Airlines obsession with Simplicity
Being profitable or scoring a profitable quarter in airline industry is not easy. Airlines industry is full of extremities. On one hand, we have Air India with debt of over INR 50,000 crore and on other hand, we have airlines like Southwest, Scoot, Indigo etc. that are making profits after profits for years. Success of these airlines is generally attributed to one factor - Simplicity - Simple operations, simple strategy, simple Pricing. The reason usually given is - Less number of variables in the operations mean fewer things that can go awry and botch up the whole process.
Is simplicity really the most important factor contributing to airlines success?
Einstein, once said, “everything should be made as simple as possible but not one bit simpler”. I am afraid this is what we are doing in the aviation sector. Embracing simplicity not because it’s the most optimum model but because we are afraid of complexity.
Instead of being afraid, Industry experts need to embrace the complexity and use it to their own advantage through collaboration with AI experts.
Conclusion
Elimination of above gaps will enable Aviation industry to leverage the power of AI driven analytics. AI driven analytics has the power to kickstart the awaited disruption in thethe aviation industry globally. Artificial Intelligence and data will derive massive cost and operational efficiencies in an airline which adopts a tech@core business model. The data revolution is real and disruption is imminent!
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