I really look forward to attend the next week's Air Transport IT Summit in Cannes. It comes at interesting time, when economic downturn forced airlines to shift from continuous top line growth towards strategies that focus on quick cost reduction and improvement in service quality. So far, both airlines and IT have been predominantly focused on operational and revenue side of business, failing to provide a multidimensional view required to better manage the operating costs at senior management level. This appears to have been a difficult task for a business renowned for its complexities and organisational fragmentation. The majority of sophisticated software solutions are unnecessarily complex and impossible to use for the majority of users. As a result, airline executives remain short of information about changes in operating costs and their root causes, crucial for effective management and decision making at both operational and strategic levels. Much of these problems and proposed solutions are described in my book Beyond Airline Disruptions.
The Summit agenda announces interesting topics. Among the speakers are the prominent names in the industry. It remains to be seen if what the IT sector has to offer, if it is really going to be ‘a force for change’ as the Summit motto suggests, and how quickly it will be able to offer solutions that will support improvement in airline operational and cost efficiency.
Will write about my impressions soon.
