In an interaction with CIOTechOutlook, Vinod Bhat, CIO, Vistara - Tata SIA Airlines shared his views on how the aviation industry is addressing data and system-related challenges with the emerging digital technologies, how are these technologies shaping up the customer and employee experience in the aviation industry and more.

In the last three to four years, the aviation industry has been entirely digitally disrupted, generating significant data. How do you see the industry addressing data and system-related challenges with these emerging digital technologies?

In the last three to four years, a lot of increased data has been generated owing to a myriad of services that have moved from offline to online. Therefore, enterprises had to develop a strategy for capturing this data across all the channels. They should also integrate and sanitize the data, which is a more significant task. We should investigate what the data contains. What are the components or parts of the data that are linked with other entities? We should also categorize the data into customer, operational, engineering, employee, or commercial data.

Thus, once the data type has been identified, you should apply the right strategy. For instance, if it is customer data, you should know if you are capturing the customer's transaction data and loyalty data, if you can provide customized offerings and solutions to the customer, and so on.

Similarly, on the operational data side, if the flights are disrupted, we should check if we can create a faster roster for our technical or cabin crew. Can we give up-to-date, quick information to customers whose flights have been disrupted? How does the engineering data support this whole disruption? And how are the employees running our sales operations centers managing or making decisions based on the data? So the kind of data is essential, the type of data is necessary, the duplication of data, connecting the data with the correct transactions, and also, at the end of the day, the goal is to ensure how you move and use this data and move from a very reactive model to a proactive model or a predictive model. Therefore, it's all data-driven decisions, interactions, and experiences that are driving, and it will continue as we integrate more and more channels into aviation.

How are digital technologies shaping up the customer and employee experience? Can you highlight a few examples? How can a digital-first mindset be instilled among employees?

Two broad categories are crucial to innovation. The first are the customers, and the second category are employees. From the customer's point of view, because of the data, the way it is generated, and the digital disruptions that have happened. Therefore, many services have moved from offline to online; for example, many touchless technologies have been used, such as DigiYatra, where your face becomes the boarding pass, and you do not have to show your ID if registered with the app. You must upload your boarding pass on the app; from there on, you do not have to show your ID. You can zoom through the airport from the gate until you board the flight.

Similarly, a lot of airports are creating a lot of self-services. For instance, self baggage drops, like the ones in the Bangalore T2 terminal, the kiosks that help people find the information they require and, in turn, lead to enhanced customer experience. They do not have to stand in the queue for long; they can help themselves. From a loyalty point of view, customers experience numerous loyalty tiers, and there are multiple loyalty tiers at Vistara. Based on that, you can provide a differentiated experience; 

these digital technologies help us achieve that. For instance, you can profile customers better; if you are going to a 360-degree view of the customers based on the earlier questions when discussing that we understand the customer data better, we can connect the relevant offers and relevant solutions to the customers and this can enhance their experience.

The second category, which includes employees, is broad. We needed to equip our employees with the right tools to help them with collaboration and productivity. During the pandemic, the whole industry was focusing on using these communication tools to just attend teleconferences or video calls. However, now we are witnessing how these platforms are being used as collaboration or productive platforms.

Furthermore, upskilling and cross-skilling among employees is essential because their digital quotient has to increase. This is crucial because we need to find employees who know digital technologies while serving customers who are already at the forefront of these technologies. Therefore, improving the digital quotient is another aspect that we are constantly doing. We also offer many solutions to employees, which helps improve the customer experience.

For example, suppose the employees serving at the airport or on the flight know what kind of profile customers are traveling in. In that case, they can provide much differentiated service to the customers. Therefore, we say that employee experience is the new customer experience or EX is the new CX. This will continue, and both will go hand in hand. Several use cases and technologies are helping to improve either customer experience, employee experience, or both.

What are the use cases for AI/GenAI in aviation that has the potential to transform the sector?

One technology that is most talked about today is GenAI technology. Aviation has quite a rich number of use cases across the processes. For example, the customer experience can go to the next level, from personalization to hyper-personalization. In hyper-personalization, you target a customer or segment, and those solutions and customer service are specially designed for that one customer, which is one of the use cases. Similarly, the training can be a lot more personalized. You can create a training plan that is relevant to each person. Instead of doing this for the whole batch, you can also use GenAI technology to optimize your fuel because you burn a lot of fuel, or 30-40% of the cost is fuel-related.

Vistara has already embarked on many tools to optimize that fuel efficiency. We have partnered with SITA OptiClimb, helping us optimize the fuel burning during flying. And we have a target of 15,000 tons of carbon reduction per year. This will continue. Hence, fuel optimization is carried out using the AI/ML and the GenAI use cases. On the engineering front, a lot of predictive maintenance can be done more efficiently and predictably. For example, you can take data from multiple sources and sensors and compare it with earlier failures; you can compare it with historical data and create an optimized maintenance schedule to help engineers do their jobs better.