It’s not often we get to say the word passenger and friendly next to each other, so let us savor this moment. All travelers are creatures of habit, with favorite apps, tips, tricks and websites to book and monitor all areas of travel. Star Alliance is embracing these tendencies, rolling out alliance wide systems to help passengers.
Star Alliance is one of the three major airline groups, with a total of 28 member airlines from all around the world. Some of the groups most famous airlines include ANA, Asiana, EVA, United, Swiss and Lufthansa. The group is attempting to make exceptional strides in information management, with an aim of making passenger experience easier for all.
Communication
Despite being partners, airlines are generally poor at communicating with each other. With regarding to things like earning and using miles, seats, bags or delays, airlines rarely know what each other are up to. This annoys passengers. Not being able to select seats on another airline, track baggage on a connection and needing to go through arduous chores to get frequent flyer miles credited is simply not good enough. Live and Let’s Fly says that’s changing.
What’s Happening
Star Alliance will make their airlines systems talk amongst each other. If you like using the United app for example, you’ll be able to track your Lufthansa bags from it. If you like the Singapore app, you’ll be able to select seats on any of the other airlines – directly from the Singapore app. These services are an addition to an exciting pipeline of Star Alliance passenger moves, such as the “connection service”, which proactively helps customers in danger of missing a flight.
In addition to passenger conveniences, it’s highly likely this sharing of information could be used to better tailor customer experiences. An airline may be able to see beyond something as simply as elite status, looking deeper into customer preferences and values within different airlines. This could apply to flight delays or issues, where a system of sharing will alert crews to take extra special care – and offer apologies. We can only hope.
Rollout
Star Alliance pledges roll out of many of these features by the end of 2018. The group will invest in blockchain technology to simplify and integrate the various systems, in hopes of making the customer experience a delight, long before stepping onto an airplane. Tech is arguably the great hope for travel experience improvements, and it’s nice to see Star Alliance diving in.
It’s a very classic system