The 3 Biggest Takeaways from Altitude 22

We are fully entrenched in fall and the aviation industry is well on its road to recovery, which means the return of events season.

Last week, our parent company Amadeus held its Altitude 22 event in person from Dubai for the first time since before the pandemic, which was attended by over 300 delegates across 75 airlines and 12 partners.

Kambr was involved in the event with several Kambrians participating as well as Kambr’s Director of Data Science & Operations Research presenting alongside Amadeus’ Director Chief Science Thomas Fiig on the topic of How will Machine Learning and Offer Optimization Transform Revenue Management?

If you were unable to attend the event, no worries! We got you covered with the three most important takeaways from Altitude 22.  

It Really is Time

We’ll begin with the big overarching theme and then get more granular. The tagline of the event was aptly dubbed It’s Time.

It seems like forever that we’ve been talking about the promise and future of the industry. Specifically, when it came to the offer and order ecosystem it seemed like digital retailing and personalization were always years away. Well, the future is finally now!

It’s been well documented that Covid and all the effects surrounding it presented an opportunity for airlines to undergo technical transformation and accelerate the rate of change.  

Now, we are finally seeing the fruits of this. Airlines are moving from POC (proof of concept) into production for the first time with all these offer initiatives that have been discussed ad nauseum but carried out with little to no action.  

With airlines such as American Airlines and Qatar Airways presenting real-world use cases, the time has come!

The People Component

While the technology piece to the puzzle is close to being solved, given the rate of development and practical adoption, there is an equally important piece that mustn’t be overlooked.

Even in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, analysts still play a crucial role in revenue management and offer optimization.  

From an organizational perspective, airlines are still learning how to structure their teams and their systems in a symbiotic manner.

"This ongoing evolution of our industry requires insights from a cross-section of disciplines – technology, marketing, payment, consultancy, scenario planning."

The next large undertaking for the industry will be addressing user experience and developing user interfaces to achieve optimal results that can fuse together human ingenuity with machine precision and computing power.  

To truly and fully enact the change the aviation industry desires, both people and technology must fully be optimized to work together.

The Importance of Ecosystems, Partnerships & Platforms

We can once again look to Covid for clues as to what is the best way to address this new challenge. Over the course of Covid, the industry rallied and united to work together across departments, disciplines, borders and companies.  

That same spirit will be needed to usher in the next era of airline commercialization. Specifically, interconnected ecosystems, partnerships and platforms will be how the industry gets there.  

"This ongoing evolution of our industry requires insights from a cross-section of disciplines – technology, marketing, payment, consultancy, scenario planning," writes Cyril Tetaz,EVP, Altéa, Amadeus, in a perspective piece about Altitude 22.

"The industry’s digital infrastructure remains complex. Many different business and IT functions need to be considered, holistically and in isolation, for any industry transformation to proceed with confidence.”

Long gone are the days of rigid wall-gardens in favor of technology that is agile, integrable and scalable.

Therefore, airlines must select tech partners that are open and in favor of creating a bigger and better ecosystem, beyond just themselves.  

The aviation industry is on the cusp of some truly incredible opportunities. Now is the time to seize the moment.  

If you’d like to see some additional highlights from the event, you can watch the recap video below.