The brand's chief executive was in town to discuss the airline's venture into the digital age and possible future collaboration projects
Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Singapore last December, and during his visit, he met up with Singapore Airlines (SIA) Chief Executive Officer Goh Choon Phong at Changi Airport’s Terminal 3 SilverKris Lounge. They discussed their collaboration on projects that follow SIA’s goal of being the leading digital airline in the world.
Currently, the airline is focusing on four key areas: building up strong digital capabilities, ensuring a continuous and solid technical foundation, digitalising its core and leveraging on digital innovation. Mobile technologies in particular are a key enabler for this transformation due to their design, ease of use, security and support. SIA already utilises nine different enterprise apps in its daily operations for six different groups of employees, covering more than 50% of its total workforce.
These include FlyNow – which provides pilots with personalised content based on pilot preferences and collaboration tools, all powered by analytics including weather conditions, fuel load, aircraft type and route – as well as Roster, which gives an overview of all roster-related information, relevant documents and qualification requirements, offering next-best-action recommendations.
Both apps were created in conjunction with Apple and IBM. The meeting also saw them head on board an SIA Boeing 787-10 plane, where Cook was able to have the apps demonstrated to him in real time within the aircraft cockpit.
SIA’s senior vice president (information technology) George Wang also presented the Kristal iPhone app to Cook, which has the ability to scan personal barcodes for passenger check-in, communicate up-to-date flight information, identify individual profiles of passengers and allow for real-time communication between lounge staff. SIA is the only airline to use a lounge entry application on the iPhone.
SIA’s current trajectory with Apple is informed by the belief that digital technologies are an enabler of the SIA experience, rather than a substitute for its world-renowned service culture. SIA aims to continue delivering the best experience for its customers while optimising operations, creating new business revenues and shaping a truly digital workforce through training and skillset development.
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This article was originally published in the February 2020 issue of SilverKris magazine
