David Pook, Burrana’s Vice President, Marketing & Sales Support, explains how a proactive approach is key to keeping customers happy on board flights, especially when it comes to in-seat power.
It is critical to understand the motivations of passengers and to mitigate unsatisfactory experiences before they become apparent. Use technology to enable personalised and frictionless experiences across the customer journey, from booking to arrival at the final destination; provide familiar and comfortable experiences in the air through the enablement of the same or similar experiences passengers are accustomed to on the ground, where they are most comfortable.
Then delight them with surprising and memorable experiences they did not expect through personalised offers and analytic observation. Even predict the passenger’s taste for food and beverages, entertainment, information or retail purchases by correlating those passenger behaviours with artificial intelligence gleaned from unprecedented global and cultural data platforms. Deliver this via the passenger’s own personal device – the heart of the personalised passenger experience. When in the air, enable those devices to communicate with onboard technology, pair them to the seatback or stream content to them exclusively. Take it even further and allow them to download content to take off the aircraft – content they want to resume later, playlists they have built and want to save for their onward journey, or podcasts they want to listen to at another time. Allow them to manage their time wisely in the air, perhaps to research their destination or to book transport and accommodation, restaurants and experiences. Offer incentives that add value to the passenger experience, redeemable through your loyalty programme while adding revenue.
THE NEED FOR IN-SEAT POWER
Digital experiences delivered through technology are the holy grail for every airline, but one important factor may be missing on board for many airlines. The ability for passengers to charge and power their devices in the cabin is critical to enabling these extraordinary experiences. Without power, that experience diminishes with each bar of the passenger’s mobile phone, laptop or tablet battery. So why are some airlines on a digital transformation journey across their business investing in and installing wireless streaming and IFC systems but not thinking about in-seat power? To maximise the value of these investments, “battery anxiety” must be addressed as well, enabling the experience to last the duration of the flight and long after arrival.
RISE Power by Burrana is built to solve this. It is affordable, compact and easy to install with limited aircraft downtime – with a streamlined STC or OEM line-fit. As the USB power box is as small as an iPhone and weighs 150g (up to 30% lighter than traditional architectures), there is typically no need for expensive dynamic retesting or recertification of most seats. The significantly smaller seat boxes and non-intrusive seat spar location means no power boxes behind sidewalls and no intrusion to passenger space. Intelligent power-sharing ensures greater utilisation and efficiency of available power in the cabin as well as smaller and lighter power supplies.
Unique to Burrana is a 48VDC common power backbone that seamlessly allows airlines the flexibility to mix and match 15W, 60W and 110V power across seat zones/classes. With full 15W charging (3 amps) via USB-A ports, passengers can charge their devices 50% faster. As passenger demand grows for 60W USB-C charging, airlines just swap out the jacks. This removes significant cost and weight and simplifies installation. Airlines can even earn revenue and monetise their captive audience with “pay-to-charge” or unlock ports for specific passengers, and the system remotely captures usage and performance data for every flight, providing greater insight into passenger behaviour.
Reference: Inflight (inflight-online.com) September, 2022
