AerQ has been showcasing its Aerena modular and open IT platform at APEX Expo in California this week. The platform has been designed to facilitate greater passenger engagement onboard aircraft, leading to a deeper understanding of passengers’ inflight behaviours and needs, and thereby opening new revenue opportunities for airlines and partners. As the company said, this could open up a new “global economy in the sky”.
So how does Aerena work? An ecosystem, including an airline, passengers and third parties, will provide a portfolio of targeted media content, products and services. The ecosystem is enabled by fully digitalised cabin touchpoints such as an in-seat system for an upscale IFE experience, and cabin digital signage powered by OLED technology.
The platform has strong influences from AerQ’s parent companies, LG Electronics and Lufthansa Technik, which can combine their latest consumer electronics and OLED display technologies, and integrate these systems onboard aircraft, as well as providing any necessary engineering and certification services.
Airlines can gain control over their digital cabin experience by logging into the Aerena system and designing their choice of applications, media content and graphical user interface (GUI). AerQ says the setup creates time and cost savings in application and content deployment due to the simple and fast operational workflows. Airlines can also use smart data capturing, analytics and matching, to gain insights into passengers and understand them better, to ensure accurate data-driven and intelligent decisions are made.
Meanwhile passengers will benefit from the personalisation of the platform as airlines will be able to offer them the right content, products and experiences, at the right time.
“We make airlines the playmaker of their digital cabin experience by giving them complete control over their operational processes and better visibility of the passenger for the first time”, stated Arnd Kikker, co-managing director at AerQ. “They can fine-tune their on-board product based on smart data. That enables entirely new business models for advertising, e-commerce, destination services and more.”
