SITAONAIR has been enlisted by Emirates to deliver personalized inflight connectivity for the airline’s customers through SITAONAIR’s onboard Wi-Fi hub, Internet ONAIR – digitally harmonizing the IFC experience across over 200 aircraft. The SITAONAIR-Emirates project was crowned Best Personalization Innovation of the year at the 2017 APEX Awards on Monday 25 September.

SITAONAIR gives Emirates customers personalized IFC experience 

SITAONAIR’s Internet ONAIR for Emirates – which delivers seamless inflight passenger connectivity – has been harmonized with Emirates Skywards, the airline’s award-winning loyalty program to offer special benefits to members. This integrated enhancement marks a first step by Emirates to personalize passengers’ connected onboard experience.

In addition to the complimentary 20mb of data for all customers, Emirates Skywards’ members are now offered a tailored onboard Wi-Fi package to use Emirates’ Internet ONAIR portal, based on their membership tiers and class of travel. This new functionality gives Emirates a new means of engaging with its highly-valued regular customers, to thank them for their loyalty. The enhanced Internet ONAIR portal has also been fully customized to ease Wi-Fi access from any connected device.

Furthermore, SITAONAIR’s ‘open platforms’ approach – launched by its hot topic white paper at last year’s APEX EXPO – has achieved a consistent user experience across the various satellite connections and pre-existing onboard technologies present across the Emirates fleet – unconstrained by hardware suppliers’ refresh cycles.

Dominique El Bez, Vice President of Strategy at SITAONAIR, says: “With Emirates we have made our open platforms vision, presented at APEX EXPO 2016, a reality. This complex digital harmonization project marks a real accomplishment for both SITAONAIR’s digital aviation specialists and our long-standing airline customer and co-creation partner.

“SITAONAIR has succeeded in what has been a real digital harmonization challenge – from integrating Emirates’ pre-existing frequent flier program within the Internet ONAIR Wi-Fi user experience, to achieving a seamless experience across Emirates’ varied satellite connectivity systems. We have worked closely with Emirates every step of the way to achieve their vision, facilitating the seamless, individualized connected passenger experience they crave.”

This development comes as SITA’s 2017 Passenger IT Trends Survey identifies that airline passengers from the United Arab Emirates reveal greater enthusiasm for sending and receiving emails, messages, images and video to their phones inflight (55% “would definitely use”) than the global average. Additionally, the SITA report highlights a universal passenger demand for a more personal – and less generic – digital experience through their journey.

The SITAONAIR-Emirates Internet ONAIR project offers value-added services to the airline’s passengers:
•The ability to log on inflight with Emirates Skywards credentials, and be welcomed by a personal message
•Delivering customized offers to passengers tailored to their seat and tier level, from discounted price plans to free unlimited internet access
• The ability to sign up for the Emirates Skywards loyalty program in real time, inflight.