Mole Expert Hub – AirAsia bouncing back with low-touch tech

AirAsia has always been a digitally-focused airline, unafraid to take risks and adopt forward-thinking new technologies, from AI to biometrics. Tech innovations like these are now becoming a necessity in a new contactless, social distanced world.

The airline had a head start but how has it been coping in this unprecedented global crisis. How has technology been able to adapt to the current challenges and how will it evolve in a new post-pandemic world?  TravelMole tapped AirAsia chief operations officer Javed Malik for insights.

FACES (Fast Airport Clearance Experience System) is AirAsia’s facial recognition boarding system – the first to be rolled out in Malaysia. The system uses facial scanning to verify individuals, reducing the need for guests to show or scan their travel documents.

Could a so-called ‘immunity passport’ health information be integrated into the FACES system? Is this feasible in the future and what are the challenges?

While an ‘immunity passport’ is purely conceptual at this stage, theoretically, our technology would allow for it to be incorporated as part of the FACES process. However, according to the World Health Organisation, there is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection and therefore that an ‘immunity passport’ would be viable. We have however, integrated our own travel advisory information and self-declaration as part of the booking and check-in process.

What are the other potential benefits of FACES?

FACES is flexible and built with the intent of being able to adapt the scope of the technology as flying changes. We’re currently looking into other potential uses such as creating a ‘Quick Tags Kiosk’ where biometric identification expedites the process and ensures it is fully contactless. We can do something similar for any payment of tickets, airport retailers, hotel and in-flight purchases by allowing FACES to integrate with an e-wallet like AirAsia’s own BigPay. We are also working on the possibility of incorporating thermal scanning functionality in FACES devices at the boarding gate.        

What other biometric developments are being planned?

We’re proud to be at the forefront of technology and are always investigating ways to enhance and improve all of our platforms, including FACES. Right now we’re working on the following:

Post security biometric identification – so we can understand where our guests are in their journey in real time to increase efficiency.

Self-bag drop – this will allow bags to be tagged and dropped without the need for a physical boarding pass.

Aerobridge reconciliation – an additional unit placed near the entry to the aircraft to allow crew to identify guests by name, flight and seat number and to welcome them onboard personally.

The Contactless Airport Journey

What is AirAsia’s Passenger Reconciliation System?

Our Passenger Reconciliation System is designed to validate passengers’ eligibility before allowing them to access the boarding area. The option to scan passports via the AirAsia app is to ensure a guest meets the entry requirements or have the correct visa for the country they are travelling to. This technology is still in early development.

What was the percentage of customers checking in online or via the app before the pandemic?

We have seen a significant increase in guests checking in via web check-in since our new norm operations commenced. Approximately 28% of our guests used to check in via this method, the number now stands at around 58%. We’ve also seen a decline in guests checking in at the airport both kiosks (less about 10%) and at counters (less about 8%).

Are there other initiatives in collaboration with airports to improve passenger flow and monitor social distancing?

AirAsia has been actively engaging with a number of our key airport partners to ensure the entire customer journey limits person to person touchpoints as much as possible.

AVA is the AirAsia Virtual Allstar, a chatbot designed to streamline customer service issues to answer hundreds of simple inquiries about AirAsia products and services in real time. Powered by artificial-intelligence (AI) she is able to converse in multiple languages.

How has AVA been coping with the fallout from cancelled flights and ticket changes these past few months? How will AVA offer more personalization in the future?

AVA is an integral part of our Customer Happiness family and she’s done an incredible job assisting over 34 million guests this year alone. It’s because of AVA that during these challenging times our guests have had 24/7 instant access to speak to us in 11 different languages while our Allstars have been able to focus on more advanced and complex queries.

The more guests that AVA talks to, the more she learns.  AVA is now able to help over 80% of all the guests she speaks to with a customer satisfaction rate of over 90% – pretty incredible for a chatbot that’s just 18 months old.

We’re constantly evolving AVA, for example, in recent weeks we’ve launched more automation through the system including same-day credit accounts for our guests. There’s more to come later this year including introducing AVA on new platforms and enhanced automation whereby guests can be directly linked to their AirAsia accounts for a more personalised experience.

by Ray Montgomery, Asia Pacific editor