The airline industry has faced a significant transformation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The initial survival tactics included downsizing staff, grounding fleets, and pausing IT programs. All these measures were necessary for airlines to manage costs and survive the unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic.
However, as the industry entered the post-pandemic phase, the rapid recovery of travel demands necessitated a swift operational scale-up. Airlines were actively recruiting new staff, reactivating aircraft, and expanding their route networks to meet the resurgence in travel.
However, the industry’s approach to technology, particularly in specialized areas such as airline catering management, has not kept pace with these changes. The reliance on outdated tools hampers efficiency and fails to leverage the potential benefits of modern technology. Today’s technology offers solutions that can revolutionize airline operations—from predictive analytics for demand forecasting to supply chain transparency and real-time inventory management.
This blog highlights the problems airlines face today using non-suitable tools and what lies ahead by embracing today’s and future technological advancements, such as airline catering management. Adopting such technologies will be a critical factor in the airline industry’s ability to navigate the complexities of the post-pandemic landscape and remain competitive in an ever-evolving market.
Efficiency Through Technology:
Technology to drive efficiency and prepare the airline for the future, which is already here today
The technology roadmap for airline catering management must involve several key advancements to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance passenger service. The main steps to climb on the maturity matrix are:
- Specialized airline catering management systems
- Big data analytics
- Sustainability technologies
1. Heavily Relying on Obsolete Home-Grown Systems or Spreadsheets
Many airlines today are managing their end-to-end catering management process with spreadsheets or obsolete in-house legacy solutions. While once sufficient, today’s world is different—airline traffic has increased, and since Covid, people in the relevant business and IT departments have moved on. Home-grown systems and spreadsheets cannot be enhanced or even maintained anymore, with the underlying operation systems, databases, or code base being out of support or not understood by those new in the business anymore. These outdated methods are inefficient and prone to errors due to their lack of integration and the manual effort required to maintain them.
These tools and systems are not configurable and require constant manual work to keep them updated and synced across the end-to-end process. They certainly miss the ability to keep up with the speed at which airlines are undergoing business changes, be it the introduction of a new Premium Economy class, a new aircraft type, new caterers at new outstations, or just the introduction of new chinaware in premium classes.
Neither of the existing legacy solutions can support and adapt to the operational complexities in today’s world, which, as per Processware, is the “single most difficult business in the world.” Catering operations must be highly coordinated to meet tight schedules, including last-minute changes, short turn-around times, dealing with delays or aircraft changes, and the constant changes undertaken by the business to stay ahead of the rapidly changing market demands. All these require sophisticated technological solutions.
2. Integrated Airline Catering Management Platform
The solution for today’s world is an integrated airline catering management platform that optimizes the airlines’ entire catering operation, connecting suppliers, caterers, and operations with a single source of truth. This system is modular, flexible, scalable, and reliable to meet an airline’s evolving needs.
The key is that any solution is based on a common data structure, allowing a single source of truth across the airline’s end-to-end process and its supply chain of suppliers, caterers, kitchen, and airline operations. Advanced technology solutions offer configurability, seamless integration, real-time data management, and easy and transparent collaboration by the supply chain partners, all driven by approval workflows and auditing capabilities to minimize ambiguity in the interactions of all stakeholders.
A highly configurable system is crucial for adapting to diverse business scenarios; a system that enables a high degree of automation and optimization across different modules, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency. By managing exceptions through alerts, business users can concentrate on strategic planning and driving the business toward future growth and development.
3. Big Data and Artificial Intelligence
This next level in technological evolution is already here–big data enables detailed data aggregation and visualization and is the foundation for using machine learning, artificial intelligence, and research.
By consolidating various types of operational catering management with other business-related data into a data lake, airlines can gain a comprehensive view of their operations, including catering management. This holistic approach allows for enhanced reporting capabilities, more nuanced interpretations of data, and decision-making, whether by human analysts or automated systems.
SIS International identified the rise of big data and analytics as the foundation to gain precise insights into passenger preferences and data-driven personalization. An article in Springer Nature Singapore identifies big data combined with machine learning as essential for item demand forecasting, which predicts the number of meals or other items based on historical data and other factors. The number of business problems to be solved by artificial intelligence in airline catering management seems unlimited. The synergy between big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence enhances current processes and paves the way for new operational excellence and customer experience possibilities.
4. Sustainability and Waste Reduction
Sustainability and food waste reduction are increasingly crucial for the world we live in and, therefore, for airline branding. These practices align with global efforts to create a more sustainable future and demonstrate a commitment to the principles outlined in the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda.
Airlines can better predict the food needed for each flight by analyzing consumption patterns and passenger preferences, significantly reducing food waste. As our blog “Taking Flight Towards a Greener Sky: Sustainability and Waste Reduction in the Airline Industry ” states, accurately measuring consumption on a large scale remains one of the biggest challenges to overcome in food-related waste reduction on board.
However, as soon as such consumption data becomes widely available, existing analytics will be able to improve the accuracy of demand forecast further, optimize supply chains resulting in reduced carbon footprints, as well as more efficient and sustainable catering operations, but for only those airlines which have advanced in their technological maturity.
Conclusion
Many airlines are working with obsolete technology—legacy systems or spreadsheets—to manage their entire catering management process today. Considering that the annual catering spend of full-service carriers often exceeds USD100M, the urgency to replace outdated systems with more efficient, data-driven solutions is straightforward.
While airlines still need to take the first step to an integrated catering management system, big data, and machine learning advancements are already real and promising to make the processes even more efficient. They can drive significant competitive advantages in brand differentiation. Moreover, passengers are already demanding the next step—improved sustainability and waste reduction. All supply chain ecosystem participants are still working on measuring consumption. Still, advanced technology will be required to implement it.
The time to act is now, setting the stage for a more sustainable, efficient, and competitive future in airline catering services.