On-Demand Speaker Zone

AirAsia has used the downtime created by the pandemic to fast track its digital transformation with the mission of becoming “more than just an airline”.

This includes the introduction of numerous new products that provide more choice to customers and new revenue streams including the airasia super app, logistics, e-commerce, fintech, as well as new procedures and innovations such as biometric facial recognition which will not only make flying more hygienic & contactless, but will also uniquely support commerce ambitions going forward. The airline is also establishing teleport delivery & pilot training businesses leveraging drones, and its own air taxi business.

In our view AirAsia is the most transformative industry player out there right now which is why we are giving them their own dedicated guest session in which they will bring together forward senior executives from across their business, and key partners they are collaborating with, to deep-dive with our audience on how they are successfully reimagining what an airline business can be.

The Transformation Honours List recognises the teams, departments and organisations that have embraced innovation and transformation, and displayed leadership to help prepare the industry for a brighter future post-pandemic. We received a huge number of entries and have whittled down the list to our final line-up of those Airlines, Airports, Vendors and Startups who will share their inspirational stories at Virtual Expo. In addition to the senior executives from Turkish Airlines, Los Angeles World Airports, JPA Design and Williams Advanced Engineering who will be speaking in the Auditorium Conference as part of this initiative, we are delighted to announce that the following pioneering organisations will present in the OnDemand Speaker Zone.

The APEX Technology Committee has remained active during the pandemic, looking toward a post-recovery environment and the needs of airlines and the passenger experience community. Advances in metadata, CODECs, connectivity, programmatic advertising and satellite technology have all occurred despite the pandemic, and the content industry has undergone a revolution. APEX’s Technology Committee offers eight sessions to inform the passenger experience industry of these technological advances.

The APEX 0415 Working Group that recently established new content security requirements for HD content in IFE, and drafted specifications for HDR in IFE, is now investigation next-generation CODECs that will follow H.264, including such candidates as AV1, VP9, HEVC, and VVC. The co-chairs of this Working Group offer three perspectives on this work in three 10-to-15 minute sessions.

This session offers an IFE vendor’s perspective on the progress of the APEX0415 Working Group’s progress over 2021, considering new CODECs and whether to add them to the specification.

The promise of lower encode rates for the same quality media is attractive, since it can result in room for more hours of content on existing IFE servers, or faster load times for the same content. But can we select a CODEC that won’t break the power/heat budget for installed IFE? Will there be any savings if we choose one of the “free to use” CODECs that don’t have license fees?

This Working Group has been evaluating modern compression algorithms such as AV1, VP9 and HEVC for future use in IFE. Theoretically, all of these algorithms promise storage requirements savings based on 30-50% file size reduction when compared to H.264. Does this really translate into IFE systems having more space on their head end servers? This presentation will provide an overview of the impact of CODEC selection on delivery of content to PEDs. Further consideration will be made to the requirements of content encryption and in browser content delivery for standard and higher quality content, such as HD, 4K and HDR.

There are meaningful options for making memorable passenger impressions. But exemplary media delivery technology is no longer a “one size fits all” proposition. You have to ask, what does this design give me? No two airlines have the exact same go-to-market strategy and messaging. You might save time and money by exactly matching the content providers’ largest new technology plays. But, is that in the best interests of your airline? Your unique brand is a passenger engagement bet, and it should be reflected in the architecture of your onboard entertainment system.

All of the leading-edge technology alternatives represent tradeoffs. You can focus on seat backs, passenger devices, operational costs, seamless passenger device engagement, or stunning new features like HDR. There are great tools that target each of these, but no one solution is the perfect way to optimise them all. This session puts the newest tools on display. Then each one of you gets to decide what message you really want to erect by using them.

A look at how the pandemic has accelerated change and precipitated a paradigm shift in the advertising industry from traditional media to digital, and the increasing role of programmatic advertising. Matt will take a deep dive into trends impacting inflight advertising ahead of the recovery, as well as share insights from advertisers and brands from Inadvia’s Attitudes to Inflight Media: Impact of COVID-19 survey. What do all these mean for inflight advertising, what is the opportunity and how can airlines benefit?

The end of the third-party cookie is already having an enormous impact on the advertising world. Here, Matt will look at the repercussions of Google’s decision to terminate the third-party cookie by 2022 and how this represents an incredible opportunity for inflight advertising. How can aviation capitalise on its accelerated digital transformation to deliver much-increased advertising revenue?

The inflight entertainment segment of the passenger experience industry is currently facing the convergence of two unprecedented and disruptive forces in the provisioning of IFE content – the reprioritisation of content markets by the major motion picture studios, and the acceleration of that reprioritisation by a pandemic that closed movie theatres, and disrupted content production and distribution pipelines. As the passenger experience industry enters a post-recovery environment, how will IFE be changed by this? A comprehensive conversation on the future of IFE content.

The Seamless Air Alliance (SAA) has been an advocate for enabling airlines to deploy open systems for inflight roaming. The group released an inflight connectivity standard in October 2020. SAA’s Jack Mandala reports on the group’s activities since that release.