The 2013 Airline IT Trends survey was released today by SITA, a co-operative run by major world airlines to provide data-processing services.
The survey received responses from 200 senior IT executives from airlines representing half of global passenger traffic.
All of these executives said they planned to invest in business intelligence (BI) solutions in the next three years, up from 80% who said they would in last year's survey.
Here are other key statistics on airline IT trends:
Nearly 75% of airline information technology (IT) executives say investing in business intelligence (BI) solutions for sales and marketing is their top priority.
Support for mobile devices is a focus
Says SITA:
By 2016, nine out of ten airlines plan to sell tickets via mobile phones.
They expect to be rewarded with a leap in mobile sales to more than US$70 billion by 2016, or 10% of total sales, up from just below 3% today.
Says SITA:
Mobile phones, kiosks and social media will represent nearly 14% of ticket sales by 2016, while indirect sales through GDSs will reduce from 46 % to just 33% of sales in the same time period.
Trends in airline IT spend
Airline investment in 2013 in operational information technology overall remains consistent with previous years.
Improving the mobile passenger experience
Airlines are rushing to put tablets to work, and their goal is to increase ancillary sales by mobile devices.
Passenger check-in patterns are changing:
Airlines earn on average nine times more ancillary revenue through direct channels, such as their own websites, than indirect ones. Today about 87% of their ancillary revenues come through direct channels.
See the full SITA Airline IT Trends survey at the official site.
Here's a video of Michael Kennaugh, United Airlines vice president for IT, and other IT execs, talking about next generation challenges: