S7 Aero, Russia’s second largest airline, intends to transform itself from a carrier delivering passengers from point A to point B, into a service company most convenient to customers. To accomplish that, it is investing in AI and Big Data in order to collect data of its customers, in blockchain technology in order to save on fuel consumed, and in building a new superlight business jet. In partnership with Skolkovo innovations center, S7 has announced a contest for startups, aiming to get most technologically advantageous and most cost-effective solutions.
Finding technologies
Five contest winners will get RUR 500K ($7.5K) each from S7 Group (S7 Aero’s parent company) and RUR 5 mio from the Skolkovo Foundation. S7 Group is not just a major aviation company, but the first private space company in Russia which designs a shuttle space vehicle and intends to become a competitor for Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Space flights require high technologies and innovative solutions. Yet Natalia Fileva, Senior Vice-President of S7 Group and daughter of company owners Vladislav Filev and Natalia Fileva, claims that space industry is much more conservative than air industry. S7 Aero was indeed the first to issue e-tickets and mobile boarding passes (in 2007); to employ blockchain (in 2017), and to launch startups for implementing new projects. Over six years, its business has doubled, but S7 has no intention to stop here. It is for its further development that it needs startups.
Travel encouragement
“Our aim is encouraging people to travel, making organization of the trips simple and convenient”, Alexandra Gribkova, Customer Support Director at S7 Travel Retail, says.
The company plans to develop an algorithm for customized airfare offers and other services based on the available passenger-related information. The company will create passenger profiles on the basis of their previous requests for air tickets, taxis, hotels, shopping interests. Say, a client is buying a ticket to Tyumen and is offered by the airline some options for accommodation and travelling from the airport to the downtown.
“We should be offering the right price at the right moment to the right client”, the company says.
To get ‘the right price’, the company has to analyze its competitors’ schedules and charges, newsfeeds (sports competitions, festivals and alike events are of significance; respective information is obtained at Expo Map website), personal data of a customer. It therefore collects Big Data for forecasting future purchases. S7 is not the only company which strives to keep customers’ loyalty by using Big Data. It is also done by Aeroflot which collects Big Data to analyze comments of its customers, including comments in social networks.
To make S7’s air tickets and services purchase convenient, a mobile application will be designed, capable of recognizing customer’s voice. A customer will no longer need to go to the website to pay for the tickets. It will suffice reading out a banking card details for a virtual assistant to make the purchase. S7 will also introduce facial recognition to relieve its customers from presenting various papers (passports, tickets, boarding passes) at registration/boarding.
Last year, S7 Aero transported 200,000 Chinese passengers. But employees of its call center do not speak Chinese. S7 Aero therefore wants to launch a service of real-time Chinese, Japanese, etc. interpreting to arrange communication between its call center and its passengers.
Another service in S7 Aero’s plans is making Internet available on a plane, That will allow, for example, colleagues to exchange correspondence during flights.
Blockchain, business jet and new engine
By developing its customer service, S7 Aero hopes to improve its efficiency. To become more effective, it cuts costs. Fuel price, for instance, is different in every airport. To save on fuel, last summer, S7 Group, Gazprom Neft Aero and Alfa Bank launched a smart contract-based service of instantaneous payments for fuel at the moment of fuelling. The airline uses AFSC (Aviation Fuel Smart Contracts) system to submit to Gazprom Neft Aero information on fuelling a respective flight, coordinates fuel volumes and prices. An online request is then forwarded to a bank to get a respective amount reserved on the air company’s account. A bank’s confirmation only takse 40 to 60 seconds, and fuelling starts immediately after that. A payment is made via Hyperledger blockchain platform.
Within two years, a plant will be built in Moscow Region’s Stupino county to manufacture a superlight business jet which will be able to accommodate four passengers and fly 2,000 kilometers at 600 km/hr. The jet will be made of composite materials including carbon fiber. The company would like to also manufacture an engine of its own. For that, S7 Group is searching for new technologies of manufacturing composite materials and ways to improve engine’s efficiency (including maintenance and mathematical computations).
By Natalia Kuznetsova