Aer Lingus Content Enhancement

Challenge

What was the requirement identified by Aer Lingus? Aer Lingus is the flag carrier airline of Ireland and the second-largest airline in Ireland. It currently serves more than 91 destinations across Europe, Africa and North America. Aer Lingus is one of our most valued clients and we are proud to have developed a strong relationship which we’ve established over the past 25 years. One of the key requirements that Aer Lingus identified in 2015 was the enhancement of the guest journey, loyalty and customer satisfaction. Based on the 2014 VOG results:

  • Voice of guests results indicated static IFE customer satisfaction
  • Results suggested there was insufficient choice for passengers
  • Frequent flyers were dissatisfied with the limited, repetitive choice due to route specific content
  • Inflight Dublin was tasked to come up with an IFE improvement strategy to improve the static customer satisfaction trends

Solution

How did we help Aer Lingus to overturn the situation?

Inflight Dublin carried out a comprehensive benchmarking exercise that compared Aer Lingus’ IFE offering against its key competitors as well as selected “best in class”. The key results showed a broad variety of content being deployed for cross-tier airlines (including more than 1500 movie channels, 100 radio channels, 100’s of CDs & audiobooks, TV shows and games).

Understanding Aer Lingus IFE positioning served as a starting point to determine the necessary next steps. Although Aer Lingus maintained a strong TV selection, our findings showed there was an opportunity to improve the guest experience by providing a more enhanced, differentiated movie offering.

After a detailed analysis and running numerous scenarios, Inflight Dublin proposed two recommendations (taking budget into consideration) that we felt would align Aer Lingus’ offering with that of other 4-Star airlines.

  • Option 01:  20 blockbusters each direction, 25 Classic Movies both directions, 5 boxsets and 54 TV Shows
  • Option 02:  24 blockbusters each direction, 24 Classic Movies both directions, 6 boxsets and 54 TV Shows

Inflight Dublin felt that there was a number of benefits to Aer Lingus based on our findings and resulting recommendations, including:

  • Improved Guest experience through providing an enhanced content offering that will result in greater VOG results;
  • A more competitive and differentiated movie selection aligning EI’s service with that of other 4 Star airlines;
  • Encourage Guest interaction and feedback through innovative content plans that will help revolutionise Guest experience;
  • Synergise marketing and promotional campaigns using our innovative content calendar; and
  • Enhance efficiency on a cycle-by-cycle basis through our EI specific content plan.

Outcome

What were the resulting benefits to Aer Lingus?

The results of our strategy were extremely positive;  passengers who thought the offering was excellent / very good increased by over 15% (the highest it has been in three years) and passengers who thought the offering was fair / poor decreased by over 10% (the lowest it’s been in three years). In summary, this initiative resulted in immediate benefits to Aer Lingus and had a very positive impact on its Guests experience KPI’s. We at Inflight Dublin are extremely proud to have helped Aer Lingus develop its inflight entertainment to one that competes strongly with other four, and five star airlines.

Client

Aer Lingus

Date

09/2014

Website

https://www.aerlingus.com/

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Air Mauritius Content

Challenge

Air Mauritius is the flag carrier airline of Mauritius and it’s the fourth largest carrier in Africa.  With flights to and from Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa, Air Mauritius now serves 24 regional and international destinations.

Air Mauritius is committed to deliver the “7 step plan”, set back in 2012. One of the key steps is improving overall service quality and the passenger experience that would be recognised by the industry. In order to do that, a requirement for the “IFE system with a difference” was made. This new IFE offering would provide the following:

  • Unique selection of eclectic content, including the latest blockbusters  & international movies, TV shows , audio collections in adherence to their budget for the whole fleet of 10 aircraft
  • Range of Exclusive Content that would follow an individual content strategy suggested by the CSP provider
  • Improved GUI design for the passengers that is intuitive and user-friendly    

Based on the above criteria and a promise of a 4-star Skytrax status within a year, Inflight Dublin was selected in 2013 as the new CSP.

 

"Achieving the coveted 4-star Skytrax rating would not have been possible without your contribution and dedication!" Andre Viljoen, CEO

Solution

How did we help Air Mauritius to achieve 4 star status?

Inflight Dublin was awarded the CSP contract in April 2013. The contract commenced from July 2013 and has been successfully deployed for the past 4 years. At the beginning of the process, we have benchmarked Air Mauritius competitors’ IFE offering and provided an overall content strategy.

At the time, Air Mauritius had 3 IFE systems: Pac 3Ki VOD, Hi8 Analogue and ASL XPI DMR, which replaced VHS tapes. As an experienced CSP provider, we’ve delivered on all these systems without any delays, complying with all the deadlines provided by integrators.

Our dedicated account manager implemented an innovative content strategy that included the development of Air Mauritius Movie offerings – increased number of Hollywood Blockbusters and Classic films available on board, as well as the addition of a new International TV programming including French and Chinese comedy.

Inflight Dublin’s proposed solution for the XP1 route configuration allowed for programming to be based on specific routes and languages, providing the same offering as VOD system. The solution was very well received by the airline and further personalised the content delivery onboard.

By switching to a more powerful format, content quality has substantially increased.    

Further IFE highlights that cemented the Air Mauritius 4 star status include expansion of the AOD library, an introduction of the XP1 system (50% increased content on Classic aircraft) and delivery of the anticipated Web GUI.    

 

How did Air Mauritius content evolve over the years?

Air Mauritius content was significantly increased after the first cycle and continued in this trend for the past 4 years. Inflight Dublin currently provides the following content for Air Mauritius:

  •  Blockbuster movies (Hollywood)
  • International Titles
  • French & Chinese TV
  • TV comedy & Drama boxsets
  • Kids bundle of movies and TV
  • Podcasts and destination videos
  • Exclusive content such as Fairdeal Bollywood movies

"Inflight Dublin has delivered significant improvement to the airline in both the content offering and the communication of the airlines IFE through value added services with a very limited budget increase"

Eclectic content including Interstellar, Big Bang Theory, France KBEK and destination videos

Outcome

Inflight Dublin has delivered on the promise to Air Mauritius to improve their Skytrax ratings to 4 stars within a year. It was a joint effort of the leading CSP provider, and Air Mauritius who put their trust in our capable hands and let us transform the inflight passenger experience.

Client

Air Mauritius

Date

09/2017

Website

https://www.airmauritius.com/

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