Easy Airtravel Services: Stress-free flying

Project field

Mobility and transport

Partners

Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Deutsche Telekom / T-Systems

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Easy Airtravel Services: Stress-free flying

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Easy Airtravel Services: Stress-free flying

Short description

Travel will now become much more convenient for frequent flyers on the Deutsche Lufthansa route from Friedrichshafen to Frankfurt/Main: T-City and Deutsche Lufthansa are jointly testing three new services designed to make the journey from home to aircraft simpler and more convenient.

Using Location-Based Services (LBS), air passengers are located via their cell phone as early as three hours prior to take-off. The system calculates the best time for the passenger to set off from their current location to the airport and informs him/her via text message. The message also includes the phone number of the Lufthansa call center. The air passenger can call this number to change travel plans if it becomes clear that he/she is unlikely to catch the flight in time.

After arriving at the airport, the passenger checks in by simply holding his/her cell phone over a scanner. A unique feature of this service is that the electronic boarding card is scanned using NFC (near field communication) wireless communication technology, the advantage being that it removes the need for the boarding card’s barcode to be visible on the cell phone display.

Once the air passenger has gone through security, he/she can board the aircraft directly, bypassing the queue, thanks to an additional new service. In order to use this service, passengers upload their fingerprints to their cell phone in digitally-encrypted form. Fingerprints are also used to identify passengers at the gate. The system cross-references the data automatically and, if it matches, the passenger can board.

Project goal

The aim of the new service is to provide maximum convenience to frequent flyers in particular, using optimized time management. Following successful testing on the Friedrichshafen – Frankfurt am Main route, the services will become a permanent feature of Easy Airtravel Services, the T-Systems’ solution for airlines.

Benefits

Frequent flyers in particular are often under time pressure and, in some cases, even have to fly from one city to another several times in one day. Easy Airtravel Services saves air passengers valuable time and makes it easy for them to adapt their travel plans to take account of last-minute schedule changes.

Project status

T-City is currently testing the three new services on Lufthansa flights from Friedrichshafen to Frankfurt/Main. Frequent flyers interested in trying out these services are kindly asked to contact the T-City Representative Office (Karlstraße 13, Friedrichshafen). The contact person is Andreas Droste (phone: +49 (0)208/4125406, e-mail: Andreas.Droste@telekom.de).