October 1, 2015
Air
travel design firm Teague has come up with an idea for an entirely new
kind of airline — one that would use robots, give passengers more
control, and take all baggage out of the cabin. (Image: Teague)
A
design company just blew our minds — and maybe provided the spark to
get airlines thinking about how they could really change things, for the
better.
In a great article this week, Fast Company
recounts three radical ideas from the innovative air-travel design shop
Teague, which played a big part in designing the 787 Dreamliner and
which, earlier this week, presented its latest vision at the Airline
Passenger Experience Association Conference (yes, there is one, and it’s
going on now). These ideas, as Fast Company puts it, “totally disrupt
air travel.” If you weren’t at APEX (and we’re guessing most of you were
not), herea are the three innovations offered by Teague principal brand
strategist Devin Liddell, whose company had the chutzpah to imagine an
entirely new kind of airline — a fictional vision they named Poppi — and
dared to ask these three questions:
What if planes carried no carry-on baggage?
In
Teague’s futuristic airline, Poppi, the overhead bins would be tiny —
like the fedora-size bins of early airline travel. (Image: Teague)
I
know, I know. Your first instinct is that this would suck. Where would
you put your bag of crap inflight necessities. But Teague’s point is
that you don’t need all that crap necessities with you. You really only
need a personal item — really, how often do you really open the overhead
bin during the flight to get something? It’s so rare (and so annoying
when some noob does it) that it’s frankly amazing that no one ever
questioned the need for it before. Plus, so much time is wasted trying
to board everyone with their carry-on bags, clogging the aisles while
trying find space in the overhead bin. If that entire time suck was
eliminated, Liddell
calculates we could improve the speed of boarding by 71% — and shave
off $25 million in fuel costs each year due to less weight. Teague even
has an idea for what to do with the savings: use them to deliver checked
luggage right to passengers’ hotel rooms. Of course, no one can promise
passengers will see the benefit of that savings, but hey a design
studio can’t do everything.
What if middle seats were the best seats on the plane?
Middle
seats might not be so bad if the passengers who were stuck there were
also entitled to exclusive items from sponsoring brands. (Image: Teague)
Teague
suggests turning middle seats into a “promotional class,” instead of
the “totally screwed class,” by inviting forward-thinking brands to take
over the seats and offer those middle passengers something different.
The brands would get a captive audience and the passenger would get an
exclusive gift box, or maybe the chance to test out new games, or nab a
huge discount off custom items if they purchase them while inflight.
Liddell points out that in this scenario, everyone wins: airlines can
make money by selling the seats to brands, brands get access to the
passenger, and the passenger gets some exclusive swag.
True,
there’s something a little icky about this (though not quite as
bald-faced as lugging suitcases wrapped in ads), but the possibility for
genuinely cool perks or opportunities lifts this advertisting-based
idea above the usual feeling of shallow grabs for your hard-earned
money. We can leave that to the airline itself.
What if airlines offered membership programs?
The
Poppi airline membership program idea includes an app that would allow
passengers to sell and exchange their tickets with other travelers.
(Image: Teague)
Teague
isn’t limiting its thinking to plain old miles programs. Instead,
Liddell asked: What if you could pay an annual fee to an airline and get
perks and privileges, the way you do from Amazon Prime, for example, or
enroll in a plan to purchase pre-paid flights? “Without a doubt,
introducing the membership model in some way to air travel would have
the most positive effect for both passengers and airlines,” Liddell told
Yahoo Travel. “This concept, which is so important to the Poppi
experience, would help airlines escape fare commoditization, and give
passengers far more rewarding and meaningful ways to engage with the
airline than what airlines offer now.” For instance, in the Poppi
exercise, the airline has an app that would allow passengers to resell
their seats. A transaction fee would go to the airline (again Teague is
always looking to make all parties come out with a win), but it’s the
passengers who’d be in control of the swap. “Membership models could
totally transform an airline,” Liddell continued, “from its revenue
streams to its long-term relationships with passengers. You don’t like
our idea for no luggage in the cabin? Fine. But take a long look at what
a membership model could do for your brand. For the happiness of your
passengers and the happiness of your bottom line.”
What’s next?
Teague is also exploring ways to use robots to handle baggage check-in and delivery. (Image: Teague)
Of
course, not everything Teague dreamed up in its brainstorming sessions
made it to their APEX presentation. We asked Liddell about some of the
other ideas his team has brewing, and he told us about two particularly
cool ones: “With Poppi, we are really interested in on-demand food and
beverage service, so we had lots of concepts that involved robotic
delivery of food and beverage to passengers, including an ‘aisle bot’
that is slim enough that passing passengers could walk past it in the
aisle.” They had a similar automated idea about baggage checking and
claim, but put that off for now. “We believe autonomous vehicles will
absolutely be part of the solution in the future,” Liddell said, “it was
just that they might be at the farther end of the 5-10 year future we
wanted to work within right now.”
Because
although response to the Poppi ideas has been positive, it remains to
be seen if airlines are really ready to implement them. Teague might
still be just a bit ahead of its time.
What air travel innovations and new ideas would you like to see?
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