Preliminary findings from the 2023 SITA Passenger IT Insights, released late in June, reveal that 32% of passengers have anxiety about flight cancellations when they book their next flight. And SITA CEO, David Lavorel, believes technology could alleviate those problems and give passengers a better travel experience.
The survey was conducted over more than 6 000 passengers across 27 countries in April this year.
SITA is an IT provider to the air transport industry, delivering solutions for airlines, airports, aircraft and governments.
Nearly two out of 10 passengers cited concerns around congestion in the airport. These anxieties could be fuelled by past experience – 56% of respondents said they had experienced delays or cancellations and 48% had had to endure long airport queues.
Nonetheless, it seems travellers intend to fly more than ever. The survey showed that, on average, passengers expect to take 4,7 flights this year compared with 4,2 flights in 2019. This was driven mainly by frequent flyers. Those planning more than 10 flights in 2023 have increased from 6% of surveyed passengers in 2019, to 10% this year.
Lavorel said while it was encouraging for the industry that passengers wanted to travel and travel better (in view of some of the challenges airports and airlines had experienced with congestion in the past year), the fact that the overall experience of air travel was an essential element in passengers’ decision-making could not be dismissed.
“With passengers indicating a clear intention to travel more this year, the industry is well-advised to address their concerns, deploying, for example, increased automation.”
Lavorel highlighted that earlier research from SITA indicated that airport and airline CIOs were taking this seriously by pushing digital transformation. The industry’s IT spend is projected to continue its steady year-on-year growth trend since 2020 to support digitalisation and automation. Last year, airline IT spending rose to an estimated US$37bn (R668bn), while airport IT spending rose to US$6,8bn (R123bn).
