Digitalizing Analog Businesses

Continuing on the digital business theme, it is an interesting reflection when looking at the airline industry.

I still remember the trauma of being stranded at the completely frozen and shut down Munich airport. When it took me over six hours in a line to a transfer desk, where they rebooked me on a next day flight and handed out a bottle of water and a blanket.

Things are better now. Typically apps take care of missed and rebooked flights, saving us from lining up in multi-hour transfer desk queues.

But it is surprising how even simple things are still not handled by the airline apps. United recently revamped their app nicely, so for example, it shows now a current gate of a connecting flight. Lufthansa, on the other hand, does not: you land and the app shows "Gate: --" and you need to observe monitors or talk to the ground staff.

United has also (finally) moved one step forward in digitizing their business: the app can guide you to the gate, notifying the gate agents that you are on the way. So it is no longer a gamble if they will wait or not. It is also able to help the stuff judge the impact of waiting (as saving one passenger's connection may jeopardize the others' when a plane is delayed).

It all seems not like a rocket science and it may be surprising it took them 12 years (counting from the iPhone 1 release) to do that. But it is good we have more such tools now. Step by step, analog businesses keep improving by mixng more digital in.