The impact of IT Technologies on Customer Services within the Airline Industry - with a special focus on Self-Service Applications

The airline industry was among the first industries to see the potentials of Information Technology as a solution for its need of a powerful communication network to exchange reservation, passenger and flight data on a global scale. Yet 46 years passed between the earliest airline communication network set up by SITA in 1949 and the first airline ticket being sold online by Alaska Airlines in December 1995. Since that milestone in 1995, the interactions between airlines and their passengers have changed dramatically. The technological advance and most importantly the internet have had an enormous impact on customer services, profoundly altering the traditional concept of customer service.

Nowadays customers can "serve themselves" through self-service applications more effectively, which helps airlines reduce costs and increases ground-handling efficiency. This also offers a new form of empowerment to the passengers, a fact highly appreciated by some customers and passionately rejected by others.

This book gives an outline of today's most commonly used IT technologies in customer services and highlights the impact of self-service applications on airline and airport operations, as well as their impact on customer experience. It offers an overview of the major interaction points between airlines and passengers in the past and today, and explores some of the implications of the IT technologies involved on both sides.