In the rapidly evolving world of air travel, artificial intelligence is being applied to provide innovation throughout the entire experience. As we navigate through airports today, most of the seamless operations we take for granted—from security screenings to baggage handling—are powered by technologies which include AI. Yet, we’ve only just touched the surface with how AI can continue to transform air travel and the airport experience.
At Alaska, my team and I have built up the innovation practice for the company. We work on bringing together emerging technologies and human needs, either for our own employees or for our guests. We prototype in our innovation lab quickly to develop technology demonstrators, experience demonstrators, proof of concepts, test these experiences out at the airport, and eventually move them into our operations.
So what we do to break down this big, gnarly challenge in our innovation practice is we break down those human challenges and technology gaps into the smallest, quickest test that we can prove. And that way, an entire program might include the proving out of eight different components. First we need to collect data. Then we need an approach that can be specific for this need. Then we need to communicate those results in an interaction form for a very, very busy airport employee.