Need Help?
The IATA Digital Innovation Program gathers a community of Airlines, Digital Innovation Strategic Partners, and startup from Accelerate@IATA. It explores and discusses digital trends in technologies in the air travel space.
Need Help?
As a member of this community, you will have access to a range of Innovation Webinars, Rountables, Innovation Sprints and opportunitiy to pitch new product ideas to the IATA Digital Transformation and Innovation team, IATA subject matter experts, and selected airlines.
Join the digital innovation community
If you are not an airline nor a selected startup from Accelerate@IATA program, participation to the Digital Innovation community requires joining our Strategic Partnership Program.
The IATA Innovation Lab is an evolution from Think Tanks and this platform has been established to foster innovation and collaboration within the aviation industry. It aims to bring together various stakeholders from Digital Innovation community to explore and develop innovative solutions to the challenges faced by the industry.
This Lab offers tools, such as sprints and proof of concepts (POCs), to enable its members to collaborate and develop innovative solutions.
Sprints
Sprints are time-bound, collaborative workshops where participants work together to solve a specific challenge faced by the industry. POCs, on the other hand, are small-scale projects designed to test and validate new ideas or solutions.
Through these programs, the IATA Innovation Lab provides its members with the opportunity to experiment with new technologies, test ideas, and collaborate with other members to develop innovative solutions. This helps to accelerate the pace of innovation within the aviation industry and drive growth and efficiency.
Proof of Concepts (POCs)
The purpose of a POC is to provide evidence that a particular idea or concept can be implemented successfully and that it has the potential to deliver value. By testing a POC, innovators can identify any technical or practical challenges that may need to be addressed before the idea can be scaled up or commercialized.
Do you want to get involved? Contact us
The Innovation Days are IATA events that bring together the Digital Innovation Community to discuss the current industry priorities defined by the Digital Transformation Advisory Council (DTAC), one of the Advisory Councils.
The key objectives of these events are:
- Encourage creative thinking and collaboration among participants
- Share knowledge and best practices
- Build networks and partnerships
- Identify new opportunities for innovation and solve specific industry challenges
- Showcase and promoting innovative ideas and solutions
- Inspire and motivate participants to continue innovating and collaborating beyond the event
The recent Innovation Day took place on 28 June, 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland.
During this event, we have shared the industry's strategic direction from various IATA governance bodies like the Digital Transformation, Distribution and Industry Financial Advisory Councils. Additionally,this event had a focus on the new Modern Airline Retailing program followed by discussions on innovation enablers and startup pitches to enhance this program.
Access the event program (pdf), presentations (pdf) and pictures.
Past Edition
The 1st edition of the IATA Innovation Day took place in Geneva on 31st May 2022.
View the agenda from 2022 edition (pdf)
The AIR Think Tank was initiated in 2018, building on the success of its predecessor, the Simplifying the Business (StB) Think Tank. The module for innovation discovery was relaunched in 2023 when the Think Tanks were replaced by the Innovation Lab.
AIR Think Tank 2022
The AIR Think Tank focused on retail and distribution topics. The team worked on the following ideas:
 |
Trust Me, Know My Needs: the customer will have their needs met throughout their journey, thanks to this envisioned process of providing easily verifiable credentials. The customer (or delegated authority, such as a parent or caregiver) will store these credentials within their digital wallet, which proves and unlocks entitlement to a specific service and/or set of offerings. |
 |
Addressing Extreme Look-to-Book Ratios: providing a portfolio of approaches to enable airlines to address extreme look-to book ratios, like: API monitoring and subsequent techniques to manage traffic, offer repositories and a variety of additions to and evolutions of the standards and documentation for specific shopping use cases. |
 |
Metaverse: Simplify and enhance the travel shopping experience by moving away from complex shop, price, book, pay, ticket processes, towards a form of retail built around customer’s needs, desires, aspirations, and dreams. |
Read the AIR Think Tank white paper 2022 (pdf)
AIR Think Tank 2021
The AIR Think Tank focused on retail and distribution topics. The team worked on the following ideas:
 |
Clairvoyant: Foreseeing demand and supply of goods and services by considering time of day, traveler profile, routine, and preferences to better meet customer needs. |
 |
Construct-o-matic: Deconstructing the travel industry into “lego-style” building blocks of capabilities to enable a more flexibility, remove barriers, and provide a resilient end-to-end experience for the customer. |
 |
Window of the future: Simplify and enhance the travel shopping experience by moving away from complex shop, price, book, pay, ticket processes, towards a form of retail built around customer’s needs, desires, aspirations, and dreams. |
Read the AIR Think Tank white paper 2021 (pdf)
Digital and Data Think Tank 2021
The just-launched Digital and Data Think Tank focused on different areas of digitalization. The team worked on the following ideas:
 |
Customer first: Create a truly customer-centric traveler’s journey where the customer, enabled by technology, can in his or her travel and retail experience enjoy maximum benefit with minimal effort. |
 |
Shopping data: By leveraging the future airline capabilities based on offers and orders only, and by linking legacy and new sources of data (previously not available to airlines), a powerful data architecture can provide better tailored service and added value to the flying public and the airline ecosystem. |
 |
AI and environment: Airlines are equipped to track, manage, and eliminate their environmental impact using AI and digital technology. |
Financial Think Tank 2021
Scope: Cash Management and Payments
The Financial Think Tank focused on two ideas:
 |
Central Bank Digital Currency in airline retailing. |
 |
Foreign currency exchange opportunities in the world of 100% offers and orders |
Members:
- Airlines: Copa Airlines, Etihad, Finnair, Hahn Air, Kenya Airways, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines, Royal Air Maroc, United Airlines, Emirates, KLM, Swiss and Turkish
- Partners: Amadeus, Kantox, Mastercard, Visa, UATP, Worldpay
White Paper
The 2021 Financial Think Tank recently closed and completed the white paper ready for download now! The team brainstormed ideas focusing on payments and currency. More specifically, the ideas the team worked on were: Central bank digital currencies in airline retailing and Foreign currency exchange opportunities in the world of 100% offers and orders.
Read the Financial Think Tank white paper 2021 (pdf)
Videos
In addition to the white paper, the team also created videos to further discuss the ideas in the paper. Since there was no physical World Financial Symposium in 2021, the team still felt that the white paper would be better supplemented by the videos and presentation of these ideas virtually.
Access the Central Bank Digital Currency in Airline Retailing video.
Access the Foreign Currency Exchange Opportunities in the world of Orders and Offers video.
AIR Think Tank 2020
The 2020 edition of the AIR Think Tank refocused its scope to support the industry during the COVID-19 crisis. The team worked on three ideas that are elaborated in the 2020 AIR Think Tank White Paper:
 |
Customer as a reference: Building off the TrulyMe idea from the 2019 AIR Think Tank, this concept leverages technology advances made by the One ID project and extends the use of the technology from facilitation use cases to distribution. |
 |
Emerging products and services: This idea looks at retailing in general, with two driving objectives: 1- facilitate the onboarding and integration of API providers (including start-ups) by airlines and 2- improve the retailing capacity of airlines (not limited to ancillaries, but all kinds of products). |
 |
Trust and resiliency: Focuses on building customer confidence in the retail experience. The intent is to provide customers with choice and transparency through further unbundling and travel flexibility, but still (re)building a solid revenue optimization model. |
Read the AIR Think Tank white paper 2020 (pdf)
