The plane began networking, Internet + aviation opportunities came

For planes, I believe many people will feel a little bored in their hearts, especially on international flights or distant domestic flights. A new poll of more than 2,000 adults in the United States found that 93% admitted that they use mobile phones in their beds. Nearly 80% of them use the toilet and 43% use mobile phones when they stop at a red light. Today's people have become increasingly inseparable from smart phones and can't live without the Internet. How to spend a long time on the plane has become a pain in the hearts of many customers who often fly.

A few days ago, Eastern Airlines took the lead in opening Shanghai's air connectivity service to and from New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, becoming the first domestic airline to put air connectivity services into commercial operation. In the future, it will also travel to and from Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Kunming in Shanghai. Some domestic flights such as Chengdu and Chengdu are also on-line for this service. When this news came out, many netizens cheered and shouted for it. In addition to Eastern Airlines, Air China, China Southern Airlines and other major airlines are also rapidly strengthening their wifi layout in aviation. For airlines, Internet + aviation will bring new hope to their profitable space.

1, wifi members

In fact, for most Chinese users, if they are allowed to pay for a fee on the Internet, they will definitely raise various objections. It is estimated that many of them will not use the paid Internet service, but at the same time There will be a small number of users willing to pay. Then for the airline, it is entirely possible to divide and conquer. For those who are willing to pay for the VIP membership system can be launched to provide advertising-free and without any additional conditions of the network service; and for free wifi users can bind with the APP or desktop program.

Of course, through these wifi members can not receive too many membership fees, but we do not underestimate the value of these wifi members. Today, major airlines provide their members with a lot of value-added services. At the same time, members also bring many more stable and long-term income sources for airlines, and wifi members also have such value. Many VIP wifi members can enjoy more value-added services. Once they have enough loyalty to the aviation wifi, they will become long-term loyal users of the airline.

2, online hotel

Everyone knows that many people who fly will often go on business trips or travel abroad. They will certainly have hotel needs. The most common place for people to go after an airplane is to go straight to the hotel. At this time, if the aircraft is able to access the Internet, and the APP or wifi portal site provided by the airline can provide online hotel reservations, this is a very convenient and quick event for the user.

Invisibly, the airline has become a new hotel platform beyond where to go, Ctrip, and the United States and other hotel reservation platforms. With the strength of the airline and the large number of travel users, it is believed that many hotels will be willing to initiate cooperation with airlines. This is a three-point win-win situation. The airline can get a certain profit from it. The hotel can bring more stable and reliable users to it through the booking on the plane, and the travel life of the consumers has also become more convenient.

3, travel O2O

From the airport to the hotel, there is bound to be some distance. Some users may have private transfers, but not all users, this time after the plane has many users will have a taxi, carpool travel needs. In addition, there are a considerable number of tourism users will have car rental needs, such as the number of users who travel to Hainan in the winter will be very many, but if there is no special car in Hainan tourism will be very inconvenient, renting a car is not very expensive However, it has solved the pain points of inconvenience for travel.

In particular, many users often experience traveling abroad. For example, in Canada, tourist attractions in many tourist cities do not have any buses. You can only choose to rent a car. At this time, if there is a car rental service for the city on the plane, it is believed that a considerable portion of passengers will be booked through the platform provided by the airline, and passengers will be more assured.

4, attractions tickets

Among the passengers who fly by plane, a significant portion of the users are passengers who come to travel. Many passengers have arrived in a strange place and are not very familiar with the many tourist attractions in this area. Of course, it is not ruled out that some passengers will be adequately prepared before coming, but most passengers are not familiar with it. At this time, the airline passed the wifi entrance on the plane and also provided services for local tourist attractions, such as attraction introductions, ticket bookings, etc. It is believed that many travelers would have such needs.

Many places are hot spots, but at the same time the attractions are also tight. To buy tickets on the spot is not only expensive, it even requires queuing for tickets. However, through cooperation between airlines and attractions, users can book tickets at a lower price in advance.

5, online ticket booking

At present, many domestic users book airline tickets through the major distribution platforms, Ctrip and other online travel platforms to book airline tickets. For airlines, these platforms do bring many users to them, but at the same time they also need to obtain them. A certain profit, which reduces the profit of the airline. If the airline can use the onboard wifi portal to allow users to book return tickets directly on their official website or APP, I believe many people will still have this need.

Once the user has formed a habit, he or she may often use his platform to book airline tickets in the future. On the one hand, it is convenient for users, especially members of the airlines, to book air tickets directly; on the other hand, it is easier to cultivate the loyalty of the users to the airlines.

6, electricity supplier

In addition to the wifi on the aircraft can provide users with a variety of travel-related services, Liu Ye believes that e-commerce will also be a relatively large profit point. One is a local specialty electric supplier. Many passengers go to a place to travel. However, due to time and inconvenience, there may be many local specialties that you would like to purchase not purchased. Some travelers even want to buy some of them. Specialty give away. If the airline can reach a strategic cooperation with these local specialty dealers, passengers can only purchase some special products directly from the aircraft orders and take them home. At the same time, the distributors can also directly send the goods to the passengers' aircraft. , and checked by the plane.

The other is cross-border e-commerce. Today's domestic consumers have a huge demand for cross-border e-commerce, but cross-border e-commerce is also developing in the domestic market because of logistics costs, tariffs, and other reasons. It's not all plain sailing. However, airlines can fully use their advantages in international flights to provide passengers with cross-border e-commerce related services. It is very likely that cross-border e-commerce will usher in a relatively large breakthrough.

7. Air Internet Finance

Any aspect of online transactions involved must be linked to Internet finance. At the end of last year, Air China’s “Internet Industry Alliance for the Air” was formally established. ZTE, China Aircom, China UnionPay, Jingdong Mall, Sina, Youku Tudou and other Internet companies have all become core members of the industry alliance. Eastern Airlines also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China UnionPay on its Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. It also released the world’s first “empty land cloud payment platform” in an effort to take the lead in attacking aerial internet finance.

Passengers who often fly by air are often users with relatively good economic strength. These users will have some savings. If they can develop into airline Internet financial platform loyal users, the development of their financial platforms will inevitably be enormous. The promotion effect.

8, advertising

Before the aircraft did not provide a wifi entrance, many airlines could only earn some expenses through aircraft seats, not very high advertising, and their forms were relatively simple. However, once the wifi portal is opened on the plane, the airline can face more and more passengers online, and it is possible to obtain higher advertising costs.

For tourism companies, hotels, tourist attractions and other tourism-related local companies and distributors, the online advertising marketing for airplane passengers who come to travel locally is more targeted, and they naturally will be more willing to advertise. . In the past, due to the space constraints of the aircraft, the advertising space was also greatly limited. Today, the wifi on the aircraft is used as an entrance, and its advertising space is more.

For the above-mentioned seven major areas related to aircraft wifi, Liu Hao personally believe that it is closely related to the aircraft passengers in the seven areas. However, the business opportunities of the Internet + aviation are not only limited to this, but they will also have wider applications in intelligence, aircraft passenger data, and other aspects. Of course, the opening of wifi on the plane is indeed very popular among users, but at the same time, their Internet + aviation path is not so smooth. They will also face numerous difficulties and obstacles.

First, security issues

Many users are worried about the fact that they can connect to wifi on the plane. Indeed, aircraft can connect to wireless networks and there are certain security risks. Today, when we fly, we often hear from the flight attendants: Turn off the phone! In other words, the mobile phone signal actually has a very large amount of interference with the normal flight of the aircraft. Of course, the signal of the mobile phone is still very different from that of the wifi wireless network, but the wifi wireless network brings the possibility of attack by hackers.

The recently released report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office stated that due to the same network as the aircraft avionics system, WiFi for passengers on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350, A380 will increase the number of hackers attacking the navigation system, or through the on-board network. Control the possibility of the aircraft. Wifi and avionics systems are isolated by firewalls, but this firewall is entirely possible to be compromised by hackers. In other words, although wifi connects the aircraft to the outside world, it also opens the windows of remotely damaged aircraft systems for many malicious attackers.

Once the aircraft's wifi is compromised by hackers, it is possible for hackers to control the aircraft's avionics system and eventually control the entire aircraft. This huge security risk has to be prevented by the airlines.

Second, wifi technology cost problems

FlightView survey once investigated 600 passengers in the United States, and only 28% of passengers were satisfied with the in-camera Wi-Fi service. At present, many domestic airlines have begun to deploy air-to-air networks, but most of them are called wifi wireless networks, which are just LANs and cannot be linked to the ground. As far as the aircraft wifi technology itself is concerned, for some large airlines with relatively strong strengths, there are not too many difficulties, but the technical cost problem cannot be ignored.

At present, there are two main methods for connecting WIFI technology in the world: one is adopted by Air China, and the communication is carried out through the internal wireless network installed on the aircraft and satellites, and then communication is performed via the satellite and the main station on the ground, and the ground master station and the domestic Network operators connect. The advantage of this approach is global coverage, but the biggest problem is that the slow speed can only achieve 'narrow-band' transmission; the other way is adopted by Hainan Airlines, which uses on-board equipment to establish network links with ground stations. The advantage lies in the speed, and the problem is that the base station must be remodeled and the service is limited to this section of the route through the base station reconstruction.

Whether it is Air China’s way or Hainan Airlines' way, there are actually huge high-cost issues. Not only the cost of infrastructure construction is very high, but also the cost of data transmission is much higher than the cost of normal Internet access on the ground.

Third, competitive pressure

For airlines, to achieve their own Internet + aviation plan is tantamount to eating from other Internet platforms. For example, in terms of airline hotel reservations, it will inevitably face competition from where to go with Ctrip; when it comes to travel, it will also face competition from Drip Trips and Uber; e-commerce and finance will be even more important, and competitors will be full.

Of course, airlines can also choose to do strategic cooperation with Internet companies. Airlines only provide wifi access and open this entrance to cooperative Internet companies. But this way, for the airline, it just became an air portal and it didn't have much value. If we want to build our own Internet + aviation eco-industrial chain, major airlines will only face challenges.

On the whole, if all airlines are implementing wifi wireless Internet access, it means huge opportunities and space for the entire Internet + aviation, which may also mean new opportunities for entrepreneurs. However, the aircraft wifi connection also brings more hidden dangers to aircraft safety. In order to popularize the aircraft wifi, it will also face enormous cost problems. At the same time, the airline's Internet+ road will also face certain market competition pressure.