What’s Next for Smart Airports and 5 Other Top Aviation Stories This Week

The Rise of Smart Airports: A Skift Deep Dive: After years of being stuck in the past, new “smart” airports are embracing technology and data to improve the experience for both passengers and vendors. But progress is still slow, widening the gap between cutting-edge and archaic facilities. What’s needed? More vision, less bureaucracy.

Norwegian Air’s New CEO Sees First Priority As Returning to Profits: Interestingly, new Norwegian Air chief Jacob Schram has plenty of experience dealing with takeovers and mergers from his time in the retail trade. Might Norwegian want to tap this experience as part of future plans?

EasyJet Seizes on Thomas Cook’s Demise With New Packaged Vacation Offerings:
With Thomas Cook out of the way, there’s certainly more space in the package holiday market. People still want to buy these types of holidays, and EasyJet is a well-known brand.

Philippine Airlines Tackles Tricky Customer Service Balance Between Robots and Humans: So is chatting with Chatbot Charlie an improved experience over Human Charlie? With more airlines undergoing digital transformations, sadly so, especially for call center workers.

Incoming CEO of Airlines-Backed ARC Sees Direct Bookings as Growth Area: Airlines Reporting Corporation’s expansion into providing services around direct bookings is intriguing. We’ll be watching how it handles the challenge without vexing the travel agencies that will remain its core customer.

Airlines Still Think They Can Offset Their Way Out of Climate Catastrophe: Airlines are much more comfortable talking about mitigating climate change through incremental changes such as more efficient aircraft and carbon offsets. But these don’t alter the fundamental problem. Flying is bad for the environment, and it’s only going to get worse as demand keeps rising.