Tourism Update attended the launch of aviation’s latest disruptor, Nacelle, in Johannesburg on October 22. A joint venture between Comair and Infinea, Nacelle brings travel and tech a step closer, enhancing passengers’ flying experience from start to finish.
Credits: Nacelle.
Comair is a South African aviation and travel company that operates scheduled services on domestic routes as a British Airways franchisee; it also operates low-cost carrier kulula.com under its own brand, and Infinea owns a software and payment services brands across Europe, Africa, Australia, and soon the US, with its base in the UK and offices in London, Melbourne, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Nacelle will act as a service provider in aviation and related sectors, such as payment solutions, e-commerce, and operations management, providing IT operations and support, IT project deployment, process design and software development.
Erik Venter, CEO of Comair and Amanda Mocellin, CEO of Nacelle.
During the launch, Amanda Mocellin, CEO of Nacelle, who previously worked for Cisco, Microsoft, Dimension Data and Dell EMC, explained that Nacelle would provide consulting services; managed services, such as 24/7 support and maintenance of infrastructure, services and applications; software development, including custom solution development, airport, airline and property product development; loyalty programmes; as well as payment technologies that are integrated, cost effective and leading edge.
According to Fred Baumhardt, CEO of Infinea, Nacelle will bring the cost of tech down for all carriers, and, as a result, see travel become more affordable.
Speaking to Tourism Update, Erik Venter, CEO of Comair, said Nacelle provided “opportunity to build the next generation of airline systems on modern systems that give you speed and flexibility to build pretty much anything you can imagine. No longer constrained by tech, but by ideas you can come up with”.
Venter said, with Nacelle, the challenges were completely new, as challenges in IT were very different to running an airline as they were constrained by regulations and compliance.
The airline industry is lacking in terms of technology, which are seemingly running on old systems. “There is a big chunk of the aviation market that is sitting on systems that can’t do anything modern. They are not going to keep up unless they get some serious people in tech,” added Venter.
Looking to the future, Venter touched on kulula introducing an app, where one can order anything online, even in flight. “Hopefully Nacelle can push Comair into faster point of delivery,” said Venter.
Baumhardt said the art of science and disruption were two very different things. “People who have truly innovated didn’t come up with the idea, but executed it.”
The disruption potential of Nacelle included prepackaged components and a service, as it supported transactions over time and had experience to implement them, explained Baumhardt.
As for airport retail, Mocellin described Nacelle as creating a “true omni-experience” for passengers.
Global airport retail rose 4% in 2016, and 8% in 2018. “Retail in airports is clearly not an area impacted by traditional retail trends,” said Mocellin, posing the question: “How do we make purchasing easier, simpler, and more fun?” Her response: “Extend that to our tablets, even to our aircraft.”
Nacelle was also about customer journey; a complete end-to-end system, added Venter.
Technology had evolved, allowing for companies such as Nacelle to communicate with passengers in a more effective way, ultimately changing the entire flight experience, mentioned Mocellin. “Change is here, and it’s starting right now.”
Nacelle, positioned as a disruptor for the aviation industry, aligning customer experience with tech, brings Africa to the forefront of innovation.
