In February 2024, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson announced a new app in an internal email communication sent out to all employees. This app was supposed to take care of cabin-wide service and customer care repositories. Now, the app is ready for prime time.

Air India rolls out Cabin Executive Plus iPad app

Air India has rolled out Cabin Executive (CE) Plus, an iOS-based app for its over 1,200 cabin executives who lead the cabin crew on its flights. The app will be used to personalise guest services, bolster crew assignments, and ensure prompt reporting of any issue related to cabin maintenance for early resolution.

Developed by Air India’s digital technology and design teams in Silicon Valley and Gurugram in collaboration with the company’s in-flight services team, Cabin Executive Plus (CE Plus) is designed to enhance in-flight guest experience and boost crew operations from take-off to landing. These capabilities include:

• Data-driven, personalised customer service: Leveraging guest profiles layered on the specific flight’s seat map, cabin executives can enhance passenger service by accessing information such as guests’ meal preferences and special requests from their past flights through CE Plus. The app also indicates a passenger’s updated frequent flyer status and benefits related to that.
• Real-time capture of maintenance issues in the cabin: The app allows cabin executives to document and capture photos of maintenance issues with regard to seats and in-flight entertainment systems. The observations captured offline during a flight are routed to Air India’s engineering or other relevant teams upon landing and individually tracked to resolution.
• Increased crew clarity and teamwork: The dynamic crew allocation system of CE Plus allows cabin executives to decide crew work positions based on specific requirements of each aircraft type, enhancing overall efficiency and standard of service. Centralised access to a repository of documents, including galley loading plans and the in-flight announcement handbook through the app should save time and enhance service quality.

CE Plus will get regular, exciting upgrades to elevate the guest experience and empower cabin executives. Features such as personalised birthday surprises for Platinum and Gold members of Air India’s recently revamped ‘Flying Returns’ loyalty program, proactive service recovery based on past travel data, multilingual menus to bridge language barriers, AI-powered recommendations for personalised food and beverage service, and camera lens cabin view for fast detection of any inconvenience.

While I haven’t seen this app in use so far, I sure do hope it helps crew remember to greet their frequent flyers ahead of the departure of the flight, rather than mid-service or late into the flight, or not at all, as it happened with my Business Class flight on Air India’s A350.

As it happens with almost all airline software announcements nowadays, Air India’s app will also have AI-enabled features in the future. Dr Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Air India, said,

Our cabin crew are the most important front-line ambassadors of our airline, making a profound impact on the experience of our guests throughout their journeys with us. With valuable data at their fingertips via the Cabin Executive Plus app, our cabin executives are now better equipped to offer an elevated experience to our guests, whether it’s providing a favourite meal, offering a preferred beverage, or addressing a specific special request. With a host of AI enabled features in the pipeline, the app is expected to become a key differentiator that defines the Air India in-flight experience for our guests.

Air India is playing catch-up here, of course. Other airlines have had such apps for about a decade, and they are more a need than a want or a luxury in the aviation business nowadays.

Bottomline

Air India has launched a new cabin-services app for all their inflight executives, called Cabin Executive Plus. The app will be rolled out to over 1200 cabin-service in charge crews, who should be able to use the app to take care of customer requirements as well as report back to the ground on hardware issues that may have occurred on board, such as faulty seats and IFE.

What do you make of Air India’s new technology initiative?

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