Most airlines and airports now offer a variety of mobile services but a survey of over 600 business passengers shows they want more help.
Key points of the survey are:
- Mobile, day-of-travel notifications are critical for business passengers. Flight status, upgrade availability and boarding alerts are wanted on mobiles.
- Airport and onboard wifi is unreliable, limited and frustrating. Only 28% are happy with in-flight WiFi and 32% with WiFi in airports.
- Business passengers want mobile boarding capabilities. More than 80 percent of business passengers who haven’t yet had access to mobile boarding passes would have used them, had they been available.
Other findings from the survey from Flightview show that only 25% of these passengers fly first or business, 63% want to be notified about upgrade availability and 21% would like lounge access during significant delays.
The results of the survey raise a number of questions:
- Is the small number of passengers flying in premium cabins a sign of renewed bad economic times?
- Are airlines and airports introducing mobile features because they can and not asking what passengers want?
- Are many business passengers hopeless about practical stuff like looking at a board in an airport?
- Why should a passenger who always travels economy on business be treated better than a “leisure” passenger?
Perhaps that 25% figure will remind airlines that when times are tough the busymen desert them but the “leisure” passengers remain firm. And they are by far the majority. And less demanding. Meaning lower costs……
