Enhancing Inflight dining experiences

Abstract

The project brief was to redesign and improve economy class passengers’ dining experiences onboard. “Air travel has been growing as a commodity much more rapidly than it is visible. “Over the last 40 years global air travel has almost increased eightfold: In 1974 air planes carried 421 million people globally. In 2014 this number has increased to 3,21 billion passengers – that’s a billion more in just five years time.” (Schuttenhelm, 2016) Air travel is rapidly becoming easily accessible to almost everyone and everywhere in the world. Low budget carriers are also making it possible for low budget travellers to afford short / long haul trip(s) in a year. With the growing number of flights and connections, the demand and offering for onboard services is also increasing. The levels of these onboard services are different based on the seating arrangements in the air carrier. As of now there is less allowance of personalisation for economy class passengers, but it is expected for the onboard experience by 2025 to be different from what we know it today. To keep up with these growing trends, Safran, the project collaborator, as a world leader for Aviation equipment supply wants to work towards bringing continuous changes to enhance passengers’ journey experiences. To be able to understand what needs to be improved, passengers’ current problems had to be identified. The focus of this research was the younger generation (students in this case) of passengers as they are usually highly opinionated and tech savvy with a preference for personalised services. A participant research had been conducted with 15 participants from different nationalities. The research conveyed that currently passengers experience uncertainty in their onboard meal experience. They often have no information or choice on what they ate or when they ate. Moreover, they feel time pressured in their decision making between often only two options given by the crew in a short span of time. This project aims to reverse the uncertainty, the passengers feel, by providing them with information and allowing them to make choices about what they can eat and when they want to eat. The medium designed to enable passengers in making these choices can be accessed through the IFE screen. This medium / tool is a service application known as À la craft, which lets passengers to order their preferred meals (main course, salads, desserts, beverages) and choose when they wish to eat from the given time slots. In addition to this the service also offers passengers, a surprise cultural meal which is determined based on their destination. This new service may attempt to solve most of the passengers’ concerns but increases crew workload if the required technology does not support their tasks. When the passenger places an order from their seat, these orders are then sent to the galley. A screen in the galley will let the crew access the orders and it also instructs them to heat (prepare) the required number of meal items in each category of the meal course and place them in the trolley. Another screen on the trolley will help the crew in locating pax in the aisle and their order details. This service can be eventually implemented, part by part in the way of working for the cabin crew as it is a major step into improving pax’s dining experiences. This service has been tested for the target group alone, but it can be assumed that testing for all the other pax groups may bring in more changes in the pax’s requirements. The final test found that this service gives autonomy and control to those pax that need it but may give a decision paralysis to those pax that do not prefer making so many choices. Most importantly, if the service could have been tested in the real context, potential for improvement would have emerged for iterations in terms of the application operated in the aisle and supporting technology for the crew in the galley. In a brief research conducted over the crew’s concerns, it has been understood that they believe in letting economy class passengers choose their meal through the IFE as serving and repeating same information on meals to more than 15 rows of passengers is heavily exhausting. It is my assumption that this may increase the workload for the crew by a few more minutes spent in preparing the orders and also would require more coordination with each other to serve pax as per their choices but would ease their workload in the aisle. Based on the findings of this study it is recommended for Safran Group to conduct further research, test the design in the real context by involving the crew and caterers as well and further develop the design it as it has a high potential for improvement and implementation in the future.