United takes seatback software in-house to personalize flights

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 10:28

   How much of the airline issues have been a story of outsourcing? Like you look at sometimes what's needed is some good devendorization and bring the tech in-house. If you look at why Tesla was so successful, they realized that software was important to cars. And the wing mirror and the wing mirror adjuster is made by the sub-vendor that does that. And so you can't centrally control it and you just need to own the tech stack.

2. 10:47

   Have you guys been bringing more in-house? We are. Which subsystems in particular? We're bringing much more in-house. We have more in-house, I think, than any airline in the world. We're the only airline in the world that owns our own reservation system. Everyone else is outsourced to Sabre and Apollo. You worked at Sabre, right? I did. It wasn't Sabre then. It was called American Airlines Decision Technologies.

3. 11:05

   But that's a mainframe system. Sure. And because we own our... It's a legacy... We locked into it. Like legacy decisions that we own our own mainframe. I mean, because we owned it and we're, because us, Copa uses it too. Copa Airlines in Panama uses it because they're a partner with us. We're the only two airlines in the world that use it. So, like, eventually it was EDS owned it and then someone else.

4. 11:27

   And, like, they didn't want to keep supporting it. So, we had to, like, we lucked into it. Like, but we had to support it on our own. But it's been huge. And now we're taking over all kinds of other parts of the tech stack. Partly because we do things, you know, it's so much more complicated at United than it is at most airlines. around the world size and complex the size and complexity is just much higher um but i'll give you another example of one that we're taking over um that i got so frustrated about the seat back's entertainment screens um i didn't actually realize until i started complaining about the maps the maps are terrible like the map like i just want a map to show up like go i'm into maps go where i'm going if i can zoom in zoom out if i want and the stupid map switches to the globe like i know like approximately where i am on the globe

5. 12:13

   i don't need to see the damn globe by the time you find the information you're looking for it switches screens what i want though is because you already know who i am you log in my name's there put on my birthday or whatever i do nothing but have the map on the whole time i want to have my map preferences. So we're taking over the map software from Panasonic. They're taking over the whole software.

6. 12:34

   And so there's all kinds of stuff. So one is we're going to know Ben likes them. You can get to other stuff. It's just going to pop up with the map on the screen. These are little things, but it comes from this book, Unreasonable Hospitality. One of the things about that book that I took away from that book is try to create memories for people. And so, like, to me, this is another example of a cool thing, which is when you're hitting your two million mile mark, the screen is going to pop up with a little thing on the bottom. And I say, congratulations, Will. But it's going to do a countdown, like 1-9-9-9-9-12-13-4.

7. 13:12

   And there's like celebration. And the flight attendants are going to all know exactly when you hit two million, wherever the country you hit. I mean, it's a little thing, but it's cool. and you know we could have never done that unless we took over the software. These surprise and delight product touches are quite important. Yeah and that's another one that AI makes possible to do things like that that wouldn't have been possible. To know who you are