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After taking over the reigns at IATA, Giovanni Bisignani is in the cockpit directing many changes. His experience in handling the crisis after 9/11 crisis is invaluable. During his recent visit to India, Bisignani met BT's Amanpreet Singh and spoke about the challenges facing the aviation industry and how to fly safe. Excerpts: Q: We hear your flight was circling the Mumbai Airport for 45 minutes before landing, how angry does that make you? A. I used to come to India quite often when I was running Alitalia; I was here last 10 years ago. I was in Jaipur this time and took a Jet Airways flight to Mumbai at 8 am. The flight lasted 35 minutes I think and then took another 40-45 minutes hovering over Mumbai airport. So after 10 years, there have not been many changes. So what I am saying is that the infrastructure has to be updated quite quickly. Q: One of the things on IATA's agenda is simplifying businesses. What does that include? A. The industry has lost nearly $40 billion between 2001 and 2004; so we have to be leaders in re-engineering certain kinds of processes. The airlines have done a good job in cutting costs, building efficiencies in fuel and IATA had to play a role in leading certain kinds of changes. We distribute 350 million tickets every year, we handle global settlements worth $225 billion each year and we saw that in this complex activity, there was a good opportunity to simplify the business. Simplifying means saving money by taking away paper and making the travel experience for the passenger more pleasant as he can book a flight and print a boarding card with a printer at home. These are all positive issues because we need to save money and the industry has to return to profitability. Q: What are the kinds of savings that you are looking at from your initiatives? A: e-ticketing is one of the five projects that we have. Our target date is 2007 and we will be saving $3.5 billion a year. The other projects related to simplifying the business are, a bar code system that gives you the opportunity to print a boarding card with your printer at home. It's a revolution because we will take away the paper from the ticket and we will be the first industry to take away paper from the system. Another one is common use of self-service; instead of having so many kiosks for different airlines there will be a common technology for check-ins, much like the banking system with their teller-machines. Another initiative to enhance passenger experience will be RFID, a chip in the baggage tag. We handle 1.5 billion bags a year, in order to be more accurate a RFID chip will enable all the bags in the container to be read at one go instead of physically reading each strip. This project is already in its pilot phase and will be a huge cost saving for the airlines. The important thing is standardisation of chips and then the project will be extremely economical. Q: Another important initiative is around e-freight, right? A: This is about taking away the paper from the freight system. It takes 38 jumbos to handle the documentation required for all the freight in a year. Each shipment today requires nearly 30 pages of paper and the incredible thing is that you need one day to deliver a shipment by air but five days to complete the paperwork. So, we are in a system that takes more time in handing than in delivering. To be on board e-freight, we need governments to ratify the Montreal Protocol, which means legalising a digital invoice. I had a pleasant and interesting meeting with Aviation Minister Praful Patel and underlined the importance of signing the Montreal Protocol. Q: What stops India from ratifying this agreement? A: Nothing special because 80 other countries are a part of it already. Q: How ready is India when it comes to e-ticketing? A: We have set a target date of 2007 for 100 per cent e-ticketing. Today, we are at 33 per cent worldwide; unfortunately, India is only at 5.4 percent when it comes to e-ticketing. This is really low; all of Asia is also at 30 per cent. The problem is that it started a bit late. But I am pleased to report that Air India, Indian Airlines and Jet Airways are moving fast. Q: Will e-ticketing eliminate the travel agent? A: If you have a PC, you can go on and print the ticket at home. If no, you can also pick up the phone and call your travel agency and they will print you one. In the US, where there is 60-70 per cent e-ticketing, the travel agents are still there. These are challenging times for them, but there is a role for them when it comes to value-addition. Q: There are almost 200 planes that are going to be added soon, what are measures that are required in the short run? A: There have been a lot of discussions and there are certain gaps that need to be covered quickly. The most important and relevant one is Mumbai airport. But I am convinced that the government will take good care and assess certain measures. Of course, we at IATA are offering all our expertise. We are already co-operating with 30 governments on important and impressive airport constructions. Today, Mumbai airport has 25 movements per hour, it can go up to 40. There is a need for a certain kind of workflow management system in Air Traffic Control (ATF), taxi route and allocation of parking lots. There is a need for co-ordination between different radar systems in the country to manage congestion with slot allocation. Logically, you have to balance brown-field and green-field expansions. Q: Will it be better if private players step in? A: An airport is meant for the interest of a community, we don't want to see airports, which are cathedrals. You have great consultants and engineers who want to build cathedrals, but who pays the bill? We want an airport that is efficient, nice and handles capacity. That is why many governments ask us for advice. We actually don't care whether an airport is private or not as long as it's efficient and safe. I have seen many times that we actually move from a public monopoly to a private monopoly, which is still worse. Q: Fifty-one per cent of the airlines in the US are in Chapter 11, what should the new airlines in India watch out for? A: You need a certain healthy ecology. But ask, what is the potential of India? I say it's enormous, with an incredible market. If you think, it is a market of over 1 billion with around 4 million who fly regularly. So you need to handle this coherently. Across the world, low -cost airlines have a lot of sex appeal, you have a lot of fuss around it. It's a bit like the internet bubble; a lot of them start and after a bit, just a couple of them remain. But this happens in Europe and the US, so I am watching what is happening in India with great interest. Right now, in fact you must take care of the infrastructure rather than the carriers.
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