According to Iris Taguet, Head of the Blockchain program at Air France-KLM, ‘use case,’ and not the technology will drive Blockchain forward.
In her opinion, use cases have to be driven by business needs, and there are many ways in which Blockchain can help in the airline industry. Airlines work with various organizations- global distribution systems (GDSs), travel agents, airports, government, suppliers.
“In such an ecosystem the potential for Blockchain is huge, and we are just at the very early stage of identifying some of them,” she says.
The first experimentations have already taken place, mainly in the engineering and maintenance departments of the airline. Yet the program has to prove the trustability of the technology and to spread awareness of it within the AFKL group. Having done that, the program may start implementing the technology.
“We are not there yet, and it will be a bit complicated, but we do have some ideas. And we do have the technical knowledge to move forward, once we are ready for it,” she says.
Other airlines, like Lufthansa, Brussels Airlines and Air New Zealand are already cooperating with Winding Tree, a company building a “decentralized platform for travel.” At the same time, International Airlines Group (IAG) has partnered with VChain, that claims it can transform the way security check-in works using Blockchain.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team