Vueling Setting Up Barcelona as an Innovation Lab | Airways Magazine
MIAMI – Resuming an action already started in the past, Vueling (VY), a member of the IAG Group, has found a new way to invest the money it received to weather the pandemic crisis.
At the same time, VY satisfies the conditions posed by the European Union, which contributed US$4.8m (€4m) out of a program valued at US$13.2m (€11m), without engaging in the usual restructuring plan: invest in innovation.
To achieve its goal, VY has teamed up with Nacar Design, a group that describes itself as “an agile and international team of over 80 creative professionals connected by common projects and challenges, eager to discover, design, and materializes new opportunities. We are design strategists, researchers, product and UX/UI designers, engineers, and overall creatives in continuous growth to provide our best.”
Their goal is to create an International Center for the Digital Transformation of the Aviation Ecosystem in order to find new ways to live airport and air travel experiences. Nowadays traveling is easy, buying airline tickets takes just a mouse click but little has changed on airport and flight experiences and VY’s aim is to develop new ways to gather information and solutions for the airline industry.
Not a Newcomer in Innovation
Vueling is not new to innovation. In 2016, during the world conference of low cost carriers held in BCN, the airline received the Innovation Award for the integration of its services with the GDS (Global distribution System) Amadeus, Galileo, and Worldspan.
In 2019 a new initiative, Innovation Strategy Service, was initiated to find new technologies by thinking about how it would look going to the airport in 2025 in order to test them today.
The initiative uses facial recognition for airport operations, eye movement to explore how passengers react when searching for their checked baggage, or augmented reality to check if hand baggage is within the size limit. The aim is to find solutions that are independent of the airport’s own infrastructure.
The program is also part of the Flightpath Net Zero initiated by the IAG Group with the aim of reaching zero emissions by 2050. VY makes part of the airlines that have shed all non-re-usable plastic onboard its aircraft.
Featured image: Vueling Airbus A320-200 EC-MLE – Photo : Fabrizio Spicuglia/Airways
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