Sprint Eyes Simpler Customer Journey as Part of Seamless Air Alliance

For Mark Yarkosky, Director of Consumer Services at Sprint, the formation of the Seamless Air Alliance offers a great opportunity.
 
“We’re still early in the development, but we want to see a customer journey that will be simpler,” Yarkosky told Loyalty360. “Our top goal is to provide our customers with the ability to maintain connectivity for all of their devices while on board an aircraft, removing the hassles that exist today and, at the same time, respecting the rules and regulations of the FCC, FAA, and other agencies and organizations that participate in the airline industry.”
 
This week Airbus, Delta, OneWeb, Sprint, and Bharti Airtel officially announced the formation of the Seamless Air Alliance, which targets a new era of innovation for airlines on all routes. By empowering member mobile operators to extend their services into airline cabins, the Seamless Air Alliance will allow them to continuously provide their customers—via satellite technology—with the same high speed, low latency connectivity from ground, to air, and back again. It will also significantly reduce costs for everyone involved while creating a smooth, positive user-experience.
 
What’s more, the alliance—which seeks to attract additional industry operators beyond the five initial members—will eliminate the immense costs and hurdles commonly associated with acquisition, installation, and operation of data access infrastructure by streamlining system integration and certification, providing open specifications for interoperability, increasing accessibility for passengers, and enabling simple and integrated billing.
 
Sprint served 54.6 million connections as of Dec. 31, and is widely recognized for developing, engineering, and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the U.S.
 
Yarkosky talked about how Sprint became involved in the Seamless Air Alliance.
 
“Sprint is an innovative company and the Seamless Air Alliance is an innovative collaboration,” he explained. “We’re currently investing heavily to ensure their customers have the best mobile Internet experience possible on the ground, and in the air should be no exception. We’re looking forward to providing seamless connectivity for our customers through this alliance.”
 
Emotional loyalty is so pivotal for brands today. Yarkosky noted how the Seamless Air Alliance plays to this theme.
 
“Seamless Air Alliance is a great example of how Sprint collaborates with brands that people love,” he explained. “We have many key partnerships with leading brands that our customers can benefit from—including AAA, Hulu, Amazon, Tidal. Through partnering with top brands, we’re able to extend greater value to our customers, and this is one of the ways we can build a lasting emotional relationship with customers. We’re really proud to be partnering with other leaders in innovation in the airline and technology arenas—such as Delta, OneWeb, Airtel, and Airbus. Sprint will play a role in guiding the vision of the alliance and extend its networks from gate to gate aboard any member airline.” 

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