Behind the Seams

To help us do this, we’ve identified five priority areas, which include seats, bag tracking, check-in, loyalty, and service recovery. These five areas are all considered as basic, high-priority seams.

Along with increasing customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) and loyalty through a more seamless customer experience, closing seams enables our members to benefit from increased ancillary revenues and cost-effective connectivity with other member airlines.

We’ve created dedicated seam teams to work with members and subject matter experts, we will be sharing updates from them as key work progresses.

Seamless check-in

Our seamless check-in initiative leverages the Digital Spine to allow customers to check in for any SkyTeam member flight using their preferred channel – regardless of which airline issued their ticket.

No more switching between apps or having to check-in across several websites when flying with two or more members.

We’ve been working closely with Air France, Delta and KLM to learn from their successfully launched, seamless check-in capability. This has formed the basis of what will be adopted by SkyTeam to allow other members to connect in a similar manner via the Digital Spine.

We recently held a two-day workshop to explore this approach with representatives from the six pilot member airlines (Aeromexico, Air France, Alitalia, Delta, KLM and Korean Air); where it was confirmed Aeromexico and Delta will be the first two carriers to begin testing seamless check-in via the Digital Spine.

Workshop attendees created a roadmap which will form a blueprint to help subsequent members connect with the Spine as they begin to go live. Agreements were also made around the business and technical design elements that will inform the build of the seamless check-in functionality.

More members will begin using the Digital Spine to facilitate seamless check-in for their interline customers next year.