LONDON – To enhance operational efficiency, India’s leading carrier, IndiGo has introduced sensor technology for faster and accurate scanning of life vests on the aircraft.
Life vests are mandatory safety equipment to be carried on all passenger aircraft in commercial service. These vests require periodic checks to ensure adequate numbers are available on board, and that they are in serviceable condition.
Manual inspection of all vests would normally take 90-120 minutes, depending on the type of aircraft. With the introduction of sensor tech, this time has been cut down to 3-4 minutes per aircraft.
This innovation is resulting in huge time savings across India’s largest fleet of 300 aircraft, housing more than 53,000 life vests. These time savings will result in better fleet utilisation and reduced waiting time for passengers.
Elaborating further, Neetan Chopra, Chief Digital and Information Officer, IndiGo, said, “At IndiGo, we are constantly exploring new avenues of utilizing technology to drive innovation and enhance operational efficiency.”
“Developed completely in-house, this sensor-based inspection process for life vests enables us to prepare aircraft faster for the next flight.”
“We will continue to push into new digital and innovative frontiers and introduce more such solutions to enhance operational efficiency and provide on-time, hassle-free, and affordable travel experience to our customers.”
Sensor technology refers to an automated data collection technology that reads a tag on the life vests. This in turn helps in identifying, tracking and locating the tagged life vest.
With the introduction of this technology, IndiGo will be able to maintain life vest expiry date and availability on a real-time basis.
IndiGo and Innovation
IndiGo is certainly showing itself to be an airline which is not averse to proactivity and innovation. Celebrating its 16th birthday in August last year, Indigo decided to introduce a measure for the first time in aviation history – the “Three-Point Disembarkation” system.
The airline invited many influencers to show-case this occasion. This new system of disembarking passengers via three points effectively meant IndiGo saved around 3-5 minutes in its turn-around time.
The carrier implemented this service for all its flights landing in Bengaluru, Mumbai & Delhi airports.
At the time the airline pointed to its drive to provide innovation in order to achieve better customer satisfaction. Their statement at the time highlighted this:
“At IndiGo, we constantly and dynamically keep reinventing our internal standards to enable a hassle-free customer experience as well as contributing to operational efficiencies for all stakeholders including airport operators and ground handling companies”
“We have always looked at newer ways to enhance our customer experience and make flying, as well as our ground operations, efficient and hassle-free.”
“Adding a third ramp for disembarkation is a simple yet effective way to complete a smooth travel experience for our customers.”
The implementation of recent operational measures across their life equipment maintenance regimen is perhaps further testament to this notion.
