Air Canada iphone Application

Both business and leisure travellers have embraced self service solutions because of the control and convenience it provides. Travel companies, especially airlines, have rushed to enable self service to improve customer satisfaction and enjoyed significant cost savings.

The recent proliferation of 'smart' mobile devices, such as the iPhone and Blackberry, provide a logical step to extend the reach of self service. Although these devices offer tremendous potential as a self service platform for travel, there are challenges providing a great user experience while accounting for the strengths and weakness of different devices.

Air Canada has invested heavily in self service over the past decade: flight bookings, check-in, flight status, timetables are available on kiosks, standard web and mobile web sites. Turning their attention to the iPhone, it was decided to create a native iPhone application rather than a 'skinned' web-based application because the native app offers several key advantages.

Superior Customer Experience

Although the web browsing experience on the iPhone is quite good, the Air Canada native iPhone application provides a superior customer experience because it is fully optimized for the iPhone. It takes advantage of the iPhone's native buttons, controls and screen transitions. The touch areas are large and easy to use. Much of the content and logic is locally cached which reduces network data requirements and improve overall performance. Some functions are available 'offline', when there is no network access, which is not possible with a web-based solution. Customer settings can be easily stored on the device to provide a personalized experience and advanced functions such a location services, push notifications and purchases can be added.

A native application also provides brand visibility both on the customer's iPhone and in iTunes.

Mobile Travel Portal

The Air Canada iPhone application allows customers to search for flights by flight number or city pair. Details flights times, gate and aircraft information are displayed in an easy to read table format.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

The customer can subscribe to flight notifications and receive a text message or e-mail if the flight is delayed, cancelled or the gate changes.The application provides access to Air Canada's mobile check-in and prefills name, flier number and location to speed the process.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

The customer's message 'inbox' is also accessible from within the application. Finally the application provides web links to some common travel services like The Weather Network and SeatGuru.com which can be viewed without leaving the application. The combination of these common travel services within a single application make the Air Canada iPhone application stand out among its competitors.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Key to success

The success of this project can be attributed to the team's focus in two areas: architecture and user interface design. As part of the project, Air Canada's host data was wrapped and exposed as light weight, efficient web services. This reduced the complexity and greatly improved the responsiveness (and ultimately the customer experience) of the application. The development team included a user experience expert, a graphic artist and an airline application specialist. Significant effort in UI design, usability and performance testing ensured a quality finished product.

It is available free on iTunes or by searching for 'Air Canada' in the App Store. Give it a try!

Coming Soon

The Team is also working on a BlackBerry version of the app scheduled to be released shortly. Both BlackBerry and iPhone application will be updated frequently to bring new features into the hand of travelers.

Meet the IBM Interactive team

Mobile Applications

"The app was first of a kind for IBM, Air Canada, and the entire travel industries. So we wanted to create a rewarding mobile experience for the travelers on the go and had a lot of great ideas. The challenge was to translate these ideas into a best of breed iPhone application and also stay consistent with the information available on ot her Air Canada channels. The app also needed to be responsive, intuitive, and easy to use. We were able to exceed all expectations with an agile approach and excellent collaborations among IBM, Air Canada, and Apple. Stay tuned, cause we are just getting started."

- Mahmood Ashek, Solution Architect
IBM Mobile Applications Practice

"The challenge with an iPhone application is that the bar is set very high. It not only has to work well, but it has to look good too. iPhone users have expectations of how applications should look and how they should work. We were sucessful because we were able to draw on different expertise within the team: software development, architecture, user experience and graphics. I think the extra time we spent on screen design, graphics, and usability testing paid off. Customers really appreciate a well thought out UI."

- Mark Dufrene, iPhone Developer
IBM Mobile Applications Practice

"Air Canada iPhone application was a result of innovative and creative thinking that our design and solution team applied to the project. From the beginning, our focus was on delivering a superior customer experience as we understood the needs of iPhone users, along with Air Canada customers. We maintained a flexible and agile approach which allowed us to go through a number of iterations in order to accommodate all the creative ideas that our team came up during this project. I have to say that the designers did a superb job with continuously providing redesigns and updated wireframes, mockups and graphics. Their flexibility and dedication gave our solution team maximum freedom to experiment with a number of ideas."

- Abrar Siddiqui, Project Manager
IBM Mobile Applications Practice

"Our aim to provide a consistent user experience across the mobile and web channels required detailed planning. The challenge was to focus on the iPhone user interface development and not be bogged down with complex business rules and multiple external systems. By centralizing these details on the server and exposing them as a simple web service, we were able to quickly integrate with the backend. We can now leverage these services to enable future mobile devices and other channels."

- Jeremy Koch, Application Architect
IBM Interactive Washington DC

"It was a challenge to design an interface that would keep a consistent brand image and user experience across the multiple channels Air Canada services. Equally challenging was to design a layout that would suit both English and French language on a smaller screen. Being an iPhone user, it was great to design and test an application from start to finish. The iPhone provided a great environment to present a more richer mobile user experience."

- Phouphet Sihavong, Interface Designer / User Experience Specialist
IBM Interactive Toronto

" The designers, information architect and development team worked closely together to create a seamless experience between channels. It was a great experience and look forward to our next mobile project."

- Amanda Anderson, Art Director
IBM Interactive Toronto

Meet the entire IBM design, development, and infrastructure resources that were involved in the Air Canada iPhone Project.

Abrar Siddiqui, Adam Schwabe, Alon Kronenberg, Al Narvanen, Amanda Anderson, Mahmood Ashek, Jeremy D Koch, Mark Dufrene, Bruno Arantes de Andrade Bueno, Terry Wong, Daniel Orner, Allen Y Siu, Danniel Willian Brandao do Nascimento, Sandra Villella, Harish Konet, Shefali Singh, Greg Hamonic, Nelson Vieira, Enio Montini, Andrew A Chow, Vitor Lentini Faria, Phouphet P Sihavong, Jason Landry, Jacob Spies, Joshua Bolduc, Sylvia Bate, Heather Y Chiang, Russell Chang, Rob Raineri, Rob Sharples

The application was released on the Apple App Store on Aug 20, 2009 and within a week rose to become the #2 application in Canada (#1 in the Travel category).

It is available free oniTunes or by searching for 'Air Canada' in the App Store. It has been downloaded 125,000+ times from 58 countries during the first month on the App Store.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Air Canada

"Air Canada continues to be an industry leader in offering customers mobile and wireless services that provide real-time information and convenient functions for people who are on the move. We are significantly expanding these options with the release of our Air Canada App, which will enable travellers using an Apple iPhone or iPod touch device to check-in, board and obtain other details about Air Canada flights. This is only the first iteration of our App and we will continue to add new features in response to customer demand."

-Ben Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer

"The team can be defined by their flexibility, teamwork and commitment. Out of the box thinking and ideas were brought to the solution to improve the application and generate new ideas for future versions. The offer of a usability test in order to ensure that we could deliver the best possible product given the project's timeline demonstrates this commitment. There was no 'IBM' or 'AC' in this project. It felt like we were working together towards a common goal."

- Darcy Noonan, Manager Customer Service Platform, Air Canada e-commerce

The mobile channel is a key part of our evolving strategy to simplify and ease the experience of our customers. Being able to offer personalized, real-time information through mobile devices is bringing the interaction with our passengers to a whole new level, allowing us to maintain a closer relationship with them.

- Patrice Ouellette, Director Customer Service Platform, Air Canada e-commerce

Online News

IBM Developed Air Canada iPhone is now the winner of 'Best Mobile Application' in 2009 Canadian New Media Awards.

- Next Media

Hats off to Air Canada for releasing a free iPhone app that not only replaces a human worker, but improves the experience for the traveler as well.

- The Gazette

Air Canada has succeeded in created a no-nonsense effective tool for their loyal flyers and integrated some great functional tools other airlines should explore in the creation and updating of their mobile tools. iPhone "App" Of The Week : Air Canada

- BoardingArea

The Prize For First North American Airline With An iPhone App Goes To... Bravo, Air Canada.

-Jaunted: The Pop Culture Travel Guide

App Store Reviews

Cleared for take-off
by Where's the bus?! - Version 1.1 - 6-Sep-2009
Great app.Airline pilot approved! ;)

Just what I was looking for
by J Swank - Version 1.0 - 28-Aug-2009
You got to hand it to Air Canada.... they're not afraid to try new things in the airline industry, technologically speaking at least (one of the first airlines to offer self serve check-in, trial self serve baggage check-in, etc). This is a very handy app. I fly a lot and find this to be exactly what I needed. Cheers!

Great app! Great for crew as well
by FlightattendantJenn Version 1.0 - 24-Aug-2009
Love the app! Great job! This is really helpful, especially as a flight attendant! I've been waiting for something like this from AC for months! Thanks!

Boarding Pass
by AH10 - Version 1.0 - 26-Aug-2009
Love the ability to get your mobile boarding pass right from within the app! Awesome!

Great airline app
by StevenDCRowe - Version 1.0 - 29-Aug-2009
Easy to check-in and great flight status info!

Great App!!
by GiselaBella - Version 1.0 - 29-Aug-2009
I think this app is great! It has everything I need while traveling with Air Canada. I even tracked my son's flight the other day and saw its status change from "Left Gate" to "In Flight" - very reassuring! Would recommend this to anyone who uses Air Canada.