FRANCE. Air France has launched French start-up company SKYdeals’ e-commerce platform onboard flights in a pilot scheme.
The SKYdeals ‘inflight shoppertainment’ platform has been available on selected medium- and long-haul flights since January.
Accessible from any mobile device, SKYdeals is available to Air France passengers from the airline’s connectivity portal, Air France Connect.
The platform offers an online marketplace and is able to target offers based on travellers’ profiles and destination, SKYdeals said. Brands can present offers whether or not they are currently active in the duty free sector.
“We are pleased that Air France is giving SKYdeals the opportunity to deploy our new inflight ‘shoppertainment’ services,” commented SKYdeals CEO Julien Sivan.
“From now on, we can experience a large number of preferred offers to passengers. It will be interesting to measure the evolution of buying behaviours on board, which is a world premiere. We would like to thank Air France for their trust and support.
“With the arrival of Wi-Fi on the majority of the fleets worldwide, we hope to be able to reach an audience of more than 200 million passengers a year within five years.”
According to SKYdeals, buying options include:
- Flyover offers: preferred offers triggered according to the area and the country overflown that are only available during the flyover time.
- Group buying offers: passengers on the same flight may be grouped together to obtain more advantageous offers.
- Flash sales: these offers are valid for 15 minutes at specific times during the flight.
- Flying auctions: Real auctions lasting the time of the flight.
The announcement comes a week after sister airline KLM, also part of the Air France-KLM group, announced it would halt the sale of tax free goods on its European flights from July and would suspend sales on intercontinental flights from January 2020.
“As a result of new developments such as the rise of e-commerce, sales on board no longer meet customer needs. Instead, KLM is exploring alternative forms of travel retail,” KLM said in a statement.
