Back to the Future: Aviation’s Complicated Relationship with Tech

Now it might seem peculiar to kick this off by writing about something so future-facing, however supersonic flight signifies more about aviation’s past and present than it does its future.

Precisely, it paints aviation’s complicated relationship with technology — painfully inefficient and lacking substantial progress.

Flying Comes Full Circle

Civil-use supersonic travel is nothing new. Many avgeeks fondly remember the Concorde, whose origins date as far back as 1969 (while its Soviet counterpart, the Tupolev Tu-144 dates back to 1968).

Unfortunately, the Concorde, although beloved, was short-lived because a fatal crash led to its eventual demise with the last commercial flight taking place in 2003.

Now here we are 21 years later and what’s the exciting new aircraft technology? Yup… supersonic flight.

Boom is one of the tech darlings of aviation, with supersonic aircraft agreements in place with American, United, and JAL.

Depending on the source you site, we won’t see one of these being used commercially until 2027-29 (and that’s if everything goes according to plan and if aviation history has taught us anything, expect delays).

In other words, the best we can hope for is that by the end of the decade aircraft technology returns to where it was at the turn of the millennium.

And the real kicker is this will be celebrated as a great win for aviation and travel as a whole — advancing to where we were about 30 years ago.

Aviation’s Tech Challenge

Of course, creating a vessel that launches people across an ocean is entirely a beast of its own with a unique set of complications, safety regulations that must be met, and challenging business hurdles (there are already plenty of articles debating the financial viability of supersonic travel, so we’re not doing that here).

However, some clear takeaways can be applied to aviation’s development, application, and adoption of software technology.

Aviation is always positioned as an industry that lags in technological development. You’ve probably heard something along the lines of one of the following:

Why can’t aviation be like Amazon?

How come aviation doesn’t work like Netflix?

But, as supersonic flight represents, it’s not as if better technology isn’t available to the industry (and yes, let’s be clear, aviation has some very unique challenges compared to other industries, which makes the degree of difficulty significantly higher).

It’s more so been an issue of effectively investing in and adopting new technology. Having the technology is only the first step in a long road to effectively harnessing it.

One of aviation’s buzzword bingo catchphrases is Digital Transformation. Translated this means let’s make technology a topic of boardroom discussions and quarterly reports so we sound like we’re… wait for it… another buzzword incoming… cutting edge.

What ends up happening is you get some VP or C-Level leading a big tech project who can’t even save a document as a PDF on his/her computer.

While the right things might seemingly be said in interviews and on stage at conferences, this person doesn’t typically have the understanding to select the right technology, ensure the technology is implemented correctly, actually have the technology adopted and/or optimize the technology for the greatest (or even baseline) output.

This has led to several airlines, for example, spending tens of millions of dollars on technology and having little to nothing to show for it (even if some of its leaders might have you think otherwise).

And when these hurdles inevitably do occur, aviation companies are far too quick to abandon ship instead of staying the course and seeing their investment through (even though they find themselves starting again with the same type of technology years down the road).

There are significant challenges that must be surmounted in aviation, but the bottom line is that technology does exist to improve the industry for all stakeholders. It’s just a matter of having a clear vision, being led by the right person, and having the right set of priorities.

And it’s fully understood that running the core components of an airline takes a great deal of effort and focus. But don’t use the often-used excuse of not having time. Don’t be like this.