Cathay Pacific Airways: Actively Promoting Machine Learning Technology and Developing Generative AI Tools

Zhitong App has learned that CATHAY PAC AIR (00293) has pointed out that the aviation industry is gradually recovering from the impact of the epidemic, and technology investment is bringing new opportunities to the industry, improving operational efficiency and customer experience. The company is actively promoting machine learning technology to various operational departments. Over the past five years, it has successfully deployed more than 50 models and is developing a generative AI (GenAI) tool for application in customer service and cargo operations. Fang Yixiang, Director of Digital and Information Technology at CATHAY PAC AIR, stated that the company has introduced machine learning tools for airport passenger announcements. By using Amazon's text-to-speech technology, Polly, airport staff can generate multilingual broadcast notifications on their mobile applications by entering flight numbers, boarding gates, and other information. Fang Yixiang pointed out that with the use of this tool, the airport team no longer needs to worry about broadcast notifications, and the artificial sentences have a smooth and natural tone, sounding similar to human voices. It is understood that currently, it supports more than 40 languages, and this tool has already been used in airports including Hong Kong and Taipei. Recently, CATHAY PAC AIR announced that it has chosen Amazon as its strategic cloud service provider. Fang Yixiang stated that with Amazon's technology and scale in cloud computing, the company's IT environment can better adapt to changes and help improve customer service experience to meet the demands brought by the expansion of its business scope. In addition, CATHAY PAC AIR has also migrated most of its information technology workloads to Amazon, greatly reducing the workload of the IT team in maintenance. Furthermore, CATHAY PAC AIR is also collaborating with Amazon to establish the CATHAY PAC AIR Machine Learning Innovation Center to identify more application scenarios. It is understood that CATHAY PAC AIR and Amazon have been collaborating on machine learning since 2018, successfully discovering hundreds of potential application scenarios and deploying over 50 machine learning models, including models for predicting in-flight meal demand to reduce food waste and models for real-time prediction of available cabin space. Fang Yixiang estimates that machine learning projects can bring about a 20% to 30% improvement in operational efficiency, and the internal team has gone from initially being skeptical about innovation to actively embracing the transformation.