HANGAR 51 ACCELERATOR
Through our leading global traveltech accelerator, start-ups and scale-ups work with our airlines to help us solve some of our biggest challenges.
Over 10 weeks, you’ll have access to real world operational environments, work with industry experts and receive support from a senior sponsor.
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After the accelerator, many start-ups continue to work with us on further trials or to implement their solutions and benefit from a fast-tracked procurement process.
We've now accelerated 60 start-ups from around the world and you can find out more about them here.
WHY HANGAR 51?
- Fast-tracked proof of concept: pilot your solution within our airlines’ operational environments, from kick off to delivery in just 10 weeks
- Unparalleled access: to senior management and industry experts, and the chance to gain a deep insight into aviation operations
- Vital product feedback: to help you develop your proposition to add the most value to airline customers
- Commercial opportunity: to pitch for a fast-tracked contract if the pilot is successful and introductions to airlines across our Group
- Expanded network: connect with other traveltech founders in your cohort and benefit from valuable introductions to our industry partners such as airports and other airlines
WHO IS IT FOR?
We want to help start-ups take their business to the next level through our accelerator. To make sure you get the most out of the programme, we do have certain requirements we expect our participants to meet:
- Be able to commit to co-working with our team over the 10
week programme - Have a proof of concept as a minimum, so that we can deploy
and test it during the accelerator - Be open to receiving investment from IAG. Find out more
We recognise the challenges that particular groups of founders face when it comes to getting investment and growth opportunities for their start-ups so we’re actively seeking and encouraging applications from start-ups with diverse founding teams.
AREAS OF INTEREST
We welcome applications from start-ups and scale-ups from around the world to help us bring new technologies to the following areas:
Travel Restart
The safety of our customers remains a top priority. That’s why over the past year, we’ve been working hard to develop a more contactless and digital travel experience. Some of the new services we’ve launched include contactless lounge entry, apps for testing and vaccination documentation and digital ordering in-lounge and in-flight.
We’re confident that a safe restart to travel can happen and we'd like to work with start-ups and scale-ups that are developing solutions in the following areas:
- New products and services, such as flight subscriptions and recurrent bookings
- Automatic document checks and validation
- Improved airport experience - queue-free, fast, digital, automated
- Further digitisation of services for a more seamless travel experience
- Scalable biometric solutions
- Inspiring travel content
- Disruptors in business and corporate travel
- In-flight technologies and experiences
- Real-time airport and travel information
- Dynamic destination maps with pricing
Connected operations
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on our operations and over the last year and a half, we’ve had to adapt quickly to ever changing circumstances. We believe that technology has a vital role to play in helping build flexibility and resilience in our operations.
We’re looking for new technologies that can help us improve performance, safety, efficiency or customer experience, in the following areas:
- Connecting all parts of flight operations in a single view
- Streamlining engineer to pilot technical support
- Virtual training for crew members
- Enterprise-grade automation solutions
- Solutions for off-site passenger handling
- Customer contact centre technologies
Sustainability
We’re committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 and have a clear roadmap with short, medium and long-term initiatives underway to achieve our goal. These include improving fuel efficiency with newer aircraft, best practice flight operations, investing in sustainable aviation fuel production and zero emissions aircraft, and offsetting our carbon emissions.
We'd like to work with innovators in the following areas:
- Innovative carbon removal (negative emissions) projects, including nature-based solutions and direct air capture
- Food waste and single use plastic reduction
- Innovative processes to manage and recycle waste
- Maximising customer and employee engagement on sustainability
- Network planning and route optimisation based on carbon
- Noise reduction
- Supply chain sustainability, including emissions and waste
- Integrating sustainability data into business decision making
Data & AI
Data informs the decisions we take at every level of the business and we’re continuing to invest in developing our data strategy and infrastructure to unlock the most value from this asset. From identifying new business opportunities to using data to streamline operations, we’re looking to explore new technologies within the data science and AI space.
We'd like to work with companies in areas such as:
- Predictive modelling to anticipate demand, understand passenger flows through the airport at a given time and how much luggage customers are likely to bring
- Monitoring and managing inventory redistribution
- Monitoring and supporting travel agency engagement and performance
- Identifying travel motivation/ intent to improve sales
- Offering the right flights and ancillaries based on the customer’s personal needs
- Identifying customers across channels
- Smart pricing and revenue optimisation
- Connected data solutions for cross-organisational planning and analysis
Future Energy
Whilst a global transition from fossil-based fuels to zero-carbon technologies is underway, there is widespread recognition that much more needs to be done, and at a faster pace, to bring down emissions. For aviation, this means changing the fuel we burn in our planes and the way we power all our supporting operations and infrastructure.
We would like to work with start-ups and scale-ups that are developing new technologies in these areas:
- Hydrogen-powered planes and ground vehicles, and their refuelling and supporting infrastructure
- Sustainable aviation fuels, including new carbon dioxide to jet fuel production pathways
- Electric/ zero emissions ground vehicles and their charging infrastructure
Enterprise Tech
We have a large-scale transformation programme underway across the finance, procurement, IT and digital services across our airlines and group operating companies. We’re looking for solutions that can help us drive efficiencies, automation, and economies of scale in an innovative and sustainable way.
We’d love to hear from start-ups and scale-ups developing solutions for:
- Website and mobile – live browsing personalisation, marketing solutions for a cookie-less world
- Procurement – supplier management tool, sourcing to contracting end to end solution, automated contract management, VAT checker and data deduplication tools that integrate with SAP
- Cybersecurity – zero trust environment, awareness and training, crisis communications management, bot threat detection
Distributed Teams
With the growth of hybrid working models across our Group, we'd like to hear from start-ups and scale-ups developing new tools and solutions ready to help teams connect and work together across geographies.
We're interested in:
- Solutions to help us create inclusivity and social interaction in a hybrid world
- Platforms to manage and share knowledge
- Employee wellbeing platforms
- Tools or platforms to measure employee satisfaction, work environment and productivity
- Enables for operating a bring your own device environment
- Solutions to enhance our employee experience, onboarding and candidate experience processes
WILDCARD
We want to transform the way people travel over the next twenty years. If you’re working on technology that has the potential to reshape travel and aviation, we’d love to hear from you.
Some of the areas our team are interested in exploring include:
- Autonomous flight
- Urban mobility
- Cargo drones
- Dark airport/ remote operations
Timeline
APPLICATIONS OPEN
We review applications on a rolling basis so encourage you to apply early.
APPLICATIONS CLOSE
We'll let you know by the end of September if you've been selected to pitch.
PITCH WEEK
Four pitching sessions will take place this week and it'll be your chance to present your company to IAG’s senior leaders and the teams you could be co-working with. The events will be virtual and you'll have 5 minutes to present and show how we could benefit from working together over the accelerator.
SELECTION WEEK
The final stage of our process is Selection Week where a shortlist of companies will meet with their potential sponsors and project leads to discuss the details of a possible proof of concept. They may also meet with our tech teams to scope out any integrations or support that may be required. At the end of this week, we will select the final list of companies to invite onto the accelerator programme.
ACCELERATOR BEGINS
Our 10-week, intensive collaboration begins! We will set out key objectives for the accelerator and you'll receive mentorship from a senior sponsor and support from experts across the business to help you towards these goals.
DEMO DAY
The accelerator wraps up with Demo Day, where you get to showcase what you've achieved with a short presentation to employees from across IAG and guests that include industry partners, investors and our innovation ecosystem partners.