LEADERSHIP
48 disruption . “ From a government perspective , they ’ ll get advanced information about that passenger ,” O ’ Sullivan says . “ They kind of do already , but right now it still has to go through an airline processing system whereas this shifts responsibility over to the passenger . This means the governments get the data they want , and they can verify that it ’ s come directly from another government , and they get it sooner than they currently would .”
For O ’ Sullivan , however , this does not represent the biggest opportunity that blockchain offers . Data noise causes issues in every sector : for every piece of information , a variant will exist for each relevant stakeholder . Maintaining truth across each of these copies is extremely difficult , O ’ Sullivan says , but with blockchain serving as a single source of truth the issue is eliminated . “ This is an incredibly collaborative industry . Flights take off from one airport , go to another , you ’ re dealing with immigration , cargo , ground handlers , and everybody ’ s got to work together . At the moment , there are too many points of friction .” The impact caused by the inefficient communication of the truth manifests as delays for passengers and increased , unnecessary costs for airlines . By providing stakeholders with verifiable , trustworthy information that has the promise of universality , airport and airline operations could be made considerably more efficient , mitigating
DECEMBER 2018