Lufthansa invests in virtual and augmented reality

Lufthansa is investing more heavily in virtual and augmented reality. The company is thus emphasising the growing importance of the technology and also demonstrating how versatile it is.

"We started looking at virtual reality early on," says Dr Torsten Wingenter, Senior Director Digital Innovations at Lufthansa. We already launched VR Room in March reportsthat Lufthansa wants to use VR primarily for entertainment purposes. An app has been developed with the Lufthansa Customer Experience Team that allows a clear view of a 3D landscape while flying over it. Lufthansa also has an app in its programme that allows passengers to experience numerous destinations in 360°.

Lufthansa is now using the technology throughout the Group in various areas, including sales, pilot training, maintenance and in-flight entertainment. A film produced jointly with Samsung now shows three of the areas of application:

More upgrades through virtual reality

For some months now, Lufthansa has been selling upgrades at the gate using virtual reality. "For example, we show Economy passengers our Premium Economy Class. They can see how much more space they have with this offer," says Alexander Schlaubitz, Senior Vice President Marketing at Lufthansa.

Lufthansa uses over 300 VR glasses worldwide with a sales app from the agency 3spin and has been able to achieve an increase in upgrades of up to 50 per cent as part of gate promotions. "Thanks to virtual reality, we can also bring destinations to life in a completely different way and convey the emotionality of the journey in advance," says Schlaubitz.

Pilot training anytime and anywhere

Lufthansa Aviation Training has also been using Samsung Gear VR with an app from 3spin for a year now. "We have developed an interactive video that flight students can use to prepare for their first cross-country flights," says Janna Bents, Training Officer at Lufthansa. "Student pilots can virtually fly to their pre-planned landmarks and receive information." The new method enables flight students to familiarise themselves even better with the situation in advance, explains Bents.

Flying aeroplanes through exhibition halls

Lufthansa recently used a Microsoft HoloLens to present the new A350 at the ITB. "As we didn't have space on the stand to show an entire aircraft in an impressive way, we decided to simply have it fly through the exhibition hall as a hologram," explains Thomas Hoger from 3spin.

Source: Media release