We have some nice news. Following an invitation from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Streamr will be travelling to Lapland, Finland on 29 November to participate in their upcoming hackathon. The event will focus on enhancing airline’s retailing capabilities, and the Streamr platform will serve as the event’s sole blockchain solution provider.

Who are IATA?

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is the trade association for the world’s airlines, representing some 290 airlines or 82% of total air traffic. They support many areas of aviation activity and help formulate industry policy on critical aviation issues.

Last year, IATA Financial Settlement Systems (IFSS) processed some $433.3 billion.

IATA members’ total freight (scheduled) — 54 million tonnes in 2017

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What’s the hack about?

During the AIR Hackathon, participants will be asked to build solutions to enhance airline’s retailing capabilities: air travel, airline distribution, air cargo and more.

There will be two main tracks, one related to IATA’s NDC (New Distribution Model) API and the other will be about blockchain. Below are few potential use cases outlined by the organizers that can be addressed with the use of blockchain technology.

Mitigate issues of overbooking by writing assigned seats to a public blockchain.

Write Order confirmations into smart contracts and execute any breach-of-contract conditions automatically (e.g. refunds due to flight cancellation).

Persist the maintenance lifecycle of aircraft parts onto a blockchain to facilitate data sharing and increase transparency.

In case of overbooking, provide an auction (blind auction?) mechanism to provide an incentive to passengers to get compensation and change their flight.

Create a flight-specific marketplace for exchangeable assets, e.g. storage space.

Bring the concept of blockchain games (e.g. CryptoKitties) to the airline world.

Streamr’s involvement

Streamr will be the main and only blockchain solution provider at the IATA hackathon. Our platform is a great fit for this industry because it can handle large volumes of realtime data. At the same time it offers the capability to interact with Ethereum smart contracts via event triggers in a seamless way.

On 27 November, we will be hosting a live webinar for hackathon attendees and airline members, to introduce Streamr’s platform and API usage. During the hackathon itself, 29 November - December 2, we will have developers on-site running a workshop and proving mentoring to all participants. Our Head of Partnerships, Ben Sheppard, will be also attend the event to discuss potential pilots and collaborations.