s s T e ch nology

o n a l Awarene
Situat i
e O p e ra tions
in Airlin
PA P E R
WHITE Daniel.Ste
cher@ibsplc
.com

IBS Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

 White Paper - Situational Awareness Technology in Airline Operations

How airlines can prevent disruptions with a

proactive situational awareness
The Operations Control Center (OCC), although invisible to
passengers, manages several complex aspects of airline
operations, such as the expensive eet of modern and old
aircraft, large number of crew members, detailed maintenance
cycles, optimization of fuel burn, ATC communications, airport
slots and so much more. This is enabled by a complex Information
Technology (IT) system, which in many cases is so outdated that it
would greatly disappoint a customer who believes he/she is ying
with a 've star' airline.

Without modern IT systems to warn the OCC staff about difcult

weather, maintenance concerns, late or sick crew and other
issues, airlines run a high risk of frequent and often expensive
disruption in their services. For instance, a diversion to an
alternate airport (due to bad weather) can cost the airline around
between 15,000 and more than 100,000 according IATA and
that is excluding crew and airport staff costs*.

Fast decision making and cost-effective alternatives are essential

to minimize the impact of disruptions. Lately, the challenge is that
Fast decision making and
there is too much information coming in from various data cost-effective alternatives are
sources and news streams, to be digested and processed
manually by operations and crew controllers for decision making.
essential to minimize
In the absence of adequate technology infrastructure to support the impact of disruptions.
them, this leads to a lack of focus on the real issues.

Major daily challenges of an Operations Control Center (OCC)

1. Growth in trafc: Despite temporary dips, air trafc continues
to grow worldwide. Congestion in major hubs, key routes and ATC-
controlled airspaces is proving to be a real bottleneck for services.
Tight schedules result in total collapses stemming from the
slightest of disconnections in the chain.
2. Reduction of internal buffers: With a goal of reducing costs,
airlines have been squeezing their resources to maximize
efciency. The number of spare aircraft and crew members, as well
as buffer time between ights, have gone down drastically while all
machines are running at the maximum legally permissible limits.
3. Stress and human error: Every second the human brain gets
ten million bits of information from the outside world, of which it
can handle only fty bits under normal circumstances. (Source:
http://www.ftybits.com/) This means that 99.9995% of the
information is lost unused, and this is made worse when the
person is under stress and working under autopilot mode.
As a result, many of the alerts typically visible in a modern
operations IT system such as pax misconnects, critical weather
warnings at the arrival airport, technical defect alerts (such as APU
inop), pax ofoad, tight or missed crew connection, curfew
warnings, diversion alerts, ATC slots, critical airport slots, etc. are all
at risk of going unnoticed by a typical operations controller.
4. The illusion of control: In effect, each commercial aircraft is
own by three pilots - the captain, the rst ofcer and the
autopilot system aided by the various instruments in the cockpit.
This is part of complying with safety regulations. On the other
hand, a single eet of 50 aircraft may be handled by just one ops
controller, one crew controller and one dispatcher. The ground
staff are obviously stretched more than their colleagues up in the
air when it comes to brain capacity and attention spans. In fact,
one large European low cost carrier (LCC) has just two ops
controllers to watch and control more than 370 aircraft!
Psychologically, human beings tend to believe that they have
everything under control even if, in reality, they do not.

* Source: http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/workgroups/Documents/ACC-2014-GVA/occ-5-diversion.pdf

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 White Paper - Situational Awareness Technology in Airline Operations

How users are getting lost in information

Technology can be used to track and trace which parts of system screens these users are actually looking at, as well as the time lag between
the information being presented and the necessary action being initiated.

Many airlines insist on providing more and more information on their screens, and IT system providers tend to comply without questioning
the effectiveness. An extra alert here, several pop-ups there, ags and remarks and a check list here all the additional information layers do
not necessarily lead to a better understanding of the situation, because it's beyond what an actual user can take in and process in his/her
brain.

Cost impact of undisclosed OCC Root causes of undisclosed OCC

System inefciency system inefciency

Internal
underutilisation
System Errors
of system Internal
capabilities 28% underutilisation 31%
33% System Errors of system 42%
capabilities

27%
39%

Human Errors Human Errors

The above gures of an undisclosed OCC have been presented at an Future OCC event in Berlin Oct 2014 by Lufthansa Consulting.

Modern IT systems take a different

path. By displaying only the relevant
information, they reduce screen
complexity, thus enabling users to
understand the situation better and
take the most appropriate decision.
Users gain control again!

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 White Paper - Situational Awareness Technology in Airline Operations

Situational Awareness Windows

An airline operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a All ights with a critical crew duty time and where a standby
year, which means an ops controller has to be at his seat in front of crew would soon be required
his system round the clock, managing hundreds of ights and lots
of information, to keep everything running in order. It is far more All aircraft on ground (AOG) which cannot be used for a tail
efcient to focus the Airline Operations Managers' attention solely change (ACH or EQT) in a case of a next disruption
toward those parts of the airline organization where plans are not
All aircraft with a planned maintenance within a dened time
working out for some reason. Time and effort should not be
range (e.g. 4 to 12 hours) and also not available for disruption
wasted focusing on those parts of the organization where things
healing
are going smoothly.
All current events like DIV, RTR, FR or ETD which need
The "SAW - Situational Awareness Window" is a unique
monitoring
approach in airline OCC management which enables key people of
the airline OPS to devote time to situations that differ signicantly All ight with VIP or priority reasons
from planned results. Applying this to airline ops allows the
operations managers to spend most of their time concentrating on All ights to curfewed airports which need special attention at
potential disruptions and to only react when something the end of the shift
unexpected arises.
All ATC slots and to airports with CDM
Technically, this means that the system displays only those
All ights to airports with airport slots and grandfather rights
widgets that give relevant information. For example, some of these
involved
individual widgets as follows:
Airlines taking advantage of this new approach relieve the ops
All legs with heavy delays resulting in high compensation costs,
controller from the need to keep manual lists in Microsoft Excel.
perhaps close to one route
By understanding the real problems, he/she can work on the true
Flights which are affected by critical weather or an ATC strike in problems and take the right decisions.
one area, so as to enable a change of crews or to prepare for
diversion

Screen shot of Situational Awareness Window in iFlight NEO

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 White Paper - Situational Awareness Technology in Airline Operations

What airlines can learn from

Formula 1 racing teams?
It's still a miracle that all four wheels of a racing
car are changed within three seconds (Just
watch it during it every F1 race) in a pit stop. How
does it work? Well, it's the combination of well
trained personnel with a clear focus, optimized
processes and sophisticated tools.

Every pit stop is a choreography of a team

consisting of about 20 people. Each wheel is
attended to by three people - one takes out the
old wheel, one puts in the new one and the third
person manages the wheel-gun. Just like the ops
controller, the crew controller and the
dispatcher manage the airline operations
together, each person has a clear focus area!

There are two people ready with jacks to lift the

car and more guys on hand if a spoiler or
something else needs to be xed. All racing
teams have approximately the same number of
people on the pit stop crew. No team in the world
wishes to increase this number from 20 to 30*
in order to reduce the time spent at the pit stop.
Each member of the crew has a dedicated task
which he/she practices regularly and is trained
further as and when new, sophisticated tools are
developed.

*https://www.formula1.com/en/championship/inside-f1/understanding-f1-racing/Pit_stops.html

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 White Paper - Situational Awareness Technology in Airline Operations
Benets for Airlines with
Situational Awareness Technology
in Airline Operations
Airlines will have many benets while introuducing modern SAW
technology in Operations and Crew Control.
Minimizing complexity for human controllers
Faster understanding of operational facts and disruptions
Fewer errors and mishandling of information under stress
Quicker decision making when IROPS occurs
More quality time for decision alternatives
Time gain for other important tasks in OCC
Improved on-time-performance due to quicker decision
making
Improve and quicker passenger communication in IROPS
situations
Cost savings for delays, cancellations and diversions
Improving an on-time-performance of just one percent is resulting
in several millions USD annual savings (Source IATA: average delay
costs per airline is 223 mio USD/year).
Transformational IT Solutions for Travel, Transportation and Logistics
2017 | IBS Software Services | For Private Circulation only | For more information: sales-support@ibsplc.com
www.ibsplc.com
Technology support for complex
Airline Operations in the future
Airline operations controllers do not require a barrage of
information that could potentially distract them; instead, they
need to see a clear picture of those areas where their focus is
required. This includes the potential disruptions and not the entire
Gantt chart with all aircraft rotations. A Situational Awareness
Window does exactly this, proving that more information does not
always lead to better understanding. More people than the optimal
number in the pit stop crew will not make things easier. Similarly,
airlines should understand that while one more chart or an
additional popup is not going to make their job easier.
The next step is to discuss how technology can better support
airline operations. How can the IT system take over routine tasks
and repetitive parts of the daily job which do not need the
attention of the operations controller? This would provide more
time for the real tough decisions and the critical parts of the job,
such as the exceptions which need the focus of the operations
controller.
Situational Awareness is the game changer in airline operations in
the future!
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