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cphmedard
Associate
Associate

In the first blog [The Challenge of Airline Air Day of Operations Recovery (Part 1 of 2) ], I discussed the challenges airline companies face when there are disruptions to service and how operations research running on the SAP HANA database can resolve these issues. This blog examines the process involved in rescheduling passengers and crew compliantly when disruptions occur.


Sophisticated and specialized technology at work

As discussed in the previous blog (The Challenge of Airline Air Day of Operations Recovery (Part 1 of 2) ), responding to airline service disruptions can be complicated. However, using the SAP HANA database, a sophisticated data model, complex algorithms, and optimization, SAP data scientists have solved this issue – and today, you’ll see how.

With the power of SAP HANA, a centralized data hub integrates real-time operational and planning data, all business and governance rules, and extensive volumes of data on aircraft, crew, and passengers. With a single source of truth, the data is then modeled and optimized.

The result is an enumeration of new legal and compliant potential schedules for aircraft, crew, and passengers that is executed within minutes rather than hours.

Passengers are easily rescheduled – within seconds

When service disruptions occur, airline companies want to accommodate stranded passengers as quickly as possible. And since there are few legal rules governing the rescheduling of passengers, this part is relatively easy. In fact, there is a four-step process that this functionality automates for new passenger schedules:


With new schedules available in seconds, or minutes, help desks no longer have to search for option after option, so queue times virtually eliminated and passengers can get to their destinations much quicker.

The complexity of rescheduling crews resolved within seconds too

The process of rescheduling crews – which, of course, are mandatory for any flight – is much more complicated. There are many more regulatory, union, and structural rules to take into consideration, such as:

  • Working-time limitations for crew
  • Rest-time requirements between working periods, especially related to fatigue management
  • Licenses of pilots for certain types of aircrafts or landing at certain airports
  • Seniority rules for pilots on certain flights

Hence, the rules processing part of this functionality, which is an integral part of the decision making systems for the airlines, is much more complex. There is extensive pairing and rostering options that must be optimized to accommodate all of the rules for the crew and scheduled aircraft flights.


It’s easy with SAP HANA

With the power of SAP HANA, data models, algorithms, and optimization, thousands of data points on flight updates for crews are processed every second to enumerate potential schedules. A disruption manager within the software identifies any illegal routes, and then algorithms generate other legal options.

Once the ideal scenarios – that match FAA rules and are fully compliant – have been identified, then crew can immediately be notified on mobile phones, creating many less cancelations.  And all of this occurs in near real time.

The process looks something like this:


To see the full power of this solution, you can view a demonstration of this in the video:


As you can see, this functionality offers a much faster solution to airlines, with quicker response to disruptions, a more optimal recovery process, and improved customer satisfaction.

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