Operations Overview: The Evolution of Airline Nerve Centres

Transcript

Zoran Savic:I'm Zoran Savic, and I'm responsible for CAE's flight operations platform solutions. I hope everybody here in the room has heard of CAE. For those who have not, a little bit of history. So we've just celebrated our 75th year anniversary in 2022. We've been the world leader in the design and manufacture of simulation equipment for decades. Um, then we've diversified into services by launching a global training network, and with this move, we really got into a position where we could offer our customers the most comprehensive package of both products and services. And most recently, we've entered the fast-growing market of the digital world in especially flight operations management and optimization. So now let's tap into the evolution of technology because I think everybody here in the room will agree that technology is a huge driver of change in the aviation industry. So let me walk you through a couple of examples. What you see here on the screen is the stock exchange in the 1950s, a trading floor full of people running around shouting numbers and exchanging hand signals with each other. And here is how the stock exchange looks today. Much tidier, less people, more technology, and probably with that, a better situational awareness overall. And in a very similar way, aircraft cockpits have also evolved from very simple control systems and instruments to a multitude of information, as you can see here on the screen, that required a lot of attention. And even an aircraft engineer in the cockpit to modern cockpit technologies as we know them today, right? So a much more simplified presentation of flight information. And technology has also left its mark on operations centers, both ATC and OCC. Business processes got automated. And even aided by artificial intelligence. So let's take a closer look into the evolution of airline nerve centers. Back in the days, airlines were operating in silos and they were operating on entirely manual processes. In the next step, many, if not most, of the manual repetitive tasks have been automated. And this took decades. Before then, artificial intelligence started to understand and respond in a way in which the context is understood. Of the input given, right? So this goes far beyond traditional rules and algorithms. But we still see airlines operating in silos, and we still see this guy from the previous slide who sits in front of sometimes 6 or 7 screens trying to gain situational awareness and understand what's the most important thing I have to tackle at this point in time. So what is it that we suggest as the next step? Are no experts needed anymore in an operations center? We think that quite the opposite will be the case. We will need highly capable experts in the OCC, but their role will change. They will probably more act like business managers, right? Not like in the traditional way today. And they will probably spend most of their time on disruptions and recoveries, where the rest will be fully automated. And what will be important is the combination of the airline expertise and experience with the right technology. This is what will drive the best results. But do you still see those experts or business managers sitting in front of 6 or 7 screens? How would you aid your people in the most meaningful way? And here is where I our Unified Task Board comes into play, an end-to-end decision support system that is built in a user-centric approach, enabling the user to gain situational awareness very quickly, to understand the cause of the disruption, and to review viable options that have been prepared, and then to execute the most optimal recovery that has been identified. But before I show you how the unified task board looks like, let's discuss what is required for such integrated disruption management solution to work. So number one is data. Everything starts and ends with data. Your decisions will only be as good as your insights, right? So having central data and alerts is key. Number 2 is integrated optimizers, or maybe even a ground solver who is taking parameters into account across your entire airline. So this really includes schedule, aircraft, crew recovery, but also understanding the impact on other areas like your airport staff, the flight plan, and probably most importantly, the passenger. Because at the end of the day, all of us want to deliver on the brand promise. And number 3 is coordinated execution, right, via improved and built-in communication tools so that you can connect the various stakeholders of an airline. But wait a minute, you will now say, I already get alerts from various systems today. I already receive individual recovery solutions. My people are already talking to each other. So what, what's the clue here? The clue is the integration across an array of products and areas of your airline. This is what makes you achieve end-to-end disruption management. To have alerts centralized in one view, one screen, to run integrated recovery solutions, and then to communicate and coordinate for the execution. So you can see the common theme across the 3 steps of the user-centric approach is the integration. And you will need to transform your business from being product-centric to being platform-centric to really achieve this end-to-end disruption management. Otherwise, we will be stuck with partial and incomplete solutions. We will be not able to really get this feedback loop, or maybe I should say understand the ramifications of the decisions taken. And you will still have your people sitting in front of lots of screens eyeballing, trying to understand what's important now. And this brings me to the Unified Task Board. This is a product that we are currently working on and that we will release only in a couple of months from today. And what the product does is very much aligned with CAE's core competencies. And you can compare it to how a pilot would act in the cockpit, right? It's the 3-step approach: gain situational awareness, you understand the situation, you identify any abnormal situations that need your action, and You start to evaluate your options, and then you execute in a coordinated fashion. And that's the same way how we built our software, how we built decision support systems. And let me walk you through this real quick, right? So you can see on the top layer how we are presenting alerts across the entire airline, right? And we put them on a timeline, and we even include predictive alerts, because at the end of the day, you want to be ahead of the curve. You want to be ahead of the aircraft, I should say, right? To be able to react and prepare. And you can naturally filter this down. You can look at specific time windows. You can filter this by airport or maybe an aircraft subtype, right? So you can always deep dive into the details. And you will see when are my operational peaks that need my attention. And then you go one level deeper into the second layer where you start resolving alerts, individual alerts, or maybe a package of alerts, right? So you are deep diving, getting a better understanding, and then reviewing the integrated recovery solutions that have been prepared by our optimizers. And how the optimizers should run and which results they should prepare is based on airlines' feedback and input, right? So is it the least delay option that you want to see? Is it the lowest cost option? That's all configurable in the system. And once you select the optimum solution that you want to accept and publish, the coordination starts with other stakeholders. And in our tool, we can do this in a built-in way. So we are using communication tools within the application so that the communication with other stakeholders happens with context, right? You don't need to start from scratch explaining the situation. Everybody sees the same view. It's a shared situational awareness, which is the baseline for the coordination and the execution of the most optimal recovery. So I'm perfectly out of time. I will end with saying if this product launch caught your attention, if you want to learn more, then please let me know, reach out, and let's continue the conversation. Thank you. Thanks for listening.

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