Aircraft Turnaround Control refers to the management and coordination of all activities required to prepare an aircraft for its next flight after it has landed. This process includes a series of tasks that need to be performed in a specific sequence and with precision time scheduling (PTS) to ensure the aircraft is ready for departure. The goal of aircraft turnaround is to minimize ground time, optimize efficiency, and ensure safety for both the passengers and crew. Our AutoATOps is a non-invasive AI-driven solution that automates the aircraft turnaround control operations at an airport.
The airline sector is one of the industries where delays or hold-ups go unforgiven. If an aircraft turnaround is late, it can lead to a ripple effect of delays across the airline's schedule, causing subsequent flights to be delayed and impacting passenger convenience. This can potentially result in missed connections, all while incurring costs for the airline due to the disruption of its operational flow. Most of the existing airports employ turnaround control operations that rely heavily on manual labor, where the employees performing ground operations themselves are tasked with logging events into the system using handheld devices. Occasionally, the inefficiencies or miscoordinations in these ground operations can lead to delayed registration of events in the system, which eventually results in delayed flights. In an industry where each dollar saved in operations matters due to the compounded effects of the sector's scale, these inefficiencies can have a significant impact.
The biggest challenge in the sector is that the integration landscape is complex, as the operational processes and tools vary across airports. Similarly, the way data is shared between the airline and the airport will vary. The handling agents for ground operations may vary over time if ground operations are outsourced to a third party. All these factors contribute to the challenges in orchestrating the automated logging of turnaround operations. Moreover, the biggest challenge is seamlessly integrating the software into the existing system without the need for strategically placed invasive hardware, such as cameras, ultrasonic sensors, or other special-purpose devices. The solution should also be able to integrate with the existing software applications used by the ground crew and the airline, without the need for a significant technical overhaul.
AutoATOps is an AI-powered solution that optimizes aircraft turnaround operations by generating software triggers for turnaround events in real-time. The system uses live feeds from the existing surveillance cameras that cover the Gate/boarding area and the Apron area. Using advanced computer vision algorithms, the system analyzes the visuals from each camera and flags different turnaround events in real-time. The system keeps track of various objects in the vicinity of the airplane, such as aerobridges, fuel trucks, baggage trucks, and belt loaders, for advanced situational awareness, which in turn drives AI-powered decision-making. The system does not burden the clients with complex hardware or infrastructure since it uses the feed from existing cameras and requires no additional electronic sensor mechanisms. For enhanced security, the system can also be hosted on a dedicated on-premise server to meet even the highest security compliance standards.
1. Aircraft parking
2.Aerobridge connection/disconnection
3. Cargo door open/close
4. Cargo onloading start/stop
5. Cargo offloading start/stop
6. Catering loading start/stop
