Transforming The Paperless Cockpit Into The Connected Aircraft

ASCEND I SOLUTIONS
Triggers — The integrated rules engine
within the data integration platform enables
Promotion Manager to provide real-time
alerts and interval-based reporting, notifying
end users that predefined conditions (such
as booking volume or when revenue is
above 10 percent of targets) have been met.
This real-time notification enables analysts
and managers to take action during the promotion to correct and optimize outcomes.
Freedom from source systems — The creation of Promotion Manager on top of the
data integration platform frees the solution
from being coupled to any other specific
airline systems.
What’s next for Promotion Manager:
Closing the revenue management loop —
The data integration platform enables integration with revenue management, providing a complete promotion-management
solution. With a focus on integrating valuable data across an airline, the natural next
step is to supply the promotional data into
the revenue management system so past
promotion activity can be incorporated to
refine elasticity models and optimize promotion parameters.
Suggesting promotions — Once the integration with the revenue management system
is in place, it will be a natural next step to
incorporate the forecast data. This enables
an airline to automate the business logic
behind identifying when to issue promotions
to stimulate demand and which promotions
to issue to achieve the desired result.
Closing the fares management loop — The
data integration platform will also enable
integration with fares management systems, allowing fares to be tagged for tracking at the time of creation rather than setting
it up manually in Promotion Manager. This
gives pricing analysts the ability to assess
the effect of the promotion in terms of bookings against the targeted fares. This information will also be incorporated into the decision making for the promotion parameters.
Some outcomes could be the retraction or
extension of a promotion or the decision to
increase or reduce the number of markets
for which it is offered.
By providing consolidated and granular
access to the data behind promotions in real
time, Promotion Manager enables an airline to
analyze and calibrate promotions while there is
still time to make changes. Promotion Manager
automates business processes, freeing analysts and managers to make the decisions that
will increase profitability. a
The Right Time To Promote Whether trying to fill seats on low-demand flights or vigorously pursuing
market share, promotions help airlines increase profitability. However, determining the best times to
issue a promotion can be a complex process, and airline analysts need systems that will automatically
alert them when the time to launch a promotion is ideal.
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Pramod Jain and Hari Subramanian
are solution directors for Sabre Airline
Solutions. They can be contacted at
pramod.jain@sabre.com and hari.
subramanian@sabre.com.
Transforming The
Paperless Cockpit
Into The Connected
Aircraft
By Amanda McLain, Andrew Eastaugh
and Dana Knight I Ascend Contributors
A new, integrated, end-to-end electronic flight bag (EFB) solution enables
airlines and their cockpit crew to leverage EFBs without the need for multiple,
disparate software that works in isolation. The solution automatically presents all
required data and resources to cockpit crewmembers for a successful take off and
flight completion, all from a single interface.
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More recently, a roadblock has emerged
that most within the industry did not foresee. All of these unique components built
by different providers fail to communicate
essential information among one another,
such as the operational flight plan for a
particular flight, the crew operating the
flight and the deferred maintenance items
for the aircraft. The lack of interconnectivity between EFB components is a strong
reminder that the implementation of a
complete EFB solution has yet to be fully
realized.
“The embrace and deployment of Class 2
EFB technology in the commercial aviation
market has increased exponentially with
the introduction of tablet devices,” said
Ken Crowhurst, Americas director of sales
for navAero, an innovative organization
focused on developing and commercializing
hardware technology solutions for business
and commercial aviation. “Today, we’re
seeing a significant number of airlines
that are trying to implement programs
consisting of multiple vendor contracts for
non-integrated, specialized solutions. This
creates significant complexities and challenges in trying to make all the pieces work
together as a harmonious and integrated
solution. As such, it’s not surprising that
the marketplace is moving toward an aggregated and comprehensive single-vendor
solution. By doing so, operators are able to
realize significant reductions in the time and
effort required to bring a truly integrated
program to fruition.”
Standing alone, these different components provide extremely useful functionality
for specific portions of flight operations, but
they are often nothing more than individual
pieces of a much larger puzzle. Airlines
have quickly realized that not all EFB providers own or can deliver an entire solution,
resulting in complex, often costly and,
sometimes, impossible integration attempts
to arrive at a desired state.
So how can EFB live up to its full potential and deliver fully interactive, integrated
flight operations from the aircraft cockpit?
Airlines have invested millions of dollars
in EFB components, only to struggle with
how to make the disparate pieces work
together. The EFB solution marketplace
has become so fragmented that decision
makers are losing sight of which solutions
support their airline’s vision and which do
not.
Imagine, as an airline executive, you are
shown a software solution that compares
updated fuel burn versus projected burn
during flight. Another provider specializes
in converting hard-copy manuals to digital
versions for use on EFB devices, and others offer individual products for real-time
weather feeds, flight-log information, route
maps and more. However effective these
individual products may be, most do not
integrate out-of-the-box, driving down
efficiency in flight operations and often
increasing both complexity and projected
costs.
Consider the following common scenario
for an EFB comprising multiple independent
applications.
A flight crew needs current manuals
onboard the aircraft, and the airline has an
application from a content management
provider to view them. The application contains all of the airline’s flight manuals, and
the crew has to manually search for those
relevant to their flight. The flight operations
team also wants to push operational notices
to the crew and verify they have been read.
To achieve this, a second application is
required to run while the document viewer
is minimized.
In addition to these two applications,
another tool is required for the crew to read
weather information, which necessitates
further manual input to find the desired
content. Once again, the other applications
must be minimized while the weather information is viewed.
Finally, the crew needs access to weightand-balance and performance applications,
for which they manually enter information
to perform the required calculations prior
to takeoff.
In this scenario, the flight crew has to
juggle multiple independent applications
and perform many manual selections and
inputs to complete its tasks, which increases the risk of planning errors.
Now, consider the following alternative
scenario utilizing an integrated EFB solution.
The flight crew has a single EFB interface with integrated applications that
share and populate the data between
them. Information is extracted from the
calculated flight plan, and the required data
is pre-populated into the performance and
weight-and-balance systems.
When the flight crew receives its briefing,
crewmembers are automatically presented
with weather data and charts based on the
actual route they are scheduled to fly. They
also have all of the appropriate company
notices and can confirm when they have
been viewed. A record of this exchange is
then programmatically saved for company
reference.
The documentation presented on the
EFB device has been pre-filtered for the
specific flight the crew is operating. In
this scenario, the flight crew automatically receives via a single interface all the
required data and resources necessary to
take off and complete the flight. This simple
example demonstrates how an integrated
EFB solution not only streamlines flight
planning and reduces operations complexity, but it also provides consistent shared
content that significantly minimizes the risk
of potentially hazardous errors.
To combat the problem of fragmentation
within the EFB market, airlines are seeking
a more integrated tool that aggregates the
core parts and processes of an EFB into a
single end-to-end solution. Focusing attention on an established, qualified vendor
simplifies the buying process for airline
executives, saving them valuable time and
Photos: Shutterstock
D
uring the past decade, innovative advancements in aviation
tools for the aircraft cockpit
have been numerous. The
electronic flight bag is one
such technological advancement, promising
to transform the cockpit into a digitally connected hub of information. However, the
original intended use for EFB was definitely
not as glamorous as today’s vision.
When initially conceptualized, the EFB
was positioned as a replacement solution
for the pilot’s heavy flight bag, always
filled to the brim with manuals, charts and
flight logs. Its objective was to bring about
the “paperless cockpit.” With technology
advancing at such a rapid pace in a world
growing more interconnected every day,
it is only natural that the proposed use for
EFB should progress as well.
The device that airlines thought would
lighten the pilot’s load has evolved into
much more than merely a display unit for
soft copies of content. EFB has the power
to drive more-efficient flight operations
through the interconnection and sharing of
data.
Today, the EFB is tasked with delivering
increasingly complex capabilities such as
real-time weather, maintenance reporting,
weight calculations and the operational
flight plan, all of which are essential for
flight operation. Now, this opportunity is
expanding beyond these essential elements
to deliver tools that drive improvements
across a broader range of flight operations
for the crew, passengers and, most importantly, the corporate bottom line.
The new vision for EFB is to transform
the “paperless cockpit” into a “connected
aircraft,” one that encompasses a wider
scope including crew schedule management, passenger administration, connection
to airport ground services and interactive
flight planning, all from the confines of the
cockpit during flight.
Each aircraft within an airline’s fleet is a
unique, data-rich pool of information that
can prove instrumental in the development of more-efficient flight and business
operations. Unfortunately, the majority of
this potentially valuable data is currently
untapped.
The market opportunity for broader
applications of EFB is so appealing that
numerous solutions providers have thrown
their expertise and resources into developing specialized tools for use on EFB
devices. Airlines mirrored this excitement
and began purchasing as many EFB components as they could afford. A prime example
is the mass acquisition of thousands of
Apple iPads by some airlines, which then
struggled to find compatible software to
load onto the device.
ASCEND I SOLUTIONS
New, Integrated EFB Solution Airlines and their cockpit crewmembers now have access to an
innovative, integrated, comprehensive electronic flight bag solution that doesn’t require multiple,
disparate software that works in isolation. The solution automatically delivers all required data and
resources to cockpit crews for a successful take off and flight completion.
Single EFB Interface Using a single, fully integrated EFB solution, crewmembers automatically receive
weather data and charts for the actual course they are scheduled to fly along with all appropriate
company notices and data vital for a safe, efficient flight.
minimizing capital leakage through investment in disparate EFB components that
were never designed to integrate.
Sabre Airline Solutions has been participating in recent EFB market developments
and has introduced an end-to-end EFB
solution called Sabre® AirCentre TM eFlight
Manager (eFlight Manager).
eFlight Manager helps airlines reduce
costs and increase operational efficiency
while delivering functionality beyond the
traditional “paperless cockpit.” In addition
to the software capabilities, Sabre Airline
Solutions has established strategic partnerships with leading industry providers that
specialize in cockpit hardware, EFB tablet
device connectivity and other areas to fully
complete the solution.
eFlight Manager is modular by design,
giving airlines the ability to configure an
EFB solution to meet their current needs
with the capacity to add functionality as
their requirements grow. A major part of the
unique value offered by eFlight Manager is
the close integration with other applications
across the Sabre ® AirCentre ™ Enterprise
Operations suite.
The initial release of eFlight Manager
will be integrated with Sabre® AirCentre™
Flight Plan Manager, enabling airlines to
receive operational flight plans and Sabre®
AirCentre™ Flight Explorer, which provides
graphical weather displays. Subsequent
releases will further enhance the integration
with the rest of the Sabre AirCentre suite
and expand the functionality beyond the
cockpit and into the cabin.
Through the current features of eFlight
Manager and those planned for future delivery, a truly connected airline is becoming a
reality. a
®
Andrew Eastaugh and Dana Knight
are solutions directors for Sabre
Airline Solutions. They can be
contacted at andrew.eastaugh@sabre.
com and dana.knight@sabre.com.
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