The pandemic continues to wreak havoc to airlines’ flight schedules, disrupting not only passengers but also the life of airline crew and their families as work schedules are torn apart and revised at short notice. Many airlines struggle to keep up with quickly shifting travel restrictions and to incorporate robust mechanisms for dealing with the unparalleled amount of changes, in what was already a complex crew scheduling process. How do airlines ensure they're not only complying with new requirements, but also doing so efficiently and quickly? We tracked down our Portfolio Technology Strategist, Tomas Gustafsson - a man with extensive experience dealing with crew-related changes across different types of operations, and asked him to reflect a little:
Tomas, to begin with, can you give us three common examples of new requirements or needs that have surfaced as an effect of the pandemic?
-Sure! What is most evident is just the incredible volume of changes that airlines are coping with, and under extreme time pressure. Being able to re-plan quickly and also easily change and implement new rules in general is critical. The pandemic has again reinforced that having the capability of changing business rules without requiring a new system installation is extremely valuable.
Looking at some more concrete examples, we can start with the need of controlling how groups of crew work together over time. The spread of the virus within the crew community can be somewhat suppressed by making each crew member interact with as few other as possible. This is not a completely new concept, but has previously been applied from a service or operational robustness perspective, by forming teams or sub-groups of crew. This ’teaming’ aspect affects all steps of the planning process; construction of pairings, rosters and also maintenance and tracking thereafter.
A second example is entry and quarantine requirements that need to be dealt with. Crew that has been to a set of countries may not be allowed to enter another set of countries unless a certain time has passed in between. These restrictions have been shifting quickly and also affect all steps of the planning process. It may, for example, be needed for rosterability purposes, to minimize the number of pairings touching certain regions or stations.
Thirdly, there are requirements around the vaccination status of crew and where they can fly. It may include the type of vaccine, number of shots or the date of the last jab taken. This affects crew rostering and the steps that follow.
What is making compliance so challenging?
- Well... crewing processes are often several weeks long and assume that constraints and the flight schedules remain fairly stable during that time. In the 'new normal' this is less and less true; flights open up and close down at much shorter notice. This leads to a greater need for a shorter planning process, meaning automation is key. There’s not enough time to manually re-plan or evaluate 'what-if' scenarios. Unfortunately it also means a shorter ’planning horizon’ for crew and more changes to the rosters at short notice.
A challenge here is regarding the airlines ability to use the automation as the business logic in terms of rules, constraints and solution objectives must be current and correct. With so many aspects changing quickly this is not always the case, meaning operators fall back on manual changes – creating a far from optimal solution with more severe consequences, not to mention the extreme workload this means for the planners themselves.
What is Boeing doing in this area to assist?
- Early on in the pandemic we launched an initiative named HALO, which provides the operators with a few easily-configurable packages for dealing with these new pandemic-related constraints and needs, integrated with their existing crewing process. We are also fortunate in that our solutions, since some thirty years back, are built with a clear separation between problem description and solution methodology. It helps operators to re-configure the solutions quickly and maintain a holistic view of their planning problem with full 'what-if' capability. These architectural decisions that we made decades ago are now really proving their worth. Last spring we also released HALO2, further extending the toolbox for our customers.
Given the volatile situation right now, is it even worth planning ahead?
- I think it is the other way around - it is more important now than ever. When there are a lot of changes you need to be able to control the impact. Having good automation, which can be updated quickly, is critical for evaluating multiple options to find a robust and efficient path forward. As much as 5-20% difference on the overall outcome is at stake, comparing manual and optimized solutions, not to mention the effect of choosing the wrong overall strategy in terms of passenger impact. The old saying is just as true today: if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Thank you Tomas. --- If you are a crew solution customer of Boeing, using Jeppesen Crew Pairing or Rostering, and are interested in knowing more about HALO 2, please contact your dedicated service manager. Read more about the power of RAVE here, and also in this customer story.
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