The saga of Brussels Airlines flight SN 2908 continues
On 17/08/2010, in CDM, by steve
Our regular readers will remember that back in June I wrote a post about how the passengers and, apparently Vienna airport itself, was left in the dark about the comings and goings of SN 2908… Passengers were being boarded into the holding area when it was revealed that the flight would be an hour and a half late. You can read that story here.
One of my advance bookings is for the same flight in September and earlier this month Brussels Airlines sent a very nifty email informing me that the flight has been rescheduled and would now leave Vienna at 21.10 instead of the original 20.35. Since the flight was late most of the time anyway, this is nothing more than recognition of a fact of life but is a good move nevertheless. It will save a lot of frustration and aggravation, not to mention the improvement to SN’s on-time performance.
I did not get any reaction from Brussels Airlines to my original post and I would hate to appear pretentious by claiming that this rescheduling has anything to do with the article. It is probably just a coincidence… but a good one!
Surprise in Vienna – When the system really fails
On 21/06/2010, in CDM, by steve
Brussels Airlines flight SN2908 is the evening counterpart of SN2901, the red-eye Brussels-Vienna flight that takes you to that magnificent city in time for a meeting that can start as early as 10.00 and conclude as late as 18.00 since SN2908 will bring you home comfortably. The only trouble with SN2908 is that it is apparently late in nine cases out of ten… No doubt this is a flight at the end of the series of rotations assigned to the 737 performing it and ATC delays and a bit of bad weather can all conspire to make an on time run a mission impossible. I have spent quite some time and euros at the Starbucks outlet conveniently located near the gate usually assigned to 2908 waiting for her to put in an appearance.
But in all cases, we knew about the delay right on arrival at the airport and could plan our extra sojourn accordingly. But not on this Friday, 18 June when we were dished up something completely new, shaking my trust in the information management savvy of our industry.
In case you are not familiar with Vienna airport, in the terminal used by Brussels Airlines the gates have a kind of holding area which you enter through a security check done at the entrance. Each gate has its own screening equipment. The gate and the security check point is normally manned about one hour before the published boarding time.
The boarding time for SN2908 was 20.05 and so a little over 19.00 processing of passengers into the holding area began as usual. One would assume that all this activity is started on the basis of the news that the aircraft is in the air and will be landing more or less on time.
As I don’t like queues, I was one of the first through security and then planted myself near the air-bridge doors ready to walk when the sign was given. I like to have a place for my flight case in the overhead bins…
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When airline, airport and passenger interests collide and cause delays
On 04/06/2010, in CDM, by steve
No matter how much I travel and no matter how bad the airport travel experience is getting as a result of increased security, I still like airports and the walk from the taxi rank to the gate. Negotiating the various artificial obstacles erected to keep the bad guys out, I always bless the inventors of internet check-in as the little A4 sheet in my pocket allows me to bypass the check-in counters and even the self-check-in kiosks. Not to mention the airline ladies with steely eyes who always insisted in the past that my flight case be weighed. As it was always above the misery 6 kilos allowed by our favorite local airline, I had to resort to all kinds of tricks to make the bag loose weight (until I walked away from the check-in counter that is). This problem is now gone with internet check in but I keep wondering: if I went to the counter, would she again be difficult about the extra 2 kilos of gear, knowing full well that if I used their internet check-in facility, nobody would care about the bag (very few airlines actually weigh stuff at the gate unless it really looks huge or heavy or both). But I diverge…
Having gone through security, the airport with its concourses and shops and gates is suddenly open for me and I feel like a bird let out of its cage. Of course the feeling is false, just like the freedom of the bird that passes from the cage into the living room. So, I am free to do anything I like except that the airport, by design, arrangement and enforced routing tries to influence me to pass by the shops, the cafés and other places happy to exchange my euros for things I have absolutely no need for and the price of which is way above what the same stuff usually costs even on the high street, let alone an internet store.
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TITAN stakeholder workshop – 17 March 2010
On 31/05/2010, in CDM, by steve
TITAN is an EC 7th Framework project and the acronym stands for “Turnaround Integration in Trajectory and Network”. As its name suggests, TITAN is looking at ways of optimizing the turnaround process while integrating it in trajectory based, net-centric operations.
The Workshop held in Brussels on 17 March 2010 had two objectives: on the one hand it presented the project to the community and on the other it collected stakeholders’ needs and requirements in the context of the turnaround process. All the actors (airspace users, airports, ANSPs and handling companies) who would be affected by the new TITAN concept had been invited to attend the workshop and the turn-out was very good. It was therefore possible to capture their daily concerns, needs and proposals in a representative manner.
The format chosen for the workshop was that of focused brainstorming with selected facilitators making sure that the time and scope objectives were observed. As it turned out, the format was very successful and participants contributed actively in the general sessions as well as in the group sessions.
The introductory session
Work started with an introduction of the project followed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking giving an overview of their main activities in the context of turnaround and the input they expected from TITAN to fill the gaps identified in the relevant parts of the SESAR work packages.
Next, an analysis of the current situation was presented, highlighting the potential bottlenecks. An initial turnaround model was also sketched to seed and start the discussions.
Click here to read the full article
First TITAN Workshop – Brussels 17 March 2010
On 07/04/2010, in CDM, by steve
TITAN, the EC 7th Framework project focusing on optimizing the turnaround process, held its first Workshop on 17 March. The purpose of the Workshop was to collect information on the turnaround as it is to-day, make an inventory of the problems and develop initial thoughts about possible solutions.
There was a good turnout, with airlines, airports, handling companies and ATC all represented. EUROCONTROL was there and the SESAR Joint Undertaking was also represented on the expert level.
The workshop was run very effectively using a formula that kept everyone busy and eager to contribute to the discussion.
The new TITAN brochure, seen already the week before at ATC Global in Amsterdam, was also available to participants of the Workshop to take with them and spread the news about TITAN.
We will be bringing you a more detailed account of the Workshop once the results have been analyzed and the conclusions formulated. Watch this space!
SWIM – How much information should we be sharing?
I would like to propose a simple rule: anybody asking how much information we should be sharing in air traffic management should have their Christmas bonus cancelled… Here is why.
System Wide Information Management (SWIM) is the concept and set of rules, procedures and other needed elements that underpin the net-centric approach of the new air traffic management environment being built by SESAR in Europe and NextGen in the USA.
In a nutshell, the SWIM concept stipulates that the traditional and cumbersome point to point connections be replaced by a solution where those with data to share (i.e. data useful to the ATM community) publish the fact that they have this data (as well as any updates to it of course) and those who need that data simply go search for it or subscribe to it to avoid having to search. This arrangement assumes a kind of directory service not unlike that used on the internet and which helps you find your favorite movie title as it were. Don’t be offended by the comparison, in the world of networking, a movie title or a flight plan are not that different, they are both data. The difference is how we protect and handle the data but that is another story.
You will have noticed the fundamental difference between to-day’s approach to data dissemination and the one being proposed by SWIM.
Click here to read the full article
Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) – History and current practice
On 09/02/2010, in CDM, by steve
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
The concept of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) was originally defined in the United States by a group of airlines, led by US Air, in response to what the airlines perceived as inadequate co-operation between airports, the FAA and the airlines themselves. They formed the so called CDM Group, members of which visited several airports with traffic flow problems and analysed the reasons.
Significantly, they discovered that in many cases the reasons were in fact quite trivial. In one case, a missing telephone connection between the FAA tower and the Delta ramp controller was found to be at the root of major departure delays; in another case the “secret” nature of cancelled flights was found to be the cause of unused slots at an otherwise seriously congested airport.
The CDM Group in its original reports had actually established three of the most basic rules of CDM which remain valid to this day even if, unfortunately, in some cases they are being ignored. The three rules are:
• Most problems have simple causes with simple solutions
• Better information sharing eliminates a very large proportion of the problems
• CDM can only be successful if trust is established between the partners as the first step
Although the CDM Group did at first address problems at airports (Atlanta and Philadelphia) when the FAA embraced the concept, they focused on applying it in the en-route environment. This was a natural consequence of the US scene where capacity constraints were present en-route while airports were almost all free flow at the time. Nevertheless, US airports got involved in CDM early as a result of the FAA’s ground-delay concept. The value of information sharing was shown right from the start. Just by being better informed, airlines were able to respond to the restrictions in a much more efficient manner. The initiative in the early 1990s called FAA/Airline Data Exchange (FADE), supported among others by Northwest Airlines, can be seen as the direct forerunner of what evolved into the US CDM project of to-day.
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TITAN Kicks into high gear
On 08/12/2009, in CDM, by steve
After several months of careful preparation, TITAN, a project in the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme, kicked
into high gear on 3 December 2009 when the TITAN Consortium held the kick-off meeting at INECO’s premises in Madrid.
The name TITAN stands for “Turn-round Integration in Trajectory and Network”. The project will analyze the aircraft turn-round process with a view to identifying opportunities for improvements as well as to pinpoint the influence of external actors and processes like passenger flow and baggage handling. The improved turn-round process will be modeled and validated and a decision support tool will be developed suitable for use by different partners, enabling them to manage the turn-round process more efficiently. This will be achieved primarily by providing predictive, common awareness of all the relevant influences, including those coming from the airport land-side.
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BluePower CDM Toolbox– The perfect tool for airport Collaborative Decision Making
On 31/10/2009, in CDM, by steve
Originally Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) was a simple concept indeed. Realizing that a lot of problems in air traffic management came from the simple fact that many of the partners simply did not talk to each other, it was easy to reach the conclusion: make them work together, stop decisions being made in isolation, improve decisions by making them the result of a collaborative endeavor.
It was not easy at first and people invented all kinds of reasons for not doing it… most of the reasons given were simply not valid. We will be bringing you a short history of CDM later and you will see why I am saying this. To a large extent thanks to a small group of enthusiasts (the famous original CDM group in the US), more and more airlines and airports realized that working together was far more beneficial than hiding behind ill-defined concepts of commercial sensitivities.
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New directions for Airport Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) – a detailed example
On 13/10/2009, in CDM, by steve
If you have read my article on the New Directions for Airport Collaborative Decision Making (CDM), you will be interested in this narrative description of the envisaged working of the expanded CDM concept. I do strongly recommend that you read the New Directions article first!
The example used is that of a departing flight. It is not a formal use-case as such and it focuses on the most important new features only. The scenario does not aim to be all-encompassing but sufficient detail is provided to enable readers to get a better understanding of the novel applications of CDM. A number of new services are mentioned in this scenario which are in addition to those mentioned in the original article. Their role is self explanatory but if you have any question, please write a comment and I will explain things in more detail.
Click here to read the full article
New directions for Airport Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)
On 07/10/2009, in CDM, by steve
What exactly is CDM?
Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is not a new concept. It is being practiced to a certain degree both in the US and in Europe, focus being on en-route in the former and airports in the latter. Mature as the concept may be, surprisingly we still see experts who seem to believe that CDM is little more than a few wise men sitting together and deciding things for the benefit of the community… Little wonder that they see a role for CDM that is strictly limited to the strategic planning phases. They seem to hang on to this view even in the face of actual CDM implementations at some airports (e.g. Munich) which are anything but limited to the strategic phase. So, what is CDM?
The concept of CDM is very simple. Decisions on all levels must be made not in isolation but based on a shared, common view of the state of the ATM network with full awareness of the consequences of the decisions on every aspect of the operation. Collaborative in this context does not necessarily imply people sitting together or working together remotely. A single person can also make a collaborative decision if the decision is based on the shared information provided by the partners and if it takes into account the impact of the decision on those partners and the ATM network as a whole.
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