Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has been working as part of a broader strategic partnership to use Google Cloud technology to develop a platform that facilitates the planning and management of the airline’s daily flight operations.
The new platform will help teams working in SWISS operations control at Zurich Airport to systematically make the best decisions about the airline’s complex and highly dynamic flight operations around the world.
The platform collects data from the company’s various units and processes, such as passenger itineraries, aircraft assignments, crew rosters and aircraft maintenance, which the system can use to propose optimal scenarios to keep its flight operations as stable and efficient as possible.
«As The Airline of Switzerland, we want to offer our customers on-time and reliable flight operations,» explains SWISS CEO Dieter Vranckx. «And our partnership with Google Cloud plays a decisive role in enabling us to maintain stable flight schedules.
«Google Cloud helps us to further reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by enabling us to deploy our aircraft more efficiently. So, together with our investments in other new technologies, such as sustainable aviation fuel, we intend – through this project – to promote innovation in Switzerland in the field of operational planning, and further confirm our pioneering credentials», he concluded.
Hans Thalbauer, General Manager Supply Chain and Logistics Solutions at Google Cloud, complements, «Through this partnership, we have an important opportunity to innovate the future of airline operations and contribute to making them more sustainable.»
«We are bringing together the best of SWISS, Lufthansa Group and Google Cloud to solve some of the airlines’ biggest challenges and positively impact the travel experience of millions of passengers who fly with SWISS annually,» he added.
Better direction of aircraft performance and individual connection times
By aggregating relevant information in Google Cloud, SWISS can use dynamic parameters, such as passenger and cargo demand or individual aircraft performance, to better plan which type of aircraft will be most efficient for a particular route.
The resulting fuel savings also help to reduce SWISS’ carbon dioxide emissions. The data collected can furthermore be used to steer and predict the individual connection times of travelers at the SWISS Zurich Airport hub.
In the event of an irregularity, the system will quickly propose several alternative scenarios to ensure that the affected customers continue to reach their desired destinations as punctually and comfortably as possible.
SWISS is the first Lufthansa Group airline to collaborate with Google Cloud as part of the group’s strategic partnership with the cloud provider. The platform in question has been specifically conceived and developed to enable its adoption by other Lufthansa Group airlines.
