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Optimizing crew planning
The process of planning and controlling an airline's schedule is strongly determined by a highly competitive market environment, increasingly resulting in very dynamic and volatile flight schedules. Particularly mid- and short-term equipment changes which often necessitate the complete re-assignment of all affected crews are a major obstacle to airlines aiming to reduce time-to-market. For all involved departments, and in particular for crew management, the challenge lies in increasing reaction time by further optimizing these processes.

In order to address this particular problem, Lufthansa Systems has expanded its range of crew planning optimization tools by developing the NetLine/Crew xOPT Recovery solution. The efficiency of duty plans is today still exclusively measured at the publication date and never again afterwards. Comprehensive studies conducted by Lufthansa Systems at a number of airlines have shown that up to 70% of the original schedule undergoes changes prior to day-of-operation. At the same time, crews have come to expect more reliable assignment planning and want to take more responsibility and self-determination for their duty plans in recent years.

NetLine/Crew xOPT Recovery has been designed specifically to automatically maintain and optimize crew schedules from the time the duty plan is published to day-of-operation. The major difference of that approach of seamless optimization compared to initial planning is the new criteria 'stability of duty plan'. This enables airlines to cut crew costs by up to 3% just by benefiting from improved pairing and duty plan maintenance efficiency and allows for a significantly improved stability of the schedules at the same time. Short-term fleet adjustments based on a more exact forecast of booking figures can deliver additional profits of up to 0.5%. While this might not sound overly impressive, it represents millions of euros of potential revenues for airlines.

Lufthansa Systems will be able to provide xOPT Recovery from early 2006.


How much fuel does an aircraft actually use?
One key element for a competitive flight planning system lies in providing the most accurate fuel figures for each flight. On one hand, the fuel taken on board must be sufficient to comply with regulatory requirements - and for landing the plane safely. On the other hand, lifting up more fuel than necessary increases the fuel burn due to the higher airplane weight and even can reduce the possible payload on specific flights. Part of Lido Operation Center, the flight-planning solution of Lufthansa Systems, is the Airplane Performance Monitoring program (APM). It provides key information to enable airlines to walk this fine line.

The fuel consumption data provided by the airplane manufacturers and stored into the Lido OC system for each airplane type reflect an average brand new airplane. However, experience has shown that airplanes are individuals that can deviate from this reference level by up to about 10 percent. In most cases, the actual fuel consumption is higher than the figure provided in the manufacturer data base.

By comparing the actual fuel consumption of each individual airplane to the manufacturer level, a performance factor can be determined. Lido OC takes this factor into account during route calculation and adjusts the manufacturer data to reflect actual airplane values. The APM solution can also identify the sources of performance shortfalls, e.g. airframe, engine, instrumentation or even operational impacts. The acquired data comprise environmental parameters like air pressure and altitude as well as engine parameters like current fuel flow.

Step by step, airlines can thus arrive at realistic assumptions regarding the fuel consumption of their fleets. Lido OC measures fuel consumption for each airplane of the Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo, Condor, Condor Berlin fleets, the German Air Force A310 and Air Berlin B737, a total of currently 290 airplanes.