Airside operations 95%
The accuracy offered by Deep Turnaround after eight weeks of operation.
Royal Schiphol Group
the cognitive workload of managing dozens of flights and gates at the same time.
“In the digital age, where information is passed on quicker and quicker and quicker, we have also started to demand more details earlier in the process – so, for us, it’s a no brainer that we need an algorithm to assist the human,” he adds. “It’s also always about the combination between the two. We don’t see algorithms taking over the work of the people – they need to be designed in such a way that they ultimately make the decision-making process easier and better.”
Cameras on both sides of the stand feed images through Deep Turnaround, allowing the Dashboard to provide real-time progress of departure procedures.
Designed for collaboration Schiphol is not the only airport to have adopted Deep Turnaround. In November, Eindhoven Airport announced it had implemented the AI solution across four aircraft stands, with plans to equip all of its stands with cameras to monitor the turnaround process by 2024. “We are a regional airport, with 14 aircraft stands. Three stands are visible through the window of our operations control room, the rest we monitor by security cameras,” explains Frédérique Portheine, manager, operational excellence at Eindhoven Airport. “On the Deep Turnaround Dashboard we are able to see real-time what is happening on stand during the turnarounds. With this information we can see if the turnaround planning fits reality.” Furthermore, Deep Turnaround is designed to incentivise collaboration, as it uses a single community model to track events across all stands and airports, so knowledge acquired at Schiphol, Eindhoven or others is available across all airports. This results in high out-of- the-box performance with 82% accuracy, and rapid optimisation with over 95% accuracy after eight weeks, alongisde the ability to scale to new stands while keeping the current performance. However, there’s always a level of challenge when familiarising personnel with new AI tools. “Starting with new AI products can be exciting since the technology is complex and it’s hard to understand how results are established ,” says Lennard Albarda, product owner, passenger & airport systems, Eindhoven Airport. “When implementing a solution like this, you need to
guide the end users step by step and show them what new possibilities this solution can bring.” At Eindhoven, Albarda and his team hosted sessions with colleagues to demonstrate how Deep Turnaround functions and what the benefits are, aiming to make the explanation as practical as possible to help speed up familiarisation. “During the workshops, our colleagues could compare the information that Deep Turnaround automatically registers, with the turnaround activities that happened on our platform. This helps to gain confidence in the data and will help with the adoption of the solution into their daily job,” he explains. The success of Deep Turnaround is highly encouraging for those interested in future use of AI and automation within airports, and both Schäfer and Albarda see great potential for further use cases. Eindhoven, for example, is working on a project called BagsID, which uses image-based analysis to track passenger luggage, replacing physical paper barcodes. For Schäfer, there’s huge potential for the technology for hub airports dealing with large numbers of transfer passengers, so they can better inform airlines when a flight is waiting on passengers delayed by a connecting flight. “To flip the question around, I can’t think of a process we couldn’t use AI in,” Schäfer adds.
All part of the same team Ultimately, the collaborative aspect of Deep Turnaround is possibly its greatest asset. As all airports face many similar challenges and given that there is very little direct competition between them, there are many reasons to encourage collaboration.
“Eindhoven Airport is always looking for innovation opportunities,” says Portheine. “We continuously wish to optimise our on-time performance. Every detail helps to improve collaboration with all our aviation partners – not just at our airport, but all our connecting airports as well. […] I really believe in working together with them as a whole. To achieve that, in my view, we need to share information and data open and transparently.” “Regardless of size, I think all airports are more of less facing the same problems,” adds Albarda. “So, when an airport finds a solution for a problem, and its willing to share that solution with others, we will all benefit from it.”
Schäfer agrees, noting that while Schiphol paved the
way, the airport can greatly benefit from improvements other airports make to the technology. “The best thing [about Deep Turnaround] is its community model. If Eindhoven wants to change something specific, which we didn’t think of yet – which is, of course, very possible – they could bring that change up to the entire community of airports and we could all start to use it,” he notes. “I personally benefit at Schiphol from that – and, vice versa, if I come up with a new idea, every airport gets to use that same system. So, we’re building it together.” ●
28 Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
Royal Schiphol Group
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