Jet Airways, which is one of the leading private airline operators in the country, has migrated to a new 'Crew Management System' that drives on real time data, unlike its previous system, which used to run on batch mode. The number of Indians choosing to fly has grown manifold after the onset of low cost airlines in the market. As per data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), air traffic was registered at 432.89 lakh people flying in 2007, a 32.51 per cent growth from the figure of 326.68 lakh people flying in 2006. With this tremendous growth, the subsequent significance of flight delay management has also shot up. It is interesting to understand how airline companies manage operations in case of delays, especially during the rainy season and foggy weather.

As per the old system, the moment a flight was delayed, the operations department would call and inform the crew controller, who would enter the information into the system and get a printout of the probable implications of the delay. Giving an insight into the new system that Jet Airways has adopted, R N Moorthy, general manager IT, says, "We migrated to a different system altogether. The new system has a real time alert mechanism. With the help of this, the crew controller will completely understand the consequences of any flight delay or disruption, which may occur due to reasons like bad weather or a strike. A typical flight delay has many repercussions on the operations".

Coordination between operations and the crew controller

Let us understand the functioning of this new system with the help of an example. Suppose that a flight gets delayed by XX number of hours, this means that the pilot flying that flight will also be tied up till it reaches the destination. Every pilot has a fixed number of duty hours. The operations department needs to ensure that the crew is qualified to fly despite the delay. In the new system, the operations controller location immediately and on a real time basis sends an alert to the crew controller if a flight is going to be delayed, which might mean that the captain may not be able to take the next flight (if his assigned duty hours are going to be over). This message is passed on through the VPN set-up so the crew controller gets an alert on the screen, which is colour-coded to signify the urgency of the message. An alert in red, for example, suggests 'very urgent'.

Legacy Systems – A Constraint

The legacy and proprietary systems that were being used till now had hindrances attached to offering any business enhancements to their users on the applications and reporting capabilities front. The database was also inaccessible. "We were working within constraints", says Moorthy. "The vendor had to be contacted for every change in the system. However, the new system is based on an open architecture. We have access to the database, which enables us to come up with various reporting capabilities and further integrate them with other applications".

"From a project management point of view, we formed a core group of business users and the IT department. We had two teams – one to manage the old system and the second to manage the project. The mock runs helped us in finalising a date to go live with the new system after eventually migrating the data there".

Automation Of The Implication Reports

The major challenge in front of Jet was to make users familiar with the new system as they were used to the old system of taking printouts about the probable implications of the flight delay. The new system is graphical and works on a real time basis. Users have to enter the system and find out the implications in an automated report format, in case the flight gets delayed. The look, feel and process of the set-up have changed. Before, the flight dispatch informed the operations team of a flight delay through a telephonic call.

After the introduction of the Crew Management System, the moment the message is created by the flight dispatch people, the information is captured real time through the interface programme and pushed on to the crew information system. The system processes that delay and lists out the implications on operations and the crew and sends out an alert on a real-time basis on the screen.

Cost, service provider and resource optimisation were some other factors that prompted Jet Airways to execute this migration.