Automation, AI and Robotics: Real opportunities for Aviation

How can automation make a difference in aviation?  What are the practical use cases that can deliver value quickly?  Airlines have an appetite to advance, to develop and utilise technology to make their business more efficient and more responsive to customers.  It is hard though, with so much coverage of AI in today's media, to understand where to start and what the real opportunities are.

Here we explore a few, airline-specific use cases, although these opportunities could apply across many industries.

Fashionably late?

Being late is not fashionable; at least not in the airline industry. According to the Financial Times, an astonishing 32% of flights were delayed in the early part of 2023. Poor punctuality can lead to additional cost and poor customer satisfaction: ultimately it can affect future bookings as customers look for more reliable operators. Not surprisingly airlines invest a lot of effort to maintain great punctuality: this can be through regular day to day procedures, robust planning or one-off initiatives. Nevertheless, a lot of airlines have (and do) suffer from dips in performance. In a way this is not surprising, airlines are complex organisations, operating complex machines within complex ecosystems.  But quite often airline executives can be found scratching their heads trying to work out why a good year turned into a bad year (it wasn’t just caused by the weather - although sometimes it is)!

Ultimately the answer comes down to how well an airline can get to understand its operation, and most importantly the pinch-points, bottlenecks and frailties within it. At a high level and when a deep-dive takes place, the answer is probably: pretty well. Although, is there an easier way to maintain & disseminate that knowledge, to understand how as the environment changes the airline's understanding changes? Airline execs recognise this and will embark on back to basics and process mapping exercises. These can be time consuming, have a shelf life, and to an extent are subjective. You only know what you know, or don’t know!

Intelligent Process Engineering can help the airline executive make this next jump. Today generative AI tools can help quickly and efficiently look deeply into complex operating models. Frailties that were not previously understood can be identified, including misunderstood dependencies and inconsistencies in data. Quite often in process reviews it can be hard to understand why things failed; largely because the mapping doesn’t reflect that the reality of how the process is executed on the ground.

As the aviation industry continues to grow, operations will become tighter and tighter but the question of understanding the root causes of any operational failure will increasingly rest with airline executives. The latest AI driven Process Engineering tools can help shine a light on this

Compliance

You must have heard the story of ‘Chinese whispers’.  One person tells the next something, that person then tells another, and so on.  By the time the last person hears the story, it has changed. Sometimes significantly. The blue car in the original story has become a yellow bike!

Similar problems occur in many organisations; not just, as you may be thinking, when communicating but also when designing and following processes. In almost all organisations processes are critical: they provide structure, efficiency and maintain standards, with adherence to these non-negotiable in a heavily regulated industries such as the airline industry. A process can be written down, trained, retrained but at some point it may be followed differently.

Following processes can be difficult: sometimes because they are designed in theory and not in practice, sometimes because the environment changes and sometimes because humans are intelligent: they find short cuts - getting the same result by doing things differently, as they become familiar with the process. This is understandable but for compliance and audit teams it is a challenge. In heavily regulated industries it is a particular challenge.

An audit is always a snapshot in time, and often asks the question do you do Process A to get to Result A?  It doesn’t ask the question, did you do Process A yesterday or is this process the best way to get to Result A? Process design and engineering is naturally a key support tool to help answer these questions.  It is still a snapshot in time though!  Intelligent Process Design and Process Engineering can help make the next step forward to avoid these challenges.   Such tools can consistently and persistently evaluate an organisation’s process adherence; most importantly it can do so in detail. For audit teams the insight is invaluable:

• are process not been followed because they are not relevant or out of date

• are they not being followed due to lack of training and understanding

For compliance teams, such technology can answer these relevant questions posed, significantly increasing their understanding and enhancing their responsibility to help business colleagues fine tune, validate and understand the processes under audit. The heavy lifting of the role is picked up by Artificial Intelligence, allowing the audit teams to deploy human intelligence.

Getting insight from the paperwork mountain

Paperwork!  How often did previous generations complain about this? Actually, how often do we complain about it today? Often we mean administrative tasks, but we also refer to real paperwork (or electronic paperwork). The days of reams and reams of paper being processed by back-office departments have gone but organisations today still generate a lot of documents. The aviation industry is no exception to this. Cabin reports, safety reports, training documents, tech reports, fatigue reports, customer feedback forms… The list goes on.  And to an extent they are all processed, and definitely the significant ones are dealt with appropriately but how easy - and how often - can trends be spotted within these mountains? What is missed? Or what could be spotted earlier?

There is an opportunity to address this challenge though. AI, or more specifically Intelligent Document Processing, can address this issue. Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) goes beyond digitising and indexing documents.   It turns the processing and recording of dissent to insight. Allowing airlines to identify trends in customer feedback or internal documentation.

As with many innovative technologies organisations may be fearful of deploying into mission critical environments. Of course, as with all tech implementations a period of parallel running can prove the software. More importantly though, IDP allows for micro-transformations. Pick one process at a time, prove the approach (learn from its deployment) whilst reducing the risk and cost. The benefits come in small but quick steps that accumulate quickly.

Paperwork should be relished. The more data, the more we learn, the more we improve. IDP is an innovation that can help the paperwork heavy airline industry on this journey.

Flight training documentation

Flight training departments are part of the hidden heart of many airlines.  Airlines grind to a halt if their crew workforce is not trained. The function is complex, carrying many challenges and with it considerable responsibility.  These departments spend a lot of time processing data: it could be course records, or replying to 3rd party providers, or responding to queries from pilots.

Crews need intensive training when they join the company or when they qualify to fly a new aircraft; they then receive a series of annual training to maintain their license. They will have a number of qualifications based on different activities (e.g training for specific airports, for evacuation and fire training).

These training activities involve bringing together pilots, instructors, the training facility, and following on from each activity, recording the training details. This can involve data being typed from one system to another or standard emails being sent out manually in high volume. Issues with the training programme mean that crew will not complete training in the planned time, in turn ultimately, they cannot fly.  The consequences of this are dramatic for any airline.

All activities are time consuming but also, even for the most diligent, error prone. As you approach the training season how can you take risk (and potentially cost) out of this process. As discussed above, this is a department ripe for the opportunities that Process Engineering and Intelligent Document Processing can bring.  Intelligent Document Processing through robotics can deliver significant time and reduce re-work for flight training teams.

Summary

For aviation four diverse opportunities are presented here.  Needless to say, these are the tip of the iceberg, and many closer to these businesses will see more (we’d love to hear of them). Without doubt, through micro-transformations, airline executives can begin to drive real value into the airline trade. Reach out to us at Emneo to learn more and discuss how we transform the aviation industry.