Shorter turnarounds save the airline more than $15 million per year

Alaska Airlines is known as an industry leader in punctuality. Their fleet of over 300 aircraft takes passengers on flights to more than 120 destinations, with a particular emphasis at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) - where one third of their business occurs.

17%
increase on-time performance at SEA
4 min
reduced average ground delays for delayed flights

Requirements

With a clear ambition to be an on-time airline, Alaska Airlines needed to prevent delays, react timeously to unanticipated issues and optimise gating allocations – so that each journey is seamless for their passengers.

Alaska Airlines needed to empower their Departure Coordinators to make sure that every flight leaves its gate on time. For decades, they relied on manual inspections and radio communication to do their job. However, with the growth of Alaska’s operations and increasing complexity in their ground operations, this method no longer provided enough information at the right time to make accurate operational decisions. Alaska needed a more efficient way to gain real-time visibility of events during flight turnarounds.

Solutions

Assaia’s Turnaround Control offers in-depth management of turnaround operations in real-time by providing situational awareness of airport resources & human capital. Flight and weather data is complemented by computer vision turnaround data from Assaia’s algorithms, which have tracked over 750 000 turnarounds across more than 30 airports. This allows Assaia’s software to more accurately predict the time the aircraft will push back (off-block time, OBT) to ensure efficient allocation of gates to arriving aircraft, and also reduce taxi-in times and average gate holding times.

Departure coordinators stay up-to-date on their daily flight movements and easily keep track of crucial events like catering, fueling and baggage loading thanks to Turnaround Control’s convenient real-time watchlist view. With this feature, they are quickly alerted to any deviations along the way, and can remedy the problem before it turns into a flight delay.

Benefits

  • Assaia helped Alaska Airlines reduce average ground delays for delayed flights by 3.9 minutes on average, equating to a 30% increase in profit per flight
  • Increase in 17% of flights departing on time
  • 12% reduction in turnaround time
  • 25% reduction of ground delay minutes
  • 4 minutes less on the turnaround means cost savings of $15 million per year with Assaia
  • Using Assaia’s Turnaround Control, Alaska Airlines has been able to proactively prevent delays, get ahead of operational issues and improve gating allocation.

Testimonials

For most airports, the apron is a a black box. Assaia finally gives our ground staff full insight into every turnaround. This allows them to focus on what really matters, while simultaneously making the work environment safer.

Jason Aspelund
Former Manager Strategic Performance, Alaska Airlines

The real-time and historical insights that can inform both airport and airline operations make this solution a clear winner for everyone.

Craig Paul
Director of Technology & Innovation , Halifax Stanfield International

We are proud to be partnering with the Assaia team in our mission to use technology to improve the efficiency and safety of the airport environment.

Raghbir S. Pattar
Director of Airports Transformation, IAG

We’re creating the airport of the future, and innovation in apron operations will directly improve the passenger experience. We are laser focused on innovations that will make Pearson and its whole apron ecosystem more efficient while reducing our carbon footprint.

Deborah Flint
President and CEO GTAA

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