Airlines To Use AI to Reduce Passenger Wait Times

Gate allocation, which may seem easy, is an unexpectedly complicated task. Dr. Joseph Doetsch, Lufthansa Industry Solutions’ Quantum computing lead, reveals that with 10 airplanes and 15 gates, there exist more than 570 billion possibilities. This makes it harder to pick the best gate for every flight, which in turn decreases congestion and amount of fuel needed as well as shortens aircraft taxi times. This is what reduces the amount of time travelers spend on the tarmac.

Normally, gates are assigned when flight schedules are published, which is almost 12 months ahead. The assignments are then reviewed one month in advance, then a week in advance, and then again on the day of the flight.

AeroCloud System cofounder George Richardson explains that different priorities have to be juggled when deciding the best place to park an aircraft. Those priorities include carrier preferences, aircraft type, the direction aircrafts are coming from, gate availability, customer and baggage connections, and airport staffing.

According to a recent survey, focusing on challenges faced by senior airport executives, gate allocation is being carried out using very basic tech.

Of the executives surveyed, AeroCloud determined that 40% were using Word and Excel documents to manage and store information related to their operations, which included gate management.

Given that most of the factors affecting allocation can change at the last minute, there is a need to adopt the use of more advanced systems. This is especially important since delayed flights make it harder to reassign gates, which increases waiting time for passengers and may, in some cases, cause flight cancellations.

American Airlines began using Smart Gating to allocate arriving aircrafts the nearest gate with the shortest taxi time. Here, machine learning uses real-time flight data to choose which gate the aircraft is sent to. An American Airlines spokesperson revealed that prior to the introduction of the new system, manually assigning gates used to take roughly four hours to complete.

Smart Gating, which was introduced at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, now completes the process in 10 minutes, saving almost 1.4 million gallons of jet fuel annually and significantly reducing aircraft taxi times by 20%.

Lufthansa Industry Solutions plans to use quantum computing to deal with this gate allocation. Doetsch believes that quantum algorithms will permit optimal gate allocation while also responding to changing external factors in real time. Already, Lufthansa is looking into different quantum computing systems to determine the best fit for this project. Richardson adds that better techniques could help reduce the amount of expansion needed in airports, especially with mounting pressure on airport capacity.

This use-case at airports illustrates how the artificial intelligence (AI) solutions being developed and commercialized by numerous entities, such as Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE: PLTR) and others, could revolutionize different industries in years to come.

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