Optimizing airline and airport efficiencies with Assaia
Christiaan Hen, CEO, Assaia
Assaia, an aviation technology and software company, established in 2018, helps airlines to optimize turnarounds, improving efficiency, sustainability and the travel experience for passengers. Christiaan Hen, CEO, Assaia, attended FTE Global EXPO last month to highlight the company’s turnaround optimization initiatives, including its current partnership with Southwest Airlines.
As Hen tells PAX Tech, turnaround is fairly complex for airlines to manage due to the variety of different stakeholders that play a role in getting the aircraft to depart on time.
“Until recently, there was no real-time visibility on what stage the aircraft is at in preparing for a timely departure,” Hen says. “We use computer vision technology and ideally existing cameras to acquire this information; then the software analyzes the video coming from these cameras and creates notifications for events as they happen in real-time.”
This can include notifications for delays in jet bridge connection, alerts when the cargo door is open and more. Hen notes that these notifications aid Assaia’s airline customers in improving productivity because they can respond to these events more efficiently, affording them more control over departure times.
Assaia recently released its 2024 Turnaround Benchmark Report, which it highlighted at FTE APEX Global EXPO. This is the second year Assaia has released the report, meaning it is the first time that the company has a reference point for comparing its system performance between 2023 and 2024. The full 2024 Turnaround Benchmark Report from Assaia is available online.
“Overall, we actually saw a reduction of six percent in ground delays, which translates into a four percent reduction in turnaround times,” Hen reveals. “For those airports, that means that the average number of turns per day per stand went up from an average of four to an average of five.”
He adds that this is where airlines and airports benefit from improving efficiency because for airlines there is a cost to a minute’s delay, but for airports gate capacity is crucial. Most airports are gate capacity constrained and building additional gates is expensive, time consuming and may not be physically possible due to space constraints. Therefore, doing more turns with the same month infrastructure is key for airports.
Hen emphasizes that the demand for Assaia’s system has increased significantly post-pandemic, particularly in the last year.
“The maturity of the solution is very different. We're no longer selling pilot projects and trials, but almost in every case it's a full airport rollout,” he adds. “And we're just getting started. We're seeing good results, but it's not the end game. I think there's still so much optimization potential if you look at airside operations. If you have good information about what's going to happen and you can use that information to predict the outcome, you can actually plan to avoid those kinds of situations.”
Hen concludes that while Assaia is doing that at the gate on the turn, the company envisions expanding that capability into the wider apron area.
