How AI might alleviate planning headaches for airlines PhocusWire

Airlines are looking to artificial intelligence to turn age-old processes upside down and make flying more efficent. While the industry has traditionally relied on long-term planning across maintenance, schedules, crew and other areas, AI could mean a move to flexible processes. Lufthansa Group chief digital officer Christian Langer believes AI could spell the end of planning. "Airlines have an inflexible asset base - aircraft, hangars, spare parts - it's expensive and inflexible. Then, we have a very flexible customer base, so it's how do you mitigate that? He points to the long-term planning of crew and summer schedules, adding that airlines also typically plan for groups of things such as customer segments and part numbers. "With upcoming data, computational power and finally AI, it is going to shift from long-term to real-time and from groups of things to individuals, and this turns all the planning systems upside down." Speaking during last week's Aviation Festival in London, Langer says small companies were tackling parts of the equation such as Hopper and Flyr for price predictions and Dohop and Kiwi for the network side of things. "We're trying to rethink and rebuild all the planning systems we have to find out what would be the real-time, individual alternative.