Flying is great! You can get from one part of the world to another in a matter of hours. Through improvements in the efficiencies of airplanes, the cost of tickets has decreased and you can fly longer distances at once. Flying would be great if it weren’t for delays, queues, and inefficient processes. Not only does this pose an inconvenience for passengers, but it leaves a heavy toll on airlines. It is reported, that in 2018 Lufthansa paid around 500 million euros in compensation to passengers due to delays so they were in dire need of improvement.
Process mining aims to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of a process by taking into account a wide variety of data points. This is especially useful where efficient processes are key to operational success – like airports and airlines.
Lufthansa has started to use this technique to evaluate its processes like check-in and boarding. Instead of having airline employees wait next to gates for hours with clipboards and counting how long it takes for one passenger to pass and then averaging this to get a picture of how well boarding processes are performed by Lufthansa, the airline paired with airports to automate this. For example, every time a passenger scans their ticket into the machine, the information is recorded in a log – over time, this can increase the number of data points from a couple of hundred to a couple of millions. When airlines and airports gain valuable information on when airplanes land, how long it takes them to taxi to their gate, how long it takes for doors to open, for passengers to exit and enter the plane and the time it takes to refuel and take off again, processes can be improved greatly.
The basis of this model is that through the collection of a variety of data logs, airlines can accurately predict future “threats” based on past performance.
https://towardsdatascience.com/can-ai-reinvent-airport-excellence-bbf581939c4e
Wow: Lufthansa Paid 500 Million Euros In Compensation In 2018
Hi Jannis, thank you for this interesting read! I personally recognise all the problems you describe when going on a holiday by plane. It sometimes takes away a bit of the pleasure you have when going on a holiday. I think it is interesting to see that a major airline like Lufthansa has 500 million euros in compensation costs, which is an incredible amount. I think its nice how you describe all the techniques Lufthansa has already put in place to improve their proccesses but the thing I find most interesting is the countless posibilities there are yet to come. I think in the end the whole customer journey you will go through before boarding your plane will be automitized. I am intrigued to see what the future will hold!