NetLine/Ops ++ optimizes the daily utilization of flights, increases user productivity and improves airline management.
Austrian Airlines recently transitioned into Lufthansa Systems’ NetLine/Ops++ operations control platform for smooth and efficient running of their flight operations. Austrian Airlines is the sixth Lufthansa Group carrier to join the group-wide operations control platform on Lufthansa Systems’ Global Aviation Cloud. NetLine/Ops ++ provides detailed information to support customer centricity by focusing on low passenger connecting times. Also, the rotational steering and optimal use of aircraft is further improved. Appreciating this extra steps taken for efficient customer service, we have selected Austrian Airlines as our Airline of the week.
The most comprehensive operations control system
Be it bad weather, missed slots or technical problems on the day of ops can leading to multiple schedule changes. In such situations, fast, cost-efficient and safe operational decisions are called for. During such times, NetLine/Ops ++ optimizes the daily utilization of flights, increases user productivity and improves airline management when there are deviations from your regular schedule. In short, NetLine/Ops ++ is the most comprehensive operations control system on the market. The application monitors current flight operations and optimizes daily aircraft utilization. By implementing Lufthansa System’s solution, the airline can react swiftly to flight irregularities and increase on-time performance through a more comprehensive overview of flight movement. This will enable the airline to improve daily flight operations, provide reliable services, and contribute to enhancing the traveler experience. It will also reduce operating costs for Austrian Airlines and help to capitalize on staff productivity.
Manuel Javorik, Head of Operations Control Austrian Airlines said, “Austrian Airlines has been a NetLine/Ops Classic customer since 1997 with Lufthansa Systems being a reliable partner for many years. The joint project management team of Austrian, Lufthansa Group and Lufthansa Systems experts did an excellent job throughout the transition phase and final cutover. Of course, challenges were faced, but these are expected to occur and were professionally managed by the expert teams. As Austrian OCC we already see major benefits of the modern platform in our daily work.”
NetLine/Ops ++ also collects, evaluates and displays many other kinds of data (including passenger bookings, critical weather conditions, technical aircraft limitations, crew rotations and airport restrictions)
Automatic tail assignments and fast support when decisions need to be made – The NetLine/Ops ++ xOPT suite
After using the scheduling tool for subfleet assignment, NetLine/Ops ++ Tail xOPT perfectly manage tail assignment on the day of ops. The optimizer takes booking figures, crew connections and technical aircraft limitations into account and assigns the best rotations to each aircraft based on the data. Operational disruptions soon lead to very high costs. This makes it all the more important to resolve them quickly and effectively. The modern optimizer technologies help to find fast, cost-efficient and legally compliant solutions. NetLine/Ops ++ Solver xOPT swaps rotations so that your regular flight schedule can be restored promptly.
Maintenance planning and control
Alerts are automatically generated if there are any conflicts with the live schedule. The Maintenance Control module in NetLine/Ops ++ significantly reduces maintenance-related delays and provides interfaces for exchanging data with the maintenance and engineering systems.
In order to carry out aircraft maintenance efficiently and economically, it is essential for maintenance & engineering to have access to the aircraft’s current performance data at all times. Thus, maintenance events be planned and executed optimally. For the efficient and economic controlling of a flight, operations control requires not only an overview of coming maintenance events, but also control of the effects that changes in operations have on maintenance events.
NetLine/Ops ++ MaintenanceControl creates a link between NetLine/Ops ++ and different maintenance & engineering systems. This ensures that both the person responsible for operations and the maintenance technician receive all the information and decision-making support they need to carry out their daily work to the optimum.
Thomas Hoelsken, Program Manager Lufthansa Systems said, “Coming from previous migrations in the program, every group airline has its specific challenges to be addressed. We have worked closely with Austrian Airlines over the past ten months, evaluated possible optimizations to business processes and even developed some feature requests allowing Austrian to cope with new regulatory requirements. Participating in our Lufthansa Group NetLine/Ops ++ cloud platform, Austrian Airlines is prepared to manage the hurdles that occur as a result of resuming flight traffic after the pandemic.”
Oliver Thoenissen, Director Ground Operation Products Lufthansa Systems said, “Cloud architectures come along with many benefits. The Lufthansa Group airlines can, for example, adapt the size of the production environment, allowing to cope with previously unimagined situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic and a drastically ramped down flight schedule. The platform was scaled down to a minimum as public life went into lockdown and platform resources were no longer required. Our Financial Optimization Team regularly checks the usage of the cloud resources and makes recommendations for optimization to keep operational costs at a minimum.”
NetLine/Ops ++ offers multiple decision support functions to quickly see information and events relevant to operations and maintenance control and respond sensibly.
Various options can be tested and evaluated on a “playground” before publishing the solution as a live schedule. Going ahead, a REST API will connect NetLine/Ops ++ to every other application based on the SWIM (system-wide information management) standard. Advanced new technologies such as AI and optimizers can then be integrated seamlessly.
