Stand & Ground Resource Optimisation Trial

What the trial saves

Open planner view See the decision

Headline savings and the decision

Decision due at SteerCo on 20 Aug

Trial scorecard

Stage-gate criteria

Stand plan

Your carrier

Carrier

Flights, stands and connections

Operations control

Alerts

Decisions needed now

Changed since the last plan

Turnaround board

Stand and time for each turnaround

Changes affecting teams

Data and solver

Data feeds and readiness

Solver run log

Validation checks

Override reasons (this session)

Illustrative solver (greedy heuristic). A production optimisation engine would search the whole plan at once; this demo assigns flights in time order. If a flight cannot be placed, the run repeats with that flight first.

Stand plan

Time runs 05:00 to 24:00. Select a flight bar for its explanation. A red outline marks a broken hard rule. Hatched areas are stands out of service. A dashed bar shows an aircraft that is towed between stands.

Disruption test

Move or remove a flight and watch the optimised plan re-plan. The current plan does not re-plan: planners fix it by hand, one change at a time. You can see what they would then have to fix.

Delay flight

Cancel flight

What moved

Rules checked on this plan

How the stand rules work

Every flight is checked against six rules. Four are hard and must never be broken: the aircraft fits the stand, there are at least 15 minutes between flights on a stand, the jet bridge and pre-conditioned air are there when needed, and the stand is in service. Two are soft and traded off by cost: the airline’s preferred pier, and a contact stand for flights with tight connections.

Every rule is checked on both plans, for every flight.
Every choice is explained: select any flight to see why it has its stand and what the alternatives would cost.
The planner decides: accept a proposal or override it, with a reason. The rules are re-checked and the impact shown first.

How these figures are measured (illustrative)

Stand plan changes: the number of flights whose stand differs from the plan issued the day before, plus flights that still have a rule conflict to fix. Both plans are measured over the same operating day and the same delays. For the current plan (rule-based assignment plus manual fixes), the changes are the late fixes the planners made by phone and radio after the resource management system (RMS) issued its plan. For the optimised plan, they are the flights the solver moved when it re-planned. If you apply a further disruption, the current plan is not re-planned (fixes stay manual, one at a time), so any new conflict counts as a change still to be made.
Tows: aircraft moved between stands during a long stay.
Remote-stand use: turnarounds that use a remote stand for arrival or departure (bus boarding).
On-time departure: share of turnarounds with less than 15 minutes of delay. A flight that arrived late departs late in both plans. Remote stands, tows, conflicts and missing equipment add minutes on top, and these differ between the plans.
Turnaround delay: total delay minutes across the day: the delays as operated, which are the same in both plans, plus the minutes each plan adds.
Planner hours per day: an illustrative effort model. Current method: 4.0 h of planning plus 0.35 h for each change or conflict. Optimised: 2.5 h to review and accept proposals plus 0.30 h for each change.
Three plans: the trial compares the current method, a classical solver and the new engine. This demo shows the current method and the engine.

All values are modelled on invented data for this concept. They show how the trial would be measured, not results from a real airport.