Source: AFP
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A state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) facility — Easyjet’s new control center is tasked with handling around 2,000 mostly European flights a day as the British airline looks ahead to high summer demand.
The Integrated Control Center (ICC), near Luton Airport in north London, is central to Easyjet’s operations, from emergency flight changes to monitoring the health of a passenger aircraft in the air.
In addition to analyzing motors in real time, technicians can also see if a toilet needs repair.
As the airline sector recovers from the Covid lockdowns that ground planes and caused huge job losses, Easyjet is on a big hiring spree.
The number of staff overseeing the operations of the control center has more than doubled in two years, to 266 people working around the clock, their eyes glued to large curved screens.
300,000 passengers daily
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“It’s going to be our busiest summer since Covid,” Easyjet’s director of network control, Gill Baudot, told reporters on a tour of the new center overlooking the runway where the company’s orange planes take off and land.
“In the next few months we will be flying… 300,000 passengers a day,” he added, as an Easyjet plane with its muffled roar flew over the center before quickly disappearing.
In the event that a plane fails to fly, for reasons ranging from bad weather to technical difficulties and strikes, the ICC steps in to modify logistics.
To assist such urgent changes, Easyjet uses an AI tool similar to ChatGPT.
It helps the staff make decisions about situations, including how best to reroute the aircraft and redeploy the crew.
Easyjet operates more than 340 passenger aircraft, of which 14 are reserve aircraft based across Europe.
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“We have … invested heavily in technology, automation and artificial intelligence,” Baudot said.
“Right now we believe that man will still make the (final) decision.”
Baudot noted that staff “are out of practice” following the Covid lockdowns – an issue facing the industry as a whole.
With passenger demand recovering strongly after the pandemic, Easyjet and its rivals, notably Ryanair, have had to step up their recruitment drive across all roles.
“Data Capability”
Piloting Easyjet through Covid was its chief executive, Johan Lundgren, who recently announced he will step down in early 2025 after seven years.
“At Easyjet we saw early on the potential for data to improve customer experience and operational efficiency that could help us deliver a better flying experience for our customers, crew and pilots,” Lundgren said in a statement. accompanied the media event.
“Although you can’t always see it, the technology is already hard at work in the air and on the ground.”
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He said it can help “predict exactly what food and drink we need for certain routes, minimizing food waste, helping predictive maintenance decisions and helping us ensure we have the right aircraft on the right routes to best meet demand”.
At the ICC, Mark Garrett, Easyjet’s customer disruption manager, monitors the flights.
In the event that a flight experiences problems, a notification is sent to the phones of the affected passengers. Flights with a large number of children or group travel transfers may be given priority.
“It’s not always the flights with (the) fewest people” that are disrupted, he added.
Source: AFP