Aerospace Xelerated: Flight & Passenger Journey Optimisation
tl;dr — 🛫 Applications for Aerospace Xelerated’s fourth cohort are now open, and close 2nd October 2022. Following three successful cohorts led by Boeing and supported by industry partners, the programme will now be run in partnership with Tawazun Economic Council, the defence and security acquisitions authority of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We’re looking for world-class startups at the seed to series A stage that are building digital services and solutions. Find out more, apply online, or book an Office Hours call.
In Cohort 4, which is focused on digital services and solutions, we are looking to support world-class startups focused on several specific sub-themes. Over the next few blog posts, we will be illustrating what Boeing, Tawazun Economic Council and its industry partners are looking for from startups focusing on these themes. This article covers flight and passenger journey optimisation. In the following blogs, we will expand on supply chain intelligence, next-generation workforce, and operational efficiency.
A side note: our definition of aerospace revolves around the design and manufacture of aeroplanes and the peripherals around that process, rather than spacecraft or satellites. Startups with hardware-only solutions are unfortunately out of scope for this programme. We may hold future programmes with a stronger hardware focus so do stay tuned.
What Is Flight and Passenger Journey Optimisation?
For this sub-theme, we are interested in exploring ways of using digital services or solutions to optimise the flight and passenger journey. In particular, we are particularly excited to see companies tackling key challenges within navigation and flight planning, flight data monitoring, analytics, security, and safety. Let’s explain a bit more.
Flight Journey Optimisation
By 2040, we are expecting 16–20 million flights on the network. Currently, the network is already highly congested. Many “Heathrow-like” airports are operating at near-capacity, and delivering current airport capacity plans is already a challenge. As we expect increased demands for flights, this translates to exacerbated delays — both in delay duration and the number of flights experiencing delays.
The climate is also changing. There will be changes to temperatures, rain, snow, wind and storm patterns, as well as the sea level. Climate change will affect aviation infrastructure, patterns of passenger demand and daily operations.
Third, we are seeing more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the skies. While UAVs don’t operate within the same airspace as commercial flights, increasingly UAV action is putting pressure to cede parts of existing controlled airspace.
With this, we are interested in digital services and solutions that could answer the following questions:
- How can digital services and solutions streamline airline operations to deliver increasing airport capacity plans?
- How might we coordinate existing data networks to plan airline operations? In particular, can we use digital services and solutions to plan where and when to fly, what aircraft to use, what flight crew to assign, and what, where, and when maintenance needs to take place?
We spoke to Zhong Zhe Dong (Boeing Research & Technology engineer) about the applications he’s particularly interested in seeing.
“The impact of COVID-19 has spurred a growing interest in flight data analytics and safety. We would also like to see solutions tackling air-ground connectivity to ensure seamless travel. For this, we are particularly interested in seeing digital display solutions for commercial aircraft. Ideally, the solutions in this space should be soft and hardware solution ready. If there is a prototype that can be easily implemented, that’d be even better.”
Passenger Journey Optimisation
Flight disruptions can seem inevitable to the passenger journey. An airport’s top priority is to keep the network running smoothly by regulating traffic to avoid the overloading of airspace. In addition, delays in loading baggage and the late arrival of an aircraft from an earlier flight on the same day amongst other operations also contribute to the problem. As average delays increase, how do we ensure affected passengers still receive a reasonable quality of service?
With this, we are interested in digital services and solutions that could answer the following questions:
- How might we monitor passenger movement through the system and preemptively reassign passengers in cases of known disruption?
- During flight delays, how might we gather information in a timely manner to ensure prompt communication with passengers?
- As the aviation industry evolves and makes decisions on how they operate, how can we ensure passengers’ voices are heard?
Have you developed a digital service or solution? To apply for this cohort, head over to our website.
Learn more about Aerospace Xelerated in our FAQ or watch our Ask Us Anything webinar. You can also book an Office Hours call to discuss your queries with the programme team.
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