Airlines manage the impact of ATFM delay on the day of operation – typically by rerouting, hot turns, tail swaps or even SID offloading to avoid expected ATFM delays.

The problem with this approach is that the interventions can be costly and ineffective along the line. Mitigations are usually considered on a sector-by-sector basis and do not consider the overall line of flying, cascading consequences or the strategic block time buffers that are available.

The result is an excess rerouting of flights, off cost-index flying or completely ineffective interventions causing operational costs which outweigh the savings from delay avoidance. 

Pre-tactical planning

There are significant benefits to the pre-emptive replanning of flights in the pre-tactical phase   (D-1). Early intervention enables:

Pre-tactical intervention is not currently available to flight planning functions because it requires foresight of the likely application of ATFM regulations and the risks of turnaround and local ATC delay along the entire line of flying. 

The Solution

HawkSim Airline

A machine learning based pre-tactical platform which predicts the risk of ATFM, Turnaround and Local ATC Start Delay at D-1. The system generates recommendations for pre-tactical re-routing and where the cost of intervention is too high, recommends that the delay can be absorbed within the block. 

Identification of ATFM Risk

The HawkSim Airline system relies on a machine learning based model which has been trained on historical ATFM delay across Europe. All planned lines of flight are assessed for the risk of delay, then the cost of that delay is calculated, and, where cost-effective, alternate routes are proposed. 

 Prioritisation

The risk of ATFM delay is balanced against the risk of turnaround delay at specific outstations and can be overlayed with weather predictions to adjust risk profiles.

Different cost factors such as additional fuel, variable ATC charges,  EU261 compensation claims, crewing limit breaches and night curfew busts are all factored into the recommendations.

Major Low-Cost Airline – Case Study

£20 million annual cost saving

Use Case 1 – HawkSim Airline was used at D-1 to identify ATC sectors along of a line of flying at high risk of delays. Flights were rerouted in the pre-tactical phase, resulting in more effective action and stabilising the day of operation. 

Use Case 2 – Running in shadow mode initially, the ADAP system identified areas of ATFM delay which tended to ease through the day. This allowed flights to be flagged as low risk even when there was flow restriction placed on a sector that it was due to transit. The recommendation not to react to the restriction, in many cases proved correct, saving the extra fuel cost of an unnecessary reroute.  

Use Case 3 – The cost-based prioritisation of intervention resulted in some flights with relatively low risks being rerouted as the cost of delay was very high. Other flights with higher risk of ATFM delay were not rerouted as the cost of reroute outweighed the benefit of taking action.