easyJet opens new AI

29.05.2024 - 13:07 / traveldailynews.com / Johan Lundgren / Vicky Karantzavelou

easyJet opens new AI airline operations control centre that will manage around half a million flights annually.

easyJet opens new AI Integrated Control Centre (ICC) in Luton to manage its daily flight programme of around 2000 flights. The new centre has embedded AI into its day to day practices to aid faster and better decision making to help improve the customer experience. For example, tools to help predict standby crew requirements and a crew planning tool which helps to recommend and select the best crew options for the needs of the operation.

More than 250 specialists work in the 24/7 control centre managing more than 340 easyJet aircraft flying up to 300,000 customers to 35 countries on more than 1000 routes to 155 airports every day. The new state-of-the-art facility houses that easyJet opens new AI experts working across the operation to get flights off the ground and to their destination, safely and on time. Roles in the centre range from route planners,  crewing teams to ensure pilots and crew are correctly allocated to flights, teams dealing with aircraft allocation and aircraft maintenance as well as live customer communications.

The new ICC facility has been thoughtfully designed to ensure the team have a calm environment where noise is limited, the team have natural daylight with dark desks and individual desk lighting so they can create the best working environment for them and a brand new rest room with reclining chairs and dark green walls and ceilings which is proven to engender a relaxing environment.

Airline have provided teams with a new generative AI tool called Jetstream, which gives them instant access to policies, procedures and information which will enable them to solve operational issues as they occur. And in the coming months, we plan for AI-led technology will be placed in the hands of our crew as well. This bespoke tool contains the information from eight operational manuals to aid ICC with a wealth of information making around 3000 pages of manuals available at their fingertips like never before.

Johan Lundgren, CEO of easyJet, commented: “We are really pleased to have our new operations control centre up and running in time for the summer season ramp up, providing our operational team with a modern and bespoke facility from which to manage up to 13,000 flights a week. 

“At easyJet, we saw the potential early on for data to improve customer experience and operational efficiency which could help us provide a better flying experience for our customers, crew and pilots. And while you can’t always see it, the technology is already hard at work in the air and on the ground helping us predict exactly what food and drink we need for certain routes while minimising food waste,