Overview
A leading airline partnered with Birlasoft to enhance flight operational efficiency with a microservices-based application hosted on AWS cloud for high availability and failover, achieving high performance through caching, lazy loading, and an optimized scheduling and event framework.
Challenges
- Errors in manual transfer of ATW (above the wing) and BTW (below the wing) data for Cargo Load Report preparation.
- Before flight take-off, the weight and balance of the flight need to be validated due to safety reasons. Ramp agents used to capture the data in the paper-based cargo load report form and submit it to the crew for the weight and balance checks, which was then fed manually to the third-party systems depending on the airline for the required validations and performance calculations.
- In case of failures, there was no real-time alerting/notifications to the Ramp Agents for the corrections. The entire process was manual and error-prone, causing cancellations or delays in flight take-off affecting customer experience.
- Potential weight and balance errors led to heavy fines by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
- Expenses related to paper documentation and management.
Solution
- Microservices-based Electronic Cargo Load Report application hosted over the cloud for high availability and failover with high performance through caching, lazy loading, and optimized scheduling and event framework.
- Application enables electronic submission of passenger ATW, and luggage, cargo (BTW) information for weight and balance performance calculation without any human intervention.
- Integration with several interfacing systems using Kafka, TIBCO EMS, and IBM MQ.
- Platform with configurable business rules and validations through a custom-developed rule engine.
- Achieved accuracy for pre-check validation (using rule engine), speed, improved departure efficiency, and data quality.
- Real-time handling of alerts and events.
AWS Services used - AWS-DynamoDB, AWS Kinesis, AWS ECS, AWS VPC
Value Created
The electronic cargo load report application enhanced synergy and efficiency in the following ways -
- Improved data accuracy and flight operational efficiency.
- Reduced delays and enhanced on-schedule accuracy with the help of process automation.
- Scalable and fault-tolerant solution that is capable of handling 500 concurrent incoming requests and messages, and processing 5000 incoming requests and messages per day with 10% growth per year.
- Utilized caching for enhanced performance and cost savings via fewer DB read transactions.
- Successfully handled a 25% increase in incoming events while maintaining smooth operation.
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