Northwest Airlines Increasing Efficiency with Sensis Airport Airside
Operations Management System
Aerobahn Providing Real-Time, High Quality
Airside Operations Information
DEWITT, NY - January 28, 2005 - Sensis Corporation announced that Northwest Airlines has awarded a five year contract to provide Aerobahn Service at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP), and continue the service at Detroit Wayne County Metropolitan Airport (DTW). Aerobahn is a powerful toolbox that increases visibility into critical airside operations. At DTW, the Aerobahn Traffic Monitor is the primary tool used by Northwest Airlines ramp controllers to manage traffic into and out of the ramp area. It is also used extensively by ground operations staff responsible for managing winter deicing events. Approximately 70% of Northwest Airlines passengers transfer through DTW, the 10th busiest airport in North America in terms of movements. At MSP, in addition to Northwest Airlines personnel in the local control center, performance analysts, strategic planners and dispatchers at the airline's Systems Operations Center use the displays to monitor operations at both airports. With Aerobahn, Northwest Airlines can view, monitor and quantifiably measure operations in real-time, playback operational events for post-event analysis, decrease routine voice communications, more efficiently manage pushbacks and movement in the ramp area, and reduce taxi times.
"By using Aerobahn for surface operations data, we have been able to improve our DTW hub operation," said Bob Muhs, Managing Director System Operations Control, Northwest Airlines. "Every minute of reduced taxi time results in a significant savings in fuel and improves on-time performance. Further, we have seen that by viewing real-time data during a particularly severe deicing event, we are able to reduce cancellations."
Northwest Airlines commenced commercial use of Aerobahn at DTW in March 2003. Since that time, Sensis has expanded its Aerobahn Service offering to include a number of new features, including detailed taxi time and throughput reports. Further, Sensis has expanded the surveillance infrastructure at DTW to provide full coverage of all the deicing pads. This additional coverage has enabled Northwest Airlines to measure the effectiveness of the execution of deicing plans, and adjust policies and procedures accordingly.
The Aerobahn platform is a secure web-based architecture, which collects surveillance data from Sensis' Multistatic Dependent Surveillance (MDS) multilateration system and other surveillance sources and flight plan data and transforms the data into real-time information. Northwest Airlines' Aerobahn Service currently features three components: the Operations Snapshot which enables users to quickly assess key performance measures and ground operations such as arrival times segmented by runway; the Traffic Monitor which enables users to monitor and quantifiably measure operations in real-time; and the Operations Analysis which enables users to play back operational events for post-event analysis to identify trends and better predict the impact of future events. The service will be expanded to include Sensis' Operations Center Command and Control, which will enable Northwest to view operations at multiple airports in real-time, with an understanding of current operational constraints at the respective airports.
"Aerobahn provides airlines and airports with visibility into operations, assisting them in making time critical decisions which directly reduce unit operating costs." said Marc Viggiano, president of Sensis' Air Traffic Systems division. "If Aerobahn were implemented at the top 60 U.S. airports, annual savings in taxi-out time alone could exceed $160 million."
