Improving airline pilot training with digital scheduling
2019 Award for Technical Excellence
Our team replaced a manual, spreadsheet-driven scheduling process at a global airline with a web-based scheduling solution, cutting the process time in half. This solution has eliminated hours of daily manual effort, significantly boosting the productivity of pilot training planners and instructor supervisors.
Category: Agile Applications and Digital Experiences
Mahesh Kumar V K, Ramesh Nallasamy
Pilot training is essential for commercial airlines. Scheduling pilot instructors efficiently enables airlines to optimize use of their classrooms and flight simulators so they can keep pilots current on their training and maintain a full flight schedule.
Our team replaced a manual, spreadsheet-driven scheduling process at a global airline with a web-based scheduling solution, digitizing the workflow and cutting the process time in half, from 10 to 15 days per month for 22 different training sections, to an average of 5 days. This solution has eliminated what had been 4 to 5 hours of manual intervention daily, significantly boosting the productive hours of training planners and instructor supervisors.
The solution seamlessly integrates with the airline’s Training Management System (TMS, implemented by DXC Technology several years ago), which maintains the master training schedules. As instructors request their work times, the entire process is managed without manual intervention, and the TMS is automatically updated, eliminating data entry errors. The solution has an easy-to-use, tablet-friendly interface, critical because the instructors use iPads issued by the airline.
Candy Crush design
"Being truly agile will help businesses see the value of software development."
A key innovation was the implementation of a gamified backfill process that helps planners and supervisors assign unpicked work to available instructors. This was done with an intuitive, “Candy Crush”-style design that reduced the monthly backfill process from 1 to 2 days to merely hours.
The solution advances the airline’s digital transformation journey and provides a template for solution delivery on other projects. The team’s agile delivery model consisted of continuous releases to production, starting with a minimum viable product on the first release and adding incremental functionality in each subsequent release. Between releases, the team collaborated with the business team and ran small pilot projects with the most vulnerable user groups to get feedback and improve the prototype. Close collaboration with the business team helped ensure that the solution was easy to use and stable.
View all the 2019 Awards for Technical Excellence.