AMORPH.aero: Capacity Planning @ VINCI Airports group: the Nantes airport case study
VINCI Airports is among the most dynamic players in the global aviation market with a network of 36 airports in seven countries, 12 airports in France, and 10 in Portugal, including major cities such as Lyon and Lisbon.
In 2017, global air IT solution provider SITA was selected as a partner to deploy airport management solutions among the airports of the VINCI group. As a partner, Amorph Systems supports with its AMORPH.aero solution, whenever predictive solutions for capacity planning and operational flow management are needed.
Amorph Systems provides its Terminal Operations Management platform AMORPH.aero. This platform is able to connect to various data sources and incorporate all kinds of predictive patterns to create a full overview of the terminal capacity planning. Within the European-funded AERFOR project, the AMORPH.aero platform is continuously improved and adapted to real-world airports’ requirements.
Nantes airport was selected as one of the first airports of this group to get various systems for airport management, including SITA’s AMS6 and Airport Pulse platform.
With around 5.5 million passengers per year and a growth rate of nearly 15% in passenger numbers, capacity planning is a very important and truly challenging task at Nantes. Also, not only passenger numbers are getting higher, but also passenger behavior is changing, for example, the usage of Check-in due to self- and mobile check-in possibilities. These changes have to be transferred into the overall airport capacity planning evaluation, as it makes no sense to look at a single process without the impact on the whole Terminal system.
The solution – SITA Airport Pulse & AMORPH.aero Flow Prediction
Together with the SITA Airport Pulse platform, Amorph Systems could help Nantes airport to deliver a flexible and scalable solution to cover all relevant check-points and services that are necessary to monitor and predict for the capacity planning process of the airport. With a focus on security checkpoints, the system provides forecasts depending on the flight times, predicted passenger numbers, and their show-up profiles at security. Depending on the given SLA’s, planners see at once the demand for staff to keep waiting times under a certain threshold without oversizing.
The past solutions at Nantes airport were siloed and made for specific processes. So, they were not connected to each other and able to generate an overall picture. This leads over time to inefficiency in working with these, as the preparation, execution, and comparison of results are pretty time-consuming.
“Amorph Systems products are developed with the agile method, directly alongside players in airport management, making them immediately functional and tailored to requirements. Nantes Airport is pleased to have chosen Amorph Systems to further improve its capacity for forecasting and simulating its resource requirements.”
Eric Siret, Security Systems Manager, Nantes airport
With this approach, Nantes airport managed not only to get valuable insights into their processes whenever needed but also reduced dramatically the need to work hours spent to produce valuable predictions. This gained time can now be spent focusing on other relevant topics within the planning process.
“In this project we have shown that AMORPH.aero is able to improve predictability and the daily work for planners no matter if this is a big Hub airport or a smaller regional airport like Nantes. The great teamwork together with Nantes airport colleagues made this a success.”
Andreas Hofmann, Director Business Development, Amorph Systems
Developing innovative solutions for capacity planning
This case study has contributed results to the Horizon 2020-funded project AERFOR of the European Union. AERFOR has the aim to support Amorph Systems in further developing innovative solutions for capacity planning and operations at airports.
