EDS Tunes SOA, Cloud for Continental Airlines Operations

EDS will combine SOA and cloud services to help Continental Airlines automate some flight operations and save money. The solution, to be delivered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS), will leverage EDS' Airline SOA platform.

by Vance McCarthy

Tags: Flight, EDS, Flight Planning, Route, SaaS, Cost, Automate,



"The EDS Flight Planning Services will allow us to take full advantage of our modern fleet capabilities, achieve significant fuel savings and increase our operational flexibility," said Continental's executive vice president of Operations Mark Moran, in a statement. Even from the cloud, EDS' SaaS solution will seamlessly integrate with all Continental's in-house flight operations services, he added.

"Effective flight planning will enable Continental to reduce costs and increase operational efficiencies," said Eric Harte, a vice president at EDS, a unit of HP. The EDS team will combine deep expertise in the airline industry and applications development to transform Continental's flight operations environment to optimize its cost per available seat mile."

EDS Flight Planning SaaS offering help dispatchers and pilots more quickly evaluate all the external factors that affect flight plans and react more quickly to changing environments using only a web browser. The system can calculate the best operational flight plans to take into consideration weather, navigational data, airport restrictions and even fuel consumption.

These ESD Flight Planning services are available as SaaS

  • Easy Route and Pilot Plan - Automates route maintenance and provides self-planning tools for pilots
  • Crew Briefing Package - Bundles flight-specific documents into one package for the flight crew and makes it available through the Internet
  • FlightGlobe - Provides powerful visual cues for flight watch and analysis of conditions around the world
  • Best Route Selection - Reviews route restrictions and automatically determines flyable routes
  • Automatic Airport Selection - Enables selection of airports by operational hours, weather status and infrastructure status
  • Historical and Statistical Weather Data - Lets operators search statistical winds back to 1948 for random routes for planning and analysis
  • Least Cost Flight Planning - Calculates a variety of optimum flight plans reflecting chosen criteria such as fuel cost and/or over flight charges and
  • NOTAM and SMART NOTAM - Gives critical "notices to airmen" regarding flight planning and operations

    • Over the terms of the contract, EDS will deliver to Continental a suite of SOA-based SaaS services, the companies said. In addition to the current Flight Planning service, EDS is developing services for Air-to-Ground Messaging, Load Planning and Aircraft Movement.


    back

    Share
    Go