easyJet opens new AI equipped operations control centre

easyJet has opened a brand new operations Integrated Control Centre in Luton to manage its daily flight programme of around 2000 flights. The new centre has embedded AI into its day to day practices to aid faster and better decision making to help improve the customer experience. For example, tools to help predict standby crew requirements and a crew planning tool which helps to recommend and select the best crew options for the needs of the operation. 

More than 250 specialists work in the 24/7 control centre managing more than 340 easyJet aircraft flying up to 300,000 customers to 35 countries on more than 1000 routes to 155 airports every day. The new state-of-the-art facility houses experts working across the operation to get flights off the ground and to their destination, safely and on time. Roles in the centre range from route planners,  crewing teams to ensure pilots and crew are correctly allocated to flights, teams dealing with aircraft allocation and aircraft maintenance as well as live customer communications. 

New ICC facility has been thoughtfully designed to ensure the team have a calm environment where noise is limited, the team have natural daylight with dark desks and individual desk lighting so they can create the best working environment for them and a brand new rest room with reclining chairs and dark green walls and ceilings which is proven to engender a relaxing environment.

We have provided teams with a new generative AI tool called Jetstream, which gives them instant access to policies, procedures and information which will enable them to solve operational issues as they occur. And in the coming months, we plan for AI-led technology will be placed in the hands of our crew as well. This bespoke tool contains the information from eight operational manuals to aid ICC with a wealth of information making around 3000 pages of manuals available at their fingertips like never before.

Johan Lundgren, CEO of easyJet, commented: “We are really pleased to have our new operations control centre up and running in time for the summer season ramp up, providing our operational team with a modern and bespoke facility from which to manage up to 13,000 flights a week. At easyJet, we saw the potential early on for data to improve customer experience and operational efficiency which could help us provide a better flying experience for our customers, crew and pilots. And while you can’t always see it, the technology is already hard at work in the air and on the ground helping us predict exactly what food and drink we need for certain routes while minimising food waste, aiding predictive maintenance decisions and helping us to ensure we have the right aircraft on the right routes to best match demand. We continue to invest in and deepen our knowledge and use of AI, with a rapid deployment team working on 250 live use cases across our operations and scheduling, customer service, the booking experience and easyJet holidays.”

Gill Baudot, Director of Network Control, for easyJet said: “Each and every day my whole team are responsible for, and entirely focused on, safely getting more than a quarter of a million passengers to their destinations, navigating the many and varied challenges that Europe’s busy and complex airspace can bring. Providing our people with generative AI solutions at their fingertips helps to speed up decision making to solve operational issues as they occur and we can see many ways to further build on the progress we have already made and enhance this in the near future.” 

AI is also transforming our customers’ ability to fly where they want, when they want. Its predictive qualities are already being used to free up over a million additional seats a year. Every month, thousands of planes are swapped, making sure larger capacity aircraft with up to around 50 more seats on each plane are deployed where AI predicts there is additional demand for seats on the most popular routes. And this benefits our passengers’ wallets as, with more seats available where there is demand, they can get seats at lower prices and we also ensure our planes fly fuller.

We have been using predictive maintenance for many years now to indicate when parts need to be replaced thereby avoiding technical delays and AI is also helping us to predict where we need standby crew in advance, minimising delays and disruption costs. Our aircraft are also being fitted with new software that helps them interact in real time with air traffic control across Europe. AI is helping us pinpoint precise aircraft locations with much more accuracy helping speed journeys and reduce emissions.