Top 5 Airline Improves IT Related Delays

Company Profile

Fortune 100 Transportation

Industry

Transportation

Function

Incident Management & IT

Region

Global

Executive Summary

A Fortune 100 leader in global air transportation enterprise, faced a challenge in leveraging generative AI to prevent delays stemming from their IT systems. The goal was to reduce flight delays originating from IT system interruptions or slowdowns and improve overall operational productivity for IT teams. Their existing system relied on time-consuming physical meetings to relay information between shifts, leading to potential inefficiencies and prolonged delays in incident resolution.

This case study examines how their incident management team partnered with Aible to leverage enterprise-grade GenAI to improve flight delays through drive faster IT incident resolution times, more replicable solution steps, and increased efficiency in freeing up team resources by generating detailed timelines for everyday incident tickets.

Challenge

The Global Airline handles incident tickets every hour from different sources that are tracked by their IT system. These sources include: helpdesk ticketing, system uptime, staffing and baggage handling systems, check-in kiosks, line length management, stand-by passenger status, and baggage handover among others. Not all incidents can be resolved within a single shift of support and service agents, so it was necessary to summarize open tickets to help the next shift. This process of summarizing the day’s activities was done manually through mandatory teamwide meetings. This manual information transfer resulted in:

Potential for Escalation

Delays in information transfer could lead to incidents escalating to higher priority levels which ultimately causes flight delays.
Lack of Standardized Information

Lengthy shift handover meetings consumed valuable time and resources.
Lack of Standardized Information

Inconsistent incident management methods due to reliance on verbal communication.

Solution

The business team partnered with Aible to leverage a GenAI-powered solution that generates detailed, business-specific timelines of incidents from both structured and unstructured data sources. The first iteration was completed in 24 hours using data from the Crowd Strike event with 10 more iterations done overall in under 30 days; two of which were completed on a single live call. Key benefits included:

Business Benefits

Faster Resolution Times: Provides immediate access to incident information, preventing escalations and minimizing delays.

Improved Repeatability:
Detailed summaries of past incidents enable replicable solution steps, enhancing consistency.

Increased Efficiency: Eliminates the need for time-consuming shift handover meetings and over-communication, freeing up skilled technical workers.
Technical Benefits

Automated Summaries leverage GenAI to generate detailed timelines for incidents, leveraging both structured (proprietary databases, AWS Redshift and others) and unstructured (call transcripts, incident reports and more) data assets.

Use Case & Project Details

Use Case: Streamlining Incident Management

Potential Project Results:  
Improved incident resolution time, reduction in total incident escalations, reduction in overhead for team hours. 

Time from Data Provision to Project Completion: 
~30 days

Technical Highlights: The first iteration was completed in 24 hours with 10 iterations done overall; two of which were completed on a single live call.

Incident Summarization
& Insights

Fortune 10 Transportation Leader Empowers Incident Management Team with GenAI

Technology Stack

The Airline leverages Amazon Web Services and the Llama 3.1 LLM with Aible's Chat and Agent interfaces, processing semi-structured data from their proprietary incident management systems. In delivering this use case, the data was always contained within their private cloud account, where the models were also deployed - maintaining required enterprise-grade security and guardrails for data privacy and residency. The team leveraged the query execution infrastructure to get summaries quickly and prompt augmentation to customize their LLM to their business vernacular. The GenAI solution helped generate detailed summaries using the Aible platform.

Results

Aible helped the Incident Management team summarize the day’s incident tickets within seconds, allowing them to have a cohesive timeline of the day’s events and a clearer understanding between shifts of what must still be resolved. Aible's solution was rapidly deployed, with a working prototype delivered within 24 hours. The iterative development process resulted in 10 iterations within 30 days, showcasing the platform's ability to tailor itself to a specific business unit's needs. While impact data is still being collected over the next few months, the Global Airline anticipates significant improvements in key metrics, including:

Increased Overall Speed to Resolution

Reduction in total time to solve from better-informed team members allows for a more expedient resolution.
Reduction of Elevated Priority Incidents

Detailed timelines allow the team to see the history of elevated priority incidents, allowing for faster recognition and prevention of recurring incidents through resolution steps replicability; mitigating some events from escalating altogether.
Improved Resource Allocation

By no longer needing to use the time of skilled technical workers to relay the day’s events to the oncoming shift manually, valuable time resources can be reallocated.

Future Plans

The business team plans to expand the use of this AI-powered solution to other lines of business, including digital retail, fuel & APU management, sales, and customer personalization. This case highlights the transformative potential of AI in streamlining operations, improving efficiency, and driving business value in the fast-paced airline industry.