At Aeriaa, Innovagency is not a newbie, they represent one of the first posts about the beauty of their ANA Aeroportos de Portugal and Madeira Airports smartphone/tablet app and its
AirTalk with…Pedro Lobo. Innovagency Co-Founder (ANA Airports App)
At Aeriaa, Innovagency is not a newbie, they represent one of the first posts about the beauty of their ANA Aeroportos de Portugal and Madeira Airports smartphone/tablet app and its use for tracking a flight (see both posts here, beauty and use). As an aviation and technology related blog, the airports’ apps gather both worlds, it is unquestionable the tremendous potential of a mobile application as a “partner” of any passenger at any airport. I think it will one of the most successful combinations of technology to the serve of the people and the transportation business. It allows to put every passenger in contact with the business and services owners, providers ant whole process of travel experience, form its conception to to the destination and beyond, or perhaps aren’t there further duties to do after reaching the destination? Or aren’t there a satisfaction sense after the trip to be analysed or exploited?. A College’s teacher of mine, Javier Recuenco (you can know more about him at his LinkedIn profile and in about.me) is evangelizing the concept behind this, Personalization, for me this is the ones of the better platforms for applying “Personotechnics”, we wear devices, we see and being seen with them more than ever in the history.
Coming back to the AirTalk, I’m glad to introduce Pedro Lobo, Co-founder and Head of International Business Development and Communication at Innovagency. I wanted to ask him about the design process of this app in a special environment as the airports are. I also asked him about some technologies aspects and project’s topics as testings phase.
I hope you like it.
ANA Aeroportos de Portugal App.
AirTalk with…Perry Rees, more than 35 years at aviation.
Welcome to a new AirTalk, this is with Perry Rees (LinkedIn profile), he has a huge airline and aviation IT projects related experience. He had worked at British Caledonian, British Airways, EDS, SITA, Logica and now he is a freelancer, his services within the IT and Aviation Sector are focused to Airports, Airlines, Ground Handling Agents, Aviation Regulatory Authorities and IT companies providing services to such organisations.
In this interview you will find comments about Airport’s Privatization, the importance of the Middle-East’s Hub, Perry’s experience at airlines and airports environments and about Spain, its airports and a beneficent cause in the Santiago’s Way.
Perry at Plaza del Obradoiro (Obradoiro’s Square), the end of the Santiago’s Way. It is really exciting, you have to try it.
On Mobile use at Commercial Aviation. An introduction.
Few years ago I started a new university degree in Telecommunications, more than ten years after I finished Computer Sciences. As I’m mixing aviation and technology topics in this blog, I remembered few days ago that I did, in 2011, a brief writing about Mobile Communication at Aircraft (MCA onwards), and I would like to share with you now.
AirTalk with…Jürgen Weder – Neuropie’s CEO
I have the pleasure to premiere a new section at Aeriaa, AirTalks. These are interviews with people that I think they can contribute with interesting issues, thoughts and opinions. I have to say that these interviews don’t have any personal commercial benefit or have nothing to do with my professional daily work. There are only a reflection of my passion about aviation, airports and technology, as Aeriaa represents. So, lets me introduce the first AirTalk.
Jürgen Weder is the Neuropie’s CEO. Neuropie is a 10 years old swiss based consultancy firm. Zeus is their star product for providing operational business intelligence to airports. Their key projects are the Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport Management Center (Sheremetyevo had recently awarded by ACI as the Best European Airport in 2012), Zurich Airport Zeus implementation and AMC for South African Airports (ACSA). You also can follow the Jürgen’s blog, Airport Operation.
Jürgen Weder – Neuropie’s CEO
I would like to thank Mr.Weder for his kindly disposition for this interview. In this interview we talk about Airport Management Centers, Airport Collaborative Decision Model (A-CDM), innovation and trends. I hope you will find it interesting.
On the Aeriaa Airport Dashboard (part VI). Events Logger
Some days ago, a friend of mine, Ram, put me on the track of Splunk, I’ve never noticed it, so I downloaded it and at the first glance I knew it was perfect for the Logger component of the Dashboard’s architecture, let’s remember it (if you are new to this blog see the previous posts):
So, I put to test a little with it. Let see all after the jump.
On airports Mobile Apps (ANA Portugal) Tracking a flight
In the previous post about the beautiful ANA mobile App, I just simply shown some screen captures. This week, I downloaded the Aeroportos de Portugal iPhone App in order to focus in the flight tracking characteristics. This is my analysis.
ANA iPhone flight tracking
On the Aeriaa Airport Dashboard (part V) – Time milestones.
Before processing thousands of events, scenarios, etc. for feeding the Dashboard, I would like to show the a dimension that put in context almost every event. The time dimension. Delays are the “Oh, no, a delay again, what was the captain reason this time?” The late arrival of the plane, air regulation over the airport…I heard once that the guilty factor was the “shamefulness of being part of an airline because the ramp handling staff were late….some other details were given by the captain and it was a gesture of honesty”. We, the passengers only concern about only time milestone, the scheduled departure time of our flight, and pray for not have a big delay, but there are always 10, 15 minutes of courtesy. In this post, you will see dozens of time milestones, that impact over all the punctuality process of the flight operation and consequently will be marked in the Dashboard we are defining in this blog (this is the part V of this series).
On the origins of the Airline’s Electronic Reservations Systems. Iberia, Aviaco and IBM’s study (Part II)
In the first part of this series, I talked about the early steps taken by Aviaco and Iberia in order to mechanize the reservations processes, one of these steps was an IBM study for collecting the basic requirements, model the basic data, tests the concept and make projections about the reservation’s business. This post is about this study, book a seat.
On the beginning of Stealth planes. From Cold War to Iraq
I’ve been reading a book of the Skunk Works (Lockheed Martin’s Advance Development Programs) history, and the story about the beginning of the stealth planes trapped me. This is a tale about spying, project management, applied science, military visionaries, processes improvement, politics and the most famous war night broadcasted on TV.
On the origins of the Airline’s Electronic Reservations Systems. A grandfather’s history (Part I)
This is the my grandfather’s story about the one of the first european airline’s electronic reservations systems.
Photo. UNIVAC 494
The beginning of this story took place in late 50′s, the local spanish airline Aviacion y Comercio (Aviaco, IATA:AO, ICAO:AYC) had two visionary workers Pepe Fernandez Monreal (my grandfather) and Rafael de la Torre. They wondered on how to manage the ungovernable manual reservation growth. This is the little story of their achievemt and it is also about the competition between IBM and UNIVAC computer makers. Please take your boarding pass.
On the Aeriaa Airport Dashboard. (part IV) Events
It’s time to talk about the airport’s events, one of the more complex situation in the airport’s management is to monitorize the thousand of events that are fired every day and manage them in order to take decisions. Events as flights delays, long check-in lines, the time milestones of a fligh operation (I will talk about some of them soon), aircraft maintenance, refuelling, weather conditions, security and safety incidents, baggage processing phases, air navigation events, terminal comfort (illumination, heating…), etc, etc. If there is a place where the “butterfly effect” take place this is an airport. A simple event can raise delays not only in the airport, but it will cause delays in other networked airports. It’s familiar to you the Captain’s apologize. “We are sorry for the departure’s delay, it is caused due a ‘late’ arrival of the previous flight…” Read more
On Project Management and Joint Strike Fighter Program (and part III)
In the final article of the JSF posts series (Part I, Part II) I want to talk about (sorry this post is a little bit arid 
):
- Lessons learned and the positives risks of hte JSF competition program.
- A few details of the ongoing F35 procurement plan, extracted of the US Congress’ Government Accountability Office (GAO) JSF Report issued on June 2012.
- The software growth on the F35 program. And a little pill about the C++ coding guide for the aircraft computers.
Lessons learned
Dilbert.com copyright.
On the Aeriaa Airport Dashboard (part III) – AODB and BHS
Following the Aeriaa Dashboard (see part I and part II), it’s time to talk about data sources, this includes systems that provide information for our Aeriaa Dashboard architecture. In the basic architecture diagram, shown in part II, you can see the Databases and Airport Systems components.
Let’s put in context a couple of systems that we are going to use in our Dashboard.
On Project Management and Joint Strike Fighter Program (part II)
In the first post (On Project Management and Joint Strike Fighter Program (part I)) I introduced the JSF contract competition and I started to talk about Project management thoughts related to the Nova documentary about the JSF program. In this post I would like to continue with it.
Writing as a scriptwriter of interlaced movies, I move forward in this story to talk about the present situation of the F35 program:
- In a report, issued by the Government Accountability Office (they work for the US Congress) on june 2012, the estimated cost of one F35 unit raised from $69 millions, not the objective of JSF to cost the third of the $100 million F22 unit costs, raised to $133 million! one third more of the F22.
- Problems with stakeholders realtionship, between Lockheed Martin and DoD is awful. The Joint Program Office (JPO) Manager, a two-star general, said “The relationship between Lockheed Martin, the JPO, and the stakeholders is the worst I’ve ever seen — and I’ve been in some bad ones”.
- Problems with software and the helmet. This plane is too advanced that about 12 million lines of code (mainly C++) and the complexity of the helmet device make this beauty aircraft a real headache for everybody.
- In 2006 it is planned to procure 1.591 units, now the number decreases to….365.
On Project Management and Joint Strike Fighter Program (part I)
I highly recommend you to view the following video about the Joint Strike Fighter contract competition for building the new All-in-one fighter for the USAF, Marines and Navy. You almost need two hours for watching it (you have the audio transcription in this site Nova Transcript). But please, read first this post.
It’s about competition, project management, team working, and another example of the american industry getting used to accomplish huge challenges. If you like airplanes you’ll get surely fully satisfied.
On the Aeriaa Airport Dashobard (part II). Architecture
In the previous post (On the Aeriaa Airport Dashobard part I) I introduced the environment of this little demo project. I want in this post define the project scope, in order to develop the “Project Charter”
- Aeriaa airport, principal stakeholder need an airport dashboard for viewing the status of the primary airport processes.
- These processes (or flows) are: airplane process, passenger processes (departures and arrivals flows), baggage processes and another group (not less important) with security, power, IT, etc.
- The dashboard will inform about the status and the future trends and affections of processes and between them.
- Simple navigation, concise, and simplicity with data visualization.
- We will access to the dashboad from everywhere.
Also, this dashboard will be used as source for process reengineering. Read more
On airport models
Today I want to delve into a passion since I was a kid, the models. I think I made more than 100 airplane models, mainly in 1/72 scale, every Xmas I wrote a letter with 10 models, fun for months
The best brand I bought those days were Hasegawa and the worse probably Italieri (I didn’t like its plastic), other brands as Revell, Tamiya (the best but expensive) were passing by my hands. The best models I’ve made were the F18 Hornet with the Spanish decals!, SR71 Blackbird, Spitfire, Hurricane, F14 Tomcat, and a Mirage IV with the free-fall nuclear weapon, it was a gift from french family.
