Pentaho helps Lufthansa quickly identify passenger data transmission errors in its partner airline network

Customer
Lufthansa IT product management can now identify and respond to problems in real time
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is a global aviation company. The group is organized in five business areas: passenger traffic, logistics, technical services, catering and IT services. Its airlines Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss and Germanwings carry more than 100 million passengers annually to over 240 destinations. Deutsche Lufthansa AG is the largest European airline by number of passengers and revenue.

QUICK FACTS > Industry: Travel > Headquarters: Frankfurt, Germany > Website: http://konzern.lufthansa.com > Products: Pentaho Data Integration, Pentaho Business Analytics, Pentaho Consulting

Challenge

At the start of their journey, passengers can already check in all the way through to their final destinations and receive boarding passes for all of their individual flight legs. This involves various passenger data being passed to the different airlines IT systems. The passenger data includes basic

Todays passengers can make use of numerous connections with other airlines within the Star Alliance network as well as partner airlines. The passenger systems unit at Lufthansa provides, among other services, the interfaces needed for these network operations and ensures smooth operations of the Inter Airline Through Check In (IATCI), which lets an agent from any Star Alliance or partner airline assign seats and issue boarding passes for a traveler's connections on other airlines.

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Passenger data transmission errors between airlines can lead to great inconveniences for travelers and negatively affect connected airline processes incurring additional costs. The common transmission standard EDIFACT, used by all airlines to exchange passenger data, is implemented in a legacy mainframe system and subject to the typical associated constraints. As airlines use a variety of different IT systems that feature EDIFACT as the single common transmission standard this restrictive interface continues to be used.

information such as seat assignment, frequent flyer number and further details like whether there is oversized baggage, an accompanying dog, a child traveling alone or a wheelchair.

Currently EDIFACT transmissions are recorded in static log files, which are overwritten on a weekly basis. In order to diagnose a transmission error after it occurs, a time-consuming manual search in the log files must then be undertaken in order to determine the scope of the problem. Lufthansa needed a solution that would make the core processes of Inter Airline Through Check In (IATCI) accessible, measurable and available for real-time operational monitoring. Lufthansa also wanted to deliver consolidated management reporting dashboards to inform decision making.

Problems arise mainly when airlines reconfigure their IT systems or implement new functions affecting the respective EDIFACT interface. This then leads to transmission errors. It is of high operational priority to quickly identify such transmission errors and to inform the respective airline about the problem immediately.

To fulfill this need, Lufthansa carried out a proof-of-concept with Pentaho and another open source business analytics vendor. In parallel, the airline evaluated further business intelligence alternatives by analyzing available literature. Important criteria were: > Time and effort as well as start-up costs for a first test implementation as internal proof-ofconcept Performance, functionality and adaptability of the solution Approach and philosophy of the BI vendor

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Lufthansa selected Pentaho for its innovative and user-friendly solution. The consulting and training on-site was also rated very positively. IT users were impressed by the ability to get up and running on the first day creating new data links using drag and drop visual tools. Pentaho also scored highly in terms of performance, functionality and value for money. Particularly important to Lufthansa is the flexibility and simplicity with which the solution can be quickly adapted in the future as well as its intuitive user interface.
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Solution
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Lufthansa uses the following Pentaho components for its operational BI implementation: Pentaho Data Integration Data retrieval, transformation and loading Pentaho Business Analytics Real-time data analysis and report generation

Pentaho is installed stand-alone on a powerful server with 16 CPU cores. The data is stored on a MySQL database. In the start-up configuration, data volume amounts to about 10GB per month. This will increase up to 200GB per month when Pentaho is expanded to cover more areas. By laying an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) around the existing system, additional interfaces were created which Pentaho can use to retrieve and analyze the data.

Results

Passenger handling is one of Lufthansas core business processes. Passenger handling failures immediately affect product quality and customer satisfaction and raise operational costs. With Pentaho, the area of Inter Airline Through Check In (IATCI) is now being monitored comprehensively in real-time for quality management. In future, the aggregated data will also be made available to feed into a management cockpit allowing analysis of the past three months as well as to provide a solid basis for decision making with the available real-time data.

Lufthansa is now instantly aware of transmission errors and can detect any patterns right away. Before, transmission errors could only be looked at on a per-case basis and further analysis was very time-intensive. Pentaho enables the airline to search large amounts of data in the shortest time for errors and recurring patterns. IT product management automatically receives respective alarm messages and can act without delay to keep the impact on passengers and operations to a minimum. Partner airlines are informed right away in the case of transmission errors between different IT systems for passenger data.

Summary

Deutsche Lufthansa AG, the largest European airline by number of passengers and revenue, relies on Pentaho to monitor one of its most important core processes, the handover of passenger data between different airlines. The process, referred to as Inter Airline Through Check In (IATCI), is implemented on legacy mainframe systems and relies on the single common transmission standard EDIFACT. When transmission errors occur they need to be diagnosed and communicated as a matter of urgency to the affected airlines. In order to capture transmission errors and downtimes comprehensively and in real-time for quality management, Lufthansa relies on Pentaho for its operational BI solution. Today Lufthansa is now instantly alerted to transmission error patterns so that they can be corrected quickly. Before Pentaho, errors could only be analyzed on a case-by-case basis and further examination and diagnosis was very time-intensive.
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Customer Quote

Passenger handling is one of our most important processes. When errors occur here, this has direct impact on our customers and the perception of product quality on the ground. We have therefore seen a great need to fully integrate the Inter Airline Through Check In processes into a quality management cycle. With Pentaho, we now are instantly aware if we are dealing with a single occurrence of an error or if there is a pattern. We can immediately take action in order to minimize the impact on our passengers. Pentaho is very intuitive to use and we can easily and flexibly adapt it to our changing requirements. We can well imagine using Pentaho in more areas in the future. I see great potential
- STEFAN GAUL, IT Product Management, Lufthansa

here.

2012, Pentaho. All Rights Reserved. pentaho.com. Worldwide +1 (866) 660-7555