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  • Academic/Airline: USD 300 for AGIFORS members (register here for free membership)
    Non-members pay USD 50 extra.
  • Industry/Government: USD 600
  • Vendor: USD 900
Cancellation is possible up to two weeks prior to the event (we prefer not to of course), with a fee of USD 100 to cover the expenses made. After that a refund is not possible anymore.



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Agenda

 

 

Tuesday, 09 April, 2019

19:00 21:00 Welcome Reception at … in the Camino Real Hotel
   

Wednesday, 10 April, 2019

08:30 09:00 Morning Coffee/Registration
09:00 09:10 Welcome Address by Agifors
 

 

Marcel Sol

09:10 09:20 Welcome Address by AeroMexico
 

 

Nicolan Rhoades

09:20 10:00 Keynote Address
10:00 10:30 Smart Manpower Planning Solutions and how to overcome the challenges of today’s operational complexity
    Franziska Burmester - M2P Consulting / WePlan
 

 

In recent years, Manpower Planning has become increasingly demanding due to its growing complexity. As a result, we received many requests from our customers to support them plan their workforce and improve efficiency and Total Cost of Delivery.

Therefore, we developed a smart tool that helps not only to analyze, forecast and optimize short- and long-term resource plans, but also provides intuitive solutions and is fun to work with. The cloud-based Manpower Planning solution replaces the error-prone excel files most planners still use today. It is a central and fully transparent platform that enables performance tracking, optimization, collaboration and guided working. We show how the features create a customized and individual planning environment for our customers and support them in their strategic and operational decisions. 


 

 

Bio Franziska is co-founder of WePlan – a software services company which has been founded last year as a spin-off of M2P Consulting.

WePlan offers a cloud-based solution for long-term workforce planning which has been developed over the past years to support especially airline clients with the increasingly complex task of Manpower Planning of air crews.

Franziska is based in Frankfurt, Germany and has been working as a consultant in the aviation industry since more than 5 years. She has deep knowledge and extensive experience in the field of airline operations. Her projects comprise crew management with a strong focus on Manpower Planning and crew cost optimization as well as process digitalization for a number of significant airlines and airports in Europe, North-America and the Middle East.


10:30 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 12:00 Airline Updates
11:00

11:10

Jeju Air

11:10

11:20

Air France - KLM - Transavia France

11:20

11:30

American Airlines

11:30 11:40

Delta Air Lines

11:40

11:50

Deutche Lufthansa AG

11:50 12:00

IndoGo Airlines

12:00 13:00 Business Luncheon
13:00 14:00 Sponsor Presentations
13:00

13:15

The Boeing Company - Gold

13:15

13:30

AD Opt - Gold

13:30 13:45

Arcos - Gold

13:45

14:00

Sabre - Gold

14:00 14:30 Introduction to the 777X
    Leon Poon and Robert Moss
 

 

Earlier this year, The Boeing Company introduced the 777X, which will become a complete game changer in the twin aisle market. In comparison to the current 777, this aircraft will offer greater range, higher fuel efficiency, more seats, and a more comfortable cabin, while also introducing the largest engine on a commercial airliner and an all-new 4th generation composite wing with folding wing tips. The 777X also incorporates many breakthroughs in flight deck technology that will alleviate the workload on flight crews and enable same fleet flying with the 777 and 787.

This presentation will serve as an overview of the 777X and will offer a glimpse as to how airlines will be able to leverage these state-of-the-art technologies to open new growth opportunities.

   

BioLeon Poon is currently the Regional Director for Flight Deck & Crew Analysis at Boeing. In this role, Leon provides expertise to internal and external customers on the costs of flight crews to airlines and how they can leverage the value of a true Boeing family of aircraft to streamline their operations. Prior to joining Boeing in 2014, Leon held several positions at Qantas, and was previously a 777 and 747 pilot at Cathay Pacific.

 

 

Bio: Robbie Moss is currently a Flight Crew Cost Specialist at Boeing in the Airline Financial & Economic Analysis team. In this role, Robbie supports the development of flight crew cost analyses for internal and external customers. Prior to this role, Robbie completed a 2-year rotational program at Boeing, where he was exposed to finance, strategy, supply chain, and marketing roles.

14:30 15:00 Redefining Airline Operations and Crew Tracking
    Daniel Stecher - IBS Software 
 

 

In this presentation AGIFORS Crew attendees will get to:
• Learn about airline operations and crew tracking dynamics
• Understand evolution of airline operations, and the requirements of digitization
• Learn about using situational awareness in airline operations and crew tracking
• Learn how leading airlines are redefining their entire operations now
• Understand the benefits of a digital airline operations and crew tracking platform

   

Bio While working and visiting 112 airline OCC's in Europe, Americas, Africa, Middle-East and Asia Daniel always meets the same situation: non-integrated IT systems, paper, XLS, reactionary decision making, human interfaces. Whether legacy airlines, LCC, regional carrier, cargo or charter airlines, they’re all face the same challenges and requirements: Decision Making Quality, Process Automation, Disruption Management, Collaborative Decision Making, Costs and OTP. Daniel helps airlines Redefining Airline Operations.
As Vice President and Head of Global Sales for Airline Operations he is responsible for global sales and business development of the brand new airline operations digital platform "iFlight NEO".
Daniel created the OPS 2020 industry event which brings together global airlines and is dedicated to the global Airline Operations and Crew Management Community. http://ops2020.ibsplc.com/
Daniel has more than 25 years of experience spanning over the logistics industry (e.g. courier, express, parcel, air cargo, airport ground handling, freight forwarder, cargo carriers, airlines) and has been traveling more than one and a half million miles, in order to meet with industry experts and customers from the air cargo industry and airline business IT solutions industry.

15:00 15:30 Tea break
15:30 16:00 Applications of Flight Delay Simulation
    Dr Olga Perederieieva - Merlot Aero
   

Flight delays and disruptions reduce airline profits and cause inconvenience for passengers. Delays might occur because of multiple reasons that are usually outside of an airline control such as changes in weather conditions and unexpected aircraft failures. Delays in one part of the network might also propagate and cause delays in other parts of the network. Even though some delays are impossible to eliminate, it is possible to create more robust flight and crew schedules. One of the approaches that allow to achieve this is delay simulation. Simulation models can be calibrated by using historical delay information and can provide insights into delay reasons and costs. We investigate such simulation approaches for measuring robustness of existing flight schedules, identifying routes that are most prone to delays and analysing how crew pairings can be modified in order to create more robust solutions that do not cause significant increase of operational costs.

 

 

Bio: Olga is an Optimisation Developer at Merlot Aero Limited. She is experienced in operations research and software development. Olga holds a PhD in Engineering Science from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

16:00 16:30 From Zero to Crew Satisfaction Hero
    Myrthe van der Gaag & Stefan Hartmann - Lufthansa Systems
 

 


In a growing aviation industry with a strong forecasted crew shortage, crew satisfaction is becoming more and more important. Investing in IT solutions is probably an obvious thing to do but isn’t necessarily the best solution to increase your crew satisfaction.  

 

 

Bio Myrthe: Myrthe has a passion for Aviation. After receiving her bachelor degree in business administration at the ‘The Hague University in the Netherlands, she started her career in 2007 working for KLM. She fulfilled the position of Roster optimization analyst and continued in the crew planning area as manpower planner. She left the crew topic for a moment to discover Revenue Management in the Air France headquarters in Paris and finished in the E-commerce domain. 1.5 year ago she broadened her scope from 1 to multiple airline but back in the Crew topic, working as a senior consultant for Lufthansa Systems Airline Consulting.


Bio Stefan: After finishing his bachelor degree in business informatics Stefan joined Jeppesen as an IT business analyst and was responsible for Crew Paring und Rostering Solutions. He worked for customers like Deutsche Bahn and Air Berlin before he left the company in 2017. Searching for new challenges he joined Lufthansa Systems Airline consulting to extend his knowledge about Crew Solutions and the related business processes. Currently working for Lufthansa in the area of Bidding as for external European customers, Stefan tries to identify trends which will affect the Crew landscape in future

16:30 17:00 Crew pairing Optimization on a two-tier production platform
    Martin Hoffman & Mårten Ahlstedt  - Scaninavian Airlines
 

 


SAS operates a fleet of 158 aircraft whereof 58 are operated on a ACMI contract by external operators. As one part of the work to optimize total resources in all SAS operations and lower cost for production is using knowledge, experience and system support to improve productivity and robustness in all parts of the planning process. We will look into the planning process in general and the creation of crew pairings in particular and how to benefit by systems and people capabilities.


   

Bio Martin Hoffman
Martin has wide experience from various key positions within SAS Operations since 1997. He has been COO for Long Haul Operations, Value Stream Owner for the Plan to Execution process, Head of Crew Planning and lastly responsible for Operational Planning Optimization within SAS Group Operations.
Martin holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and an MBA in International Aviation from Concordia University.


Bio Mårten Ahlstedt
Mårten has held numerous positions within SAS Crew Planning since joining SAS in 2011. Engaged by the challenges within the crew planning field and operations research, Mårten now has the position as Head of Crew Optimization.
Mårten holds a Master of Science in Communication and Transport Engineering from Linköping University, Sweden


19:00 22:30 Conference Dinner sponsored by AeroMexico
   

Thursday, 11 April, 2019

08:30 09:00 Morning Coffee
09:00 09:30

Roster Change Impact Analysis


   

Anthony Carville - Rainmaker Business Technologies


09:30 10:00

Virtuous Cycles


  

Nicolas Rhoads - AeroMexico


10:00 10:30 Sponsor Presentations

10:00

10:15

Travelliance - Gold

10:15

10:30

AIMS - Silver

10:30

11:00

Coffee break

11:00 12:00 Sponsor Presentations

11:00

11:15

2E - Silver

11:15

11:30

Lufthansa System - Silver

11:30

11:45

Merlot.aero - Silver

11:45

12:00

NAVBLUE, an Airbus Company

12:00 13:00 Business Luncheon
13:00 13:30 Sponsor Presentations

13:00

13:15

GE Aviation Digital

13:15 14:00 Applying Analytics to Operational Problems
    Roberto Malvaez & Alison Camp - GE Aviation Digital
 

 


This session will review the results of three projects conducted by GE Aviation Digital across multiple airlines to solve crew-related operational problems by applying analytics. We will explore the determination of appropriate crew standby levels; this work included daily prediction of standby demand to accommodate crew sickness and uncovered flights. The second project identifies the root cause of crew-related delays at a station and the analysis to determine how to eliminate those delays. And finally, we will dig into the process utilizing historical flight data to assess the robustness of crew pairings and infer specific station and time buffers for pairing generation.


14:00 14:30

Solving the Nightmare of Crew Scheduling

    Punam Shah - Arcos
 

 


For over 20 years, ARCOS has worked with leading utility partners throughout North America to help respond, restore, and report during both blue and grey skies. When approached by an innovative major airline in 2017, our SaaS company learned that there are more similarities than differences across utility, airline, and other critical infrastructure industries.

ARCOS’s Callout Trip Management solution (ARCOS AscendTM) has evolved to help airlines solve their toughest flight crew trip coverage challenges, automating the process of filling open trips, eliminating the hours spent picking up an old fashioned phone, and decreasing the number of cancelled and delayed flights annually.



 

 

Bio Punam Shah is a business and technology professional with more than fourteen years of experience across multiple industries. Her expertise resides in addressing business challenges identified through client reviews, industry trends, and reports via technology solutions, partners and internal cross functional teams. Punam Shah is the National Account Manager for Aviation with ARCOS, a SaaS company that solves complex resource management issues for airlines and other industries. ARCOS has helped critical infrastructure companies reduce or eliminate union grievances, get the right resources faster, and improve response and restoration times for both daily operations and emergency events. 


14:30 14:40 Vendor Presentations

14:30

14:40

Apm Technology

   


16:30 22:30 City Tour and conference dinner
 

 

Friday, 12 April, 2019

08:30 09:00 Morning Coffee
09:00 10:00 Vendor presentations

09:00

09:10

ELP Aviation Inc.

09:10

09:20

Hitit Computer Services

09:20

09:30

IBS Software

09:30

09:40

Laminaar Aviation

09:40

09:50

M2P Consulting GmbH

09:50

10:00

Rainmaker Business Technologies

10:00 10:30 Integrated Planning
    Eduardo De la Mora - AeroMexico
   

As MEX airport is getting more congested year by year, the need of a robust and coordinated planning between Operations, Crew and Commercial 

 

 

Bio Joined Aeromexico 7 years ago, working all my professional life in the airline industry, since I was IT developer for crew planning until I joined the crew planning team from the business and analytics perspective. 

10:30 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 11:30 Airline Updates

11:00

11:10 

AeroMexico

11:10

11:20 

PSA Airlines

11:20

11:30 

Cathay Pacific

11:30 12:00 M2P Resource Management Study 2018 – Insights, Trends and Best Practices in Crew Management
    Marina Lützenberger - M2P Consulting
 

 


Last year M2P conducted a Resource Management Study at which many AGIFORS Participants participated. In course of the study, also 16 selected Heads of Crew Planning from 12 countries shared their’ insight-views of issues in Crew Management. The study further shares benchmarks and trends in Crew Management. The focus is set on Crew Productivity, Crew Management Processes, Crew Management Organizations, and the IT-Infrastructure supporting the departments’ activities. During this years’s AGIFORS we will share the major findings in all four categories. Topics cover crew productivity barriers, strategies for reserve planning, organizational benchmarks, Crew demands and IT system support.

 

 


Bio Marina is a Manager at M2P's Frankfurt office and has been with M2P since 2014. She is leading the Operations Management Practice which includes Operational excellence, Planning and optimization and Resource Management. Her experience with M2P includes extensive work with Airlines worldwide in different operational departments. Marina is particularly experienced in working with companies on Resource Management, Collective Bargaining, Business Process Optimization and Change Management. She holds a master's degree in Industrial Engineering with focus on Traffic Management and Aviation. 


12:00 13:00 Business Luncheon
13:00 13:30 Closing the loop - operational robustness in crew pairing
    Tomas Gustafsson - The Boeing Company
 

 

All airlines have some concept of operational robustness built into to their crew pairings. It might mean minimizing the number of aircraft changes or how close one can plan to the FDP limit. Common for most of these approaches are that they are typically based on anecdotal feedback from operations or tribal knowledge. In this talk we’ll review a few examples of current practices and point out some of the challenges or missed opportunities. Additionally we’ll look at some ideas for making the process more analytical and data driven, as well as using historical data directly when optimizing the pairings.

 

 

Bio Tomas Gustafsson is currently Product Manager for Analytics and Optimization, within Boeing Global Services' Crew & Ops portfolios. These portfolios cover a full airline crew management suite as well tactical planning to operations for aircraft and schedule. Tomas has been working withe these products for more than 20 years, with the last 15 in various management positions. He started as a research intern in Optimization and has since then worked with research, development, tech sales, business consulting, client installation projects and more. Tomas university background is mainly in Optimization and Analytics and this has typically been the focus in any of his positions to date.

13:30 14:30 Airline Updates

13:30

13:40

Qatar Airways

13:40

13:50

Scandinavian Airlines

13:50

14:00

Viva AeroBus

14:00 14:45 Reducing crew split in multi-rank pairing optimization problems
    Jaroslaw Pyzik - Sabre Airline Solutions
 

 


Airlines having multi base operations across various countries have always been troubled with the problem of keeping their crew together for the entire length of trip while still maintaining the manpower limitations and costs minimal. Although there are various restrictions that can be placed in the optimization system to try to achieve these goals, recently we have tried techniques for reducing the number of different bases, number of different pairing types, or number of pairings covering a set of flight legs within our optimization framework.

We intend to provide overview of the mathematical complexity while keeping the business aspect of the problem in the highlight. The talk will share initial test results and discuss further efforts that would enable us to achieve better crew friendly rosters right from the pairing level while not compromising on costs.

 

   

Bio Senior Operations Research Analyst and Developer at Sabre Polska sp. z. o.o , responsible for design and development of optimization solutions and products for airline industry problems like crew scheduling problem, pairing generation and crew recovery problem. MSc. in Mathematics, graduated from AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland. Areas of interest are also machine learning and image processing.


14:45 15:15 Can Machine Learning Guide Column Generation?
    Christophe Menager & Thibault Corneloup - Air France
   


After rosters are built by our optimizers, scheduling agents still have a few days to edit them before official publications of the rosters. We initiated a study to explore how we could limit the number of editions by changing the rosters obtained out of the optimizers. To do so, we trained a machine learning model which would predict the probability for a roster to be edited by an agent. We then implemented this predictive model directly in the column generator of our optimizer to filter out low potential variables.


 

 

Bio 

Christophe Menager is an Operations Research Engineer for Cabin Crew Scheduling at the Air France Operations Research Department.

Bio Thibault Corneloup is project manager for Cabin Crew Scheduling at the Air France Operations Research Department.

15:15 15:45 Tea break
15:45 16:00 Conference Close and Awards
    Marcel Sol


Hosting Airline



Call For Presentations

A meeting like this is nothing without content. And the content should come from you. For that reason I would hereby request if you would consider submitting a technical presentation for the conference also. So, come and share with us your ideas, thoughts, practical innovations, current trends, case studies, philosophies, and latest advances on the topics which are relevant to you. 




Presentation Registration


Requirements of Presenting

  • A 30-45 minute presentation
  • Willingness to comply with requests for additional information and clarification on abstract and/or presentation material
  • Willingness to tailor a presentation for the AGIFORS Crew Management audience and to accept direction from the selection committee in doing this
  • Must register and attend the meeting


Presentation entry deadline: March 20th 2019


Sponsors

The policy of AGIFORS for all their meetings are to have the registration fee for Airline staff and Academics as low as possible. The philosophy behind this is that academics are likely to enter new lines of thought into our field, and having a strong presence by airlines brings great value to both the vendors and the airlines.
It would therefore be great if
 your organisation could this year be one of our sponsors


 Gold (USD 4000)









 Silver (USD 2500)




Bronze (USD 1000)




 

Sponsor registration 


Social Activities

Welcome Reception

Tuesday April 9th, from 19:00 to 22:00 in Toy Garden in Camino Real

Network Dinner

Wednesday April 10th, from 19:00 in a restaurant in Camino Real


Network Event & Dinner

Thursday April 11th, from 17:00. A City tour followed by dinner and drinks in Cantina La no 20


Hotel

This year we have selected the Camino Real Polanco hotel for our venue.


Camino Real Polanco Mexico is located in one of the most important Financial and Business Center also Shopping District with exclusive and luxuries brands. Four Diamond Hotel designed by famous architect Ricardo Legorreta and considered as a Hotel Museum with more than 300 masterpieces. 
The h
otel offers 712 comfortable and spacious rooms distributed in 9 categories within 5 levels; seven World Class Restaurants: La Huerta (opened daily 24 hours), Bistró, María Bonita, Morimoto, China Grill, Beefbar and Centro Castellano; two Coffee Shops: Token Café and Café Tamayo and one Bar: Blue Lounge.


To attend a business meeting, the Business Center and Meeting Rooms are available. On the other hand, they have a Fitness Center with high-end equipment, one main outdoor and heated swimming pool and walking distance to Tourist and Cultural Sites like Chapultepec Castle, Anthropology Museum, Tamayo Museum and Modern Art Museum.


The rates we negotiated fot the event are:

  • USD 150 per night for the DeLuxe Room
  • USD 170 per night for the Garden View Room
  • USD 210 per night for the Camino Real Club Suite

All prices are excluding 16% VAT and 3% Lodging Taxes.

You can make this booking via the hotel web site using rate code "0604AGIF", or just click on the button below


Make the booking


Alternatively you can also scan this QR-code 


These rates are available from April 6th up to April 16th for those who want to extend their stay in order to explore this amazing city a bit further.


The hotel is currently updating their reservation system with these rates. Once completed there will be a link here through which you can make the reservation.



(source: https://www.caminoreal.com/hotels/details/cr/mex)


Visa Information

General Information

A visitor visa allows you to stay in Mexico for a period of up to 180 days if carrying out any unpaid activities. This includes tourism, volunteering, studying courses shorter than 6 months, transit and attending business meetings, among others, as long as you are absolutely sure that no monetary earnings will be derived from your activities in Mexico.


(source: Mexico gobierno de la Republica)


Do I need a Visitor Visa? 

The following picture shows which countries need a visa and which are visa-free:



(source Wikidedia)


Host City

Mexico City

Mexico City is one of the most enjoyable destinations. Its historic center, better known as Zocalo, is declared World Heritage by UNESCO and is the heart of a living culture that exudes everything accumulated since the founding of Tenochtitlan. Visit its neighborhoods flooded with art nouveau and art deco, enjoy its cuisine and lose yourself in the streets of the city with the most museums in the world.


(source: Visit Mexico)



(source: Karime Jiu Cortina)


General Information

Attire

Business Events - Business Casual

Welcome Reception - Business Casual

Social Events - Evening Casual


Weather

The  average temperature in Mexico City in April is quite nice with 27°C (80 °F). With on average three rainy days per month, it should be rather pleasant to be here at this time of year.


More Information

For questions or more information, please contact:


Marcel Sol

Chair, AGIFORS Crew Management Study Group

Tel: +974 66091969

Email: msol@qatarairways.com.qa


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