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Hotel

The official conference hotel is the W Doha Hotel & Residences located in the West Bay. 



W Doha is a five-star hotel offering business accommodation and lifestyle in West Bay Doha, Qatar.


Reveal the unexpected. Sparkling by Crystal blue water of the Arabian Gulf and Set against a breathtaking exotic desert landscape W Doha Hotel & Residences is located in the heart of Doha. Casual glamour meets urban energy where you will find insider access to the hottest shopping, buzzing nightlife and the ultimate culinary destination in the city.


The rate of the rooms will be QAR 700 for single person occupancy and QAR 800 for two persons, and includes breakfast. 

This rate is available from May 19th until May 29th. So, grab this chance to book a few days extra allowing you to explore the things Doha and the state of Qatar has on offer. If you do please realize that in Qatar the weekends are Friday and Saturday. 



Book the hotel


Hotel Phone:+974 4453 5000

Agenda



 Sunday, 22 May

18:00 20:00 Welcome Reception
  

 Monday, 23-May

08:30 09:00 Morning Coffee/Registration
09:00 09:15 Conference opening
09:15 10:00 Welcome address and Keynote speak
    Dr. Hugh Dunleavy - Chief Commercial Officer Qatar Airways
10:00 10:30 Coffee break
10:30 11:40 Arline Updates
10:30 10:40 Air Baltic
10:40 10:50 Air France
10:50 11:00 American Airlines
11:00 11:10 Qatar Airways
11:10 11:20 Saudi Airlines
11:20 11:30 South African Airways
11:30 11:40 United Airlines
11:40 12:10 Escape from Alcatraz
    Lana Kleimann - M2P Consulting
    IT has been and remains the critical enabler for airlines to achieve the
most effective and efficient management of their pilots and flight
attendants. For some, however, it is the IT of the past that is standing in
the way of progress; airlines have become prisoners of their IT! With the
business limits reached and operating costs spiraling more and more out
of control with legacy mainframes, airlines have begun (or are already
deep into) the critical, yet highly risky journey of replacement. The
speech will look into the development of crew management IT, reasons to
change, replacement trends, unexpected obstacles and opportunities to
make these projects more successful.
12:10 13:30 Business Luncheon
13:30 15:00 Sponsor Presentations - Part 1
13:30 13:45 AD OPT, a Division of Kronos - Gold 
13:45 14:00 InterDynamics Pty Ltd -Silver
14:00 14:15 Xenia - Silver
14:15 14:30 Jeppesen - Gold
14:30 14:45 2e Systems - Silver
14:45 15:00 Sabre - Gold
15:00 15:30 Tea break
15:30 16:15 Sponsor Presentations - Part 2
15:30 15:45 GE - Bronze
15:45 16:00 Constraint Technologies - Silver
16:00 16:15 Lufthansa Systems - Bronze
16:15 17:00 “Minimum Cost of Delivery” Manpower Planning
    Matthias Feix - M2P Consulting
    Crew related costs rank in the Top 3 of airline’s operational spending.
Today’s management goals usually focus on maximizing the productivity
of resources. In our view this approach is too short sighted – driving
productivity to the limits comes at the price of operational instability and
thus higher operational costs. We believe that there are good reasons to
question the concept of maximizing crew productivity and consider the
concept of minimizing total cost of delivery. The implementation of this
concept will increase the contribution of manpower planning on the
airline’s business decisions and allow better steering of crew and ops
related costs. The presentation will elaborate the manpower planning
concept of “Minimum Cost of Delivery”, requirements, success factors
 and limits of the concept. It is followed by an open discussion of the
 chances based on specific use cases.
18:30 22:30 Conference Dinner
  

Tuesday, 24-May

08:30 09:00 Morning Coffee
09:00 09:30 Crew management process robustness and its
impact on manpower planning and cost management
    Woong Oh and Leo Trap - Seabury
    Seabury will explore the importance of process robustness and its impact
on downstream dependencies such as manpower planning and cost
structure. 
Seabury noticed that without proper review and continued improvement
of processes and communication loops, the importance of updated data
and information to make informed decisions is sometimes lost in a
“business as usual” environment or lost in the chaos of a difficult situation. 
We will review a process / communication loop that relies on static
assumptions in a dynamic environment and its impact on forecasting crew
requirement.  In our review of manpower planning, we highlight best
practices to ensure that processes, data flow from these processes and the
tools they rely on these data feed are in balance and current.  We will also
explore the dangers of static assumptions, be it a historical productivity or
ratios, such as crew per aircraft, and its potential impact on operational
robustness and cost management
09:30 10:00 On the move towards full Crew and Fleet integration
    Tomas Gustafsson - Jeppesen
    The traditional planning steps within different airline resource areas
inherently lead to various levels of sub optimization. Crew planning is
typically more complex and more constrained than aircraft allocation, yet
general practice is to let the aircraft rotations be input to crew planning.
Here we discuss how that process can be turned around by allowing crew
planning to influence aircraft rotations already from an early phase. We'll
compare scenarios for a simple iterative approach, with higher levels of
integration together with the option of also allowing re-fleeting. 
Computational results from multiple airlines will be shared.
10:00 10:30 Coffee break
10:30 11:00 Preference-based trip trade system for pilots
    June Ma - American Airlines
    We developed a preference-based trip trade system for American Airlines
pilots to enhance their schedules.  The system allows pilots to drop
sequences (pairings) to, pick up sequences from, and trade sequences
 with other pilots and a pool of sequences that are currently not owned
by anyone.  It honors pilot seniority with fairness, FAA mandates, and
company rules using a comprehensive modeling framework.  We will
briefly describe the system and share implementation challenges, some
examples, and lessons learned.   
11:00 11:30 Overview of the 737MAX
    Leon Poon - Boeing
    What I’d like to present this year is an overview of the 737MAX. As you
know the 737MAX was rolled out in December last year and is currently
undergoing flight testing. The overview will basically touch on Boeing’s
view of the market requirements for this sized aircraft type, the new
technologies Boeing is introducing into the 737MAX whilst balancing
commonality with the existing 737 Next-Gen aircraft. Here, I’ll touch on
improved aerodynamics with a new advanced technology winglet, new
engines and an improved passenger experience. I’ll also talk a little bit
about the new cockpit and flight deck commonality with the 737NG and
it’s minimal effect on pilot training and operational benefits to the airlines.
11:30 12:00 Empowering Crew with a Socializing Platform
    Capt. Mohamed Ahmed - Information Systems Associates
    With years of experience and extensive research one of the key problems
we have identified is the hassle both Crew members as well as the crew
schedulers have  when a crew member wants to know about their
Remaining Off days, Duty hours done, Who flies with me, Expiries or
 Allowances etc... each time crew members have to call the schedulers to
know about it. We have solved this issue with a smart solution embedded
to aeroLINE CREW which is a socializing platform.

aeroLINE CREW socializing platform not only eliminate the hassle of the
 crew member, but also allows the schedulers to focus on their job while
 providing a self serving platform which will provide all the information a
 crew member wants to know. In addition the socializing platform has
enabled crew members to interact with each other (via messaging,
exchanging & Chatting), swap duties, etc...

Capt. Mohamed will be elaborating about the real challenges and how
the platform has empowered the airline.
12:00 13:30 Business Luncheon
13:30 14:40 Vendor Presentations
13:30 13:40 Boeing Commercial
13:40 13:50 Fujitsu SA
13:50 14:00 ICF International
14:00 14:10 Information Systems Associates FZE
14:10 14:20 Ing.büro für CMS Dienstleistungen
14:20 14:30 M2P Consulting GmbH
14:30 14:40 Seabury SHC
14:40 15:10 Using Decision Support to maintain optimality
during tracking phase 
    Afeef Rahiman - Qatar Airways 
    Optimal distribution of work is key factor influencing employee satisfaction
and should be one of the most important objective of any organization.
Optimal distribution of work during planning phase is difficult enough,
however maintaining it during the operational phase without impacting
efficiencies brings in an array of complexities.
Join us while we take you through our journey to optimality in planning
and operation phase and how Decision support systems is a game changer.
15:10 15:40 Tea break
15:40 16:10 How to get better than optimal Crew Pairing
Solution?"
    Yogesh Dashora - Sabre Corporation
    The traditional pairing optimization is a done deal? Commercial optimizers
can solve it to optimality and the research focus has now moved on to the
""hot"" recovery problems? If you said yes to both, you would be right …
unless you look at what we have been doing.
 
We took our early research about handling complex long haul pairing
 optimization used for pure long haul networks and made it commercially
viable option to run on short haul networks. The results? We can now
improve on even the optimized short haul solutions if we are given a little
flexibility of using extra crew (of course this is possible - FAR117 part c).
In this talk, we will present our approach and some interesting results on
one of the largest short haul problems that can be found.
16:10 17:00 Vendor exhibitions
18:30 22:30 Networking/Evening Open
  

Wednesday, 25-May

08:30 09:00 Morning Coffee
09:00 09:30 Avoiding the pitfalls of rules and regulations
    Andreas Söhlke - Lufthansa Systems
    Rules and regulations are one of the major drivers of complexity in crew
planning. This is especially true for airlines where crews are organized in
several unions or even for multinational airline groups with crews having
completely different working conditions.
But also national and international regulations tend to grow and become
more difficult to handle.
This talk gives some examples for how well-meant rules can lead to an
amazing complexity and how some of the pitfalls can be avoided.
09:30 10:00 SB / RES Lines request by CONDOR Crews
    Helmuth Eggeling - Ing.büro für CMS Dienstleistungen
    The presentation will show how the requirements were defined and how these was integrated in the CONDOR environment
10:00 10:30 Coffee break
10:30 11:00 Optimizing the Pairing of Reserve Pilots to Open
Sequences via Ballots
    Isaac Tetzloff - American Airlines
    Due to disruptions, previously assigned sequences become unassigned or
open. As a part of Daily Open Time Coverage (DOTC) process, crew
schedulers at American Airlines cover open flight sequences for tomorrow’s
operation by using reserve pilots. A crew scheduler’s objective is to
maximize coverage of open trips while utilizing the reserves efficiently and
also respecting seniority based pilot preferences. Inefficient utilization of
reserves may lead to unavailability of reserve pilots at a later date resulting
in either cancelled flights or flights covered at a premium rate by off-duty
pilots. We have formulated the DOTC process as a multi-objective
assignment problem. Our model will also aid and guide the schedulers to
fine tune their solutions using various options at the company’s disposal.
This optimization model will replace the current system where schedulers
must manually make assignments and proffer routes to volunteer pilots.
11:00 11:30 Technical presentation
    Unknown speaker
11:30 12:00 Technical presentation
    Unknown speaker
12:00 13:00 Business Luncheon
13:00 14:00 Conference Close and Awards

Presentations

The presentations can be downloaded here:
Presentations.zip


Once I have received the official pictures that were made by the QR photographer, I will make those available on the website too.


Survey

Those of you that attended this conference, please take the time to fill out the Conference Survey

Sponsors

  Gold

   

  Silver

   

 


  

 

 Bronze 

  


Registration

Call For Presentations

You are invited to submit a proposal to present at the meeting. 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. 


Abstract Submission Deadline: SOON! Submit your paper today!

Draft Presentation Due: May 5th

Final Presentation Due: May 10th


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


General Information

Attire

Business Events - Business Casual

Welcome Reception - Business Casual

Social Events - Evening Casual


Weather

The month of May is characterized by rapidly rising daily high temperatures, with daily highs increasing from 95°F to 105°F (35° to 40° C) over the course of the month. Daily low temperatures range from 77°F to 84°F (25° to 29° C.) However, relative humidity should be below 21%. Moreover, you will have 13 and a half hours of daylight and only a 2% chance of clouds or rain.

More Information

For questions or more information, please contact:


Marcel Sol

Chair, AGIFORS Crew Management Study Group

Tel: +974 40 102929

Mob: +974 66091969

Email: msol@qatarairways.com.qa


Social Activities

Welcome Reception

TBD


Network Dinner

TBD

Visa Information

Nationals of the following countries can buy a visa upon arrival: The United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Finland, Spain, Monaco, the Vatican, Iceland, Andorra, San Marino, Lichtenstein, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, HongKong, South Korea.


For other nationals, there are two options to request a visa:

  1. Apply via Qatar Airways when you book your flight. Unfortunately this is only possible through Qatar Airways, no other airlines. For more info on this see: http://www.qatarairways.com/global/en/visa-and-passport-requirements.page
  2. Apply via a hotel.
    For this contact the reservation department of your hotel for further information.

Please note that processing of a visa application take up to 10 working days, excluding Friday and Saturday.

Host City


Doha, capital of the peninsular Persian (Arabian) Gulf country Qatar, is a modern city on Doha Bay. Ringing its downtown waterfront are numerous parks and the Corniche Promenade. On a man-made island, the I.M. Pei–designed Museum of Islamic Art houses an extensive collection from across the Muslim world. At Souq Waqif, a traditional market, vendors offer goods like clothing, crafts and spices.

By amjra - Own work, derived from several sources (see description), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7067187
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