Artificial intelligence (AI) looms large over business aviation’s future, although for now most in the industry have fairly limited visibility as to how life-changing this will be. Early indicators are that the first applications will illuminate a path forward in which, hopefully, humans are still able to do what they do best, only with greater efficiency from autonomous support.
UAS International Trip Support is hosting a discussion about how AI can be made to “work for you” this morning at Booth B51. This will be moderated by James Hardie, founder of the Course Correction consultancy; Daniel Newman, Honeywell’s chief technology officer for advanced air mobility; Arthur Ingles, founder of flight booking platform Moove; and Chris Marich, co-founder of financial software group MySky. They will be joined by no less of an expert than Pepper the Robot from Robots of London.
MySky is tapping AI as part of its quest to help aircraft operators exercise effective revenue management, while also keeping close control of spending. This week, the company is launching an AI-driven Smart Quoting engine to help charter flight providers ahead of the busy summer travel period.
“We’re not looking to replace humans, but to empower them with a level of automation for repetitive tasks like capturing invoices,” Marich told AIN. “In our spend system, we can use the AI technology to automatically capture and digitize information so that the operators can focus on producing the final quote and on the relationship with the owner and the charter customer.”
Making Charter Quotes Count
Part of the challenge that AI can ease comes from the fact that operators can receive hundreds, if not thousands, of flight requests and yet are only likely to convert around 1% of these into bookings. The AI technology is capable of gathering the necessary data to build the first part of the quote and can also give guidance as to how to optimize the operator’s fleet in the process.
“What is very powerful is that, instead of having hundreds of unanswered questions, the system can gather what it needs from previous quotes, such as aircraft types [and their performance],” Marich explained. “It also takes into consideration logic around where to reposition aircraft, et cetera. That gives operators a clean slate each morning [in terms of workload] and that could be a competitive advantage.”
According to Marich, AI applications are still in their early stages in aviation and the industry is somewhat behind the finance sector in this respect. “Security has to be taken very seriously, and this is still very much under human control,” he concluded.
In March, the Swiss-based company teamed with digital contract specialist Tuvoli to support quote generation and payments for charter flight bookings. The companies have agreed to integrate the MySky Quote platform with Tuvoli’s digital checkout function.
It was at the EBACE show in 2023 that the team from document management specialist Web Manuals conceived plans to apply AI to what they offer the industry. To accelerate progress, it acquired a specialist called Manual AI and in April rolled out its Amelia AI system.
Making Sense of Complex Manuals
For Web Manuals’ clients, AI promises to facilitate the search process. “There are lots of situations where pilots and other operations people need to find very specific information in time-critical moments,” explained CEO Martin Lidgard. The technology supports a more contextual search, rather than just using keywords, and can help pinpoint something specific relating to maintenance activity or some operational issue during a fast turnaround.
Amelia AI integrates natural language processing that can accelerate the process of understanding factors such as aircraft faults to support decisions over airworthiness. Once initial information from the manuals has been shared, pilots can continue to interrogate the platform to find out more details and assess the responses.
Yesterday, Austrian aircraft management and charter company Skyside confirmed that it is the first Web Manuals customer to start using Amelia AI. “Managing a vast array of safety, operational, and compliance documents can be challenging,” said Jonas Conrad, the operator’s electronic flight bag administrator. “With Amelia, we anticipate a significant enhancement in our ability to quickly find crucial information.” In his view, the time savings will allow Skyside’s personnel to focus on the most safety-critical tasks.
So far this year, Malmo-based Web Manuals has added eight new business aviation customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, taking its total for the region to 102, out of a global client base of 643 companies. “An increasing number of business jet operators are starting to recognize the importance of using a digital documentation system,” said Web Manuals operations director Julia Larsson. “As regulators such as the FAA begin to mandate safety management systems that help identify and assess risks, the role of digitalization has become more central to aviation safety.”
For instance, Amelia AI can help the crew understand whether there are any applicable safety notices or bulletins that are relevant to a particular flight procedure they are working on. The pilots then get a summarized response based on the manuals along with sources referencing relevant content from the documents.
“The problem we’re trying to solve is information overload because pilots are expected to know by heart thousands of pages of manuals,” Lidgard told AIN. “Sometimes information overlaps between these, and in other cases, it doesn’t apply in all conditions. This is a way to simplify searches for pilots to support better decision making.”
As part of its security protections, the system only conducts searches within the documentation that is available to the user and relevant to their specific needs. It does not access any external public data. All responses provide specific references to parts of the manuals to ensure that users can validate the search results.
Amelia AI will be released through the Web Manuals Core 2024.3 update, with additional features to be announced later this year. The company has around 70,000 end users in its customer base, including operators.
More hands-on AI applications can be found in Lufthansa Technik's prototyping room in Hamburg, where the cabin refurbishment and systems specialist is evaluating multiple options. These include an intelligent cabin reading light that automatically moves the beam of the light as the passenger’s head moves.