Fraport and Lufthansa have founded a joint venture called "FraAlliance" in 2022. Each company holds a 50 % share in this company. The two companies intend to use FraAlliance to strengthen their existing cooperation on strategic and operational matters at Frankfurt Airport and thus, plan to deepen their long-standing partnership in relation to enhancing services at Frankfurt Airport’s Terminal 1. The aim is to improve the quality of products and services at Frankfurt Airport.
The joint venture seeks to improve aspects relating to business development and operations, customer experience, infrastructure, intermodality, and sustainability. Improvements are to be achieved by analyzing and optimizing processes in terminal operations, as well as by taking a joint, customer-focused approach to product development. The goal is to bring about a journey-wide enhancement of processes and product offerings for flights, while boosting the competitiveness of the airport.
One initial outcome of the enhanced partnership is the availability of real-time updates for aviation security checkpoints in the Lufthansa App. This allows Lufthansa passengers to see checkpoint waiting times in Frankfurt via the app, enabling them to take these times into account when planning their schedule and travel arrangements.
In another project, passenger flows have been carefully analyzed and optimized. This will significantly reduce transfer times for around a million passengers per year by removing unnecessary, duplicate security checks.
Jens Ritter, CEO Lufthansa Airlines, says: “We want to offer our customers a reliable, punctual, and first-rate travel experience. The joint venture will allow us to place stronger and more targeted emphasis on the projects required to realize these aims. The new partnership at our Frankfurt hub will deliver significant added value for our customers by implementing innovative, future-focused measures.”
Joint Data & Innovation Challenge
FraAlliance, the Lufthansa Group Data & Innovation Team and Lufthansa Ground Ops are launching a joint internal challenge in May 2023 to revolutionize the digital experience at Frankfurt Airport. Data-related ideas for improving the digital passenger experience at Frankfurt Airport and/or process innovations for the daily work around the Frankfurt hub are being sought. The ideas submitted on the platform "Create our Future" will then be put to a vote by colleagues according to the "crowdfunding" principle.
Over the course of two months, many creative ideas were put forward and fellow colleagues were invited to sponsor the most innovative ones. Finally, end of July 2023, the three most promising concepts were invited to participate in a Pitch Day.
And the winner is the "IRROPS" (Irregularities in Operations Dashboard) team. The team presented their developed dashboard prototype that shows the waiting times at all customer and baggage touchpoints in case of severe irregularities - a process that was previously completely offline. The IRROPS team will now participate in an ideas workshop to further refine and automate their MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
The jury agreed that the case has a high potential for digitalisation and thus for making work easier for ground staff. We look forward to developing the prototype further.
We keep you posted on the implementation of the idea.
