Joint collaboration with FraAlliance

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 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.

FraAlliance, the Lufthansa Group Data & Innovation Team and Lufthansa Ground Ops also launched a joint internal innovation challenge in spring 2023 to revolutionize the digital experience at Frankfurt Airport. The ideas submitted via the internal innovation platform "Create our Future" were then put to the vote by colleagues according to the "crowdfunding" principle. They were looking for data-related ideas to improve the digital passenger experience at Frankfurt Airport and process innovations for day-to-day work around the Frankfurt hub. Over the course of two months, many creative ideas were put forward and fellow colleagues were invited to sponsor the most innovative ones with virtual money. In July 2023, the 3 most promising concepts were invited to participate in a Pitch Day. And the winner is the "IRROPS" (Irregularities in Operations Dashboard) team as the jury agreed that the case has a high potential for digitalisation and thus for making work easier for ground staff.

Irregularity Operations Dashboard

The aim of IRROPS Dashboard was to optimize resources in irregular situations (IRREGs), i.e. events that interrupt flight operations, e.g. due to severe storms. During an heavy IRREG, operational decision-makers need a quick, real-time overview of the current situation at all relevant touchpoints. This information was passed on to the individual departments by telephone. If the person responsible was busy, several attempts had to be made to reach the relevant person and often no information could be passed on at all. This led to additional stress and the information could not be passed on promptly and sufficiently. The situation was therefore often dissatisfying for our employees and our passengers, who were directed to a service counter where there was already a high volume of passengers. The idea was to develop an app-based dashboard to manage all customer touch points (service centers, lounges, airport hall utilization, etc.) more effectively and increase customer satisfaction. As part of a design sprint, a 1st dashboard prototype with a chat function was developed to simplify communication between operational employees and managers. The prototype can also analyze the flow of movement, which gives us a better overview of overcrowded service centers and allows us to better manage the utilization of our service centers. The next step will be the introduction of the "Irregularity Operations Dashboard" for all ground staff at Frankfurt Airport. In addition, the dashboard can also be used for non-IRREG situations and for other airports.