Lufthansa Systems announced that Neos, the Italian airline that is part of Alpitour World, has selected NetLine/Crew as its crew management system. The solution covers the complete process and will help Neos to optimize their crew management at a time when the airline’s fleet is growing from 16 to 20 aircraft. NetLine/Crew supports Neos in automating their crew management process and will be operated in the Global Aviation Cloud. That makes it easier to scale to future growth, and to adapt to dynamic business requirements more efficiently.

“Neos has always distinguished itself by providing a high-quality and reliable service. Our crews are the ones who provide this service. As our operations grow, we need to equip our crew management and members with a solution that supports this growth and enables them to drive customer satisfaction in this new environment. We decided to work with Lufthansa Systems based on our positive experiences with Lido data and charts as well as the slot management modules from NetLine,” said Carlo Stradiotti, Neos CEO.

Crew management is a complex process that includes pairing, assignment, and crew control. The availability of crew resources, their training requirements, and the fair distribution of duties, wishes, and preferences must be reconciled with network needs, operational and legal regulations, economic requirements, and logistical aspects. NetLine/Crew covers all these issues with 24/7 operations, support, and unique industry experience, helping airlines to reduce costs, improve crew productivity, and manage planning challenges as well as short-term operational challenges.

“We are delighted that Neos chose our crew management solution to support their growth path. NetLine/Crew provides cutting edge technology to support the exchange of information between crew members and crew control,” said Marco Cesa, Senior Vice President Regional Management EMEA at Lufthansa Systems.

“In the planning area the new Bid Management module has a set of functionalities to let crew members request days off, layovers, specific flights and much more in the assignment period. Another new development is the Qualification and Training Management module, which enables Neos to provide an accurate picture of the current training and qualifications of its crews at any given time and, together with the built-in Fatigue Risk Management module to ensure safety and compliance.”

Background information on the solutions

NetLine/Crew Qualification and Training Management provides trainings, planning, and qualifications on one platform to reduce the complexity of planning and tracking crew member and ground staff training. It ensures the highest level of security and compliance, as trainings must be tailored to specific employee groups to comply with regulatory requirements, and employees have to be frequently re-trained to maintain valid licenses. The module enables the airline to provide an accurate picture of the current training and qualifications of the crews at any given time.

NetLine/Crew Bid Management supports both the bidding and the awarding processes. It allows crew members to place requests for different roster artifacts: specific bid – a request for a concrete pairing already available in the bidding period, or a request for one or more subsequent personal, daily-based activities like off days, leave days, etc.; criteria bid – a request for pairing(s) fulfilling certain conditions in a concrete period within the current bidding period; lifestyle bid – a request for a profile in long-term independently from the current bidding period.

NetLine/Crew Fatigue Management provides an upgrade package supporting fatigue risk management. IT helps airlines manage fatigue in aircrew while planning, tracking, or re-planning a roster. The underlying algorithms are developed by Fatigue Risk Management Systems Limited from a substantial and growing database, built from more than 50 years of continued original research to identify and measure fatigue in aircrew across many types of operations.

NetLine/Crew Preferences Planner completely automates the awarding of preferences, strictly following the given priorities and respecting all legal requirements. The module is highly customizable: Crew member and pairing priorities can be defined with great flexibility. This also applies to defining reasons for rejection and to reporting.

NetLine/Crew Preferences xOPT, as an advanced roster optimizer, supports the crew scheduling department in generating fast, legal, stable, and cost-efficient roster solutions that consider crew-oriented aspects. The module assigns flight hours, duty shifts, stopovers, and routings equally to all crew members, taking individual preferences into account while generating fair duty rosters. The principle of fair distribution ensures optimal personnel utilization.

NetLine/Crew IADP (Interactive Duty Plan) is an app for the crew that simplifies direct communication with the crew management. Crew members can easily access the schedules and details of their roster. Depending on the data protection basis of the respective airline, IADP enables the planned crew members for the next rotation to be viewed. The respective crew member can access a check-in page directly via the duty plan.

As soon as check-in occurs, that employee appears in the system as “checked in”. This eases the daily load on crew controllers. Additionally, a localization function ensures the check-in happens at the right place. Changes to the roster are made fully automatically via a notification in the app, which the crew member confirms. At the same time, an automatic notification appears in the crew tracking environment. An information page provides the flying personnel with comprehensive information on duty times and flight times as well as a note on license renewal or medical check.

About Neos

Neos is the airline company part of Alpitour World, founded in 2002 and in a very short time has become the main company specialised in short, medium and long haul leisure routes, although in recent years it has launched scheduled flights, operations for other market segments and now also cargo flights. It has 16 aircraft, 4 hubs located between Milan Malpensa, Rome Fiumicino, Verona and Bologna and takes its customers to over 50 destinations worldwide. Among the most important operations are routes to China, New York, Toronto, India, Israel and Kazakhstan, which have quickly led the company to open up to new international markets, as well as partnerships with the music and sports worlds, making Neos a unique player in the international aviation sector.

About Lufthansa Systems

Lufthansa Systems GmbH is a leading airline IT provider determined to shape the future of digital aviation. It draws its unique strengths from its ability to combine profound industry know-how with forward-looking technological expertise and has lived by its slogan “We’re into IT” for more than 25 years. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group, the company offers its more than 350 customers an extensive range of successful IT products and services for the aviation industry, many of which are market leaders. Lufthansa Systems’ pioneering portfolio covers all of an airline’s business processes – in the flight deck, in the cabin and on the ground. As a tech company and airline IT provider, Lufthansa Systems is committed to identifying its own environmental footprint and improving that of its airline customers across the globe. Headquartered in Raunheim near Frankfurt/Main, Germany, Lufthansa Systems employs around 2,800 people at its locations in 16 countries.

Featured image credited to Neos