Aviation Center of Excellence

Datahub have offices in the UK, London and our European office is based in Madrid. Our technical team are based at both locations. We don’t find location an issue. We have worked successfully with clients in Africa, Europe, Middle East, and U.S.

We will always make the time to visit client offices as required. Depending on the engagement we will agree on the frequency of visits and the duration. Usually when we travel overseas then the visit will be a minimum of 1 week. On a visit we will have a plan of action so that we can achieve on the visit what we need to do to ensure that the project runs smoothly.

On a data project we would factor in a minimum of 3 visits per engagement. Usually one at the beginning to meet the team, complete a data discovery where we talk to you about the data and understand and document all the requirements. We usually have a visit mid project, and a final visit to deploy the solution. During this visit we will train any of your team on how to use the solution.

Sure. Our team of experts have the ability and knowledge to work on a join project, with the internal team and Datahub work side by side. With this deliverable will will initially discuss what you are wanting from Datahub so that we understand your expectations. We are able to work in a agile methodology where larger deliverables are broken down into smaller pieces of work and these then can be split between Datahub and the individual in the internal team. We have the ability to work at your head office but in most instances like this we can work remotely to keep the cost down. Where we work in a collaborative way like this we would normally suggest daily team calls where deliverables and progress is discussed.

With the increase in cyber security attacks and new data protection laws regulating the use of personal information. Having data protection and governance alongside your analytics is key and essential. This is why working with a consultancy with analytics and data protection professionals working side by side is paramount.

General guidance

• Only include the personal information in the database that’s required (data protection minimization principle). For example, if there’s a financial reporting system the passport number, nationality, or date of birth may not be required.
• In the reports and dashboards not to allow personal information to be visible unless it’s essential. Most reports and dashboards require aggregated data and personal information is not required. What I mean by aggregated is numbers counted, summed, or forming an average. For example, what is the seat utilization as a percentage for flight A compared to flight B. Or what was the total number of children travelling on the AM flights compared to the PM flights. We don’t need to know the children’s names or any other personal information just the count of children.
• When reporting by age remove the date of birth as this is considered personal information. Instead create a column in the reporting data that has the age of the passenger. The age of the passenger would not be considered as personal information. It would be better to include in the reporting data that the passenger is 56 rather than using the date of birth in the form of mm/dd/yyyy.  The age could be calculated using the date of birth in the data warehouse. But only make available the age or age band in the reporting data.
• When there’s a need to include personal information, include the appropriate security measures to protect the data. This can be achieved with techniques such as row level security. Row level security ensures that individual users can only see the data they need to. The security uses the email address to identify and filter the data based on what they have access to.
• To comply with ISO 27001 and data protection Sensitivity Levels are required. Sensitivity levels allow an organization to categorize the content of the data with a label. Typically, these labels are confidential, private, public etc. Analytics tools like Azure services and Microsoft Power BI have sensitivity levels built in to the applications, allowing organizations to use these as part of a security strategy.
• As a partner of Microsoft, with the new Microsoft Fabric analytics, data engineering, machine learning, data governance, and data compliance are all together under one platform. This allows Microsoft fabric to integrate compliance to data protection easily.

Some of the challenges that airlines and airport face are:

Volume of Data
One of the biggest challenges is the volume of data. Airlines have access to vast amounts of data. To have a competitive advantage over other airlines then they need to make sure they maximize the use of this data. This is a challenge, as they may not understand how to use it to maximize efficiency and customer satisfaction etc. This is where a data consultancy can work with the airline to overcome this challenge.

Personalised Customer Experience
One of the biggest growth areas in aviation data is personalising the customer experience. Passengers not only want airlines to take them from one destination to another. Customers want to have a personalised service included. This includes airlines collecting preference data, being able interpret this, and personalise it to the customer. Does a passenger like a window seat, do they need any support, tailormade offers sent to their devices, do they travel for business or family vacations, do they have any dietary requirements etc.?

This requires a data driven culture from the airline. It includes building a profile of the customer using business intelligence and machine learning. This personalised experience has been used in retail (like Amazon) very successfully. Now airlines need to provide these services.

Changing Technology
Cloud technology is evolving year on year. Airlines have specialist IT people and analysts but with business intelligence and machine learning then there’s a need for subject matter experts to help. With data and cloud technology airlines want to invest in the future. Have a custom-built end-to-end solution that is robust and future proof.

For example, with technology today there are dedicated and serverless cloud database systems, each with their own pros and cons. Knowing what technology will be right for the airline’s needs is a challenge. Having a specialist that can understand aviation data and the requirements of the airline, create a roadmap that can deliver, design, architect and develop an efficient cost-effective solution is key.

Integrating Affiliated Companies
Many airlines that I’ve worked with have affiliated companies that could include airport services, catering companies, aircraft maintenance companies etc. Integrating the data from affiliated companies into the airline, so data is accessible across the group is a challenge. We have addressed this challenge many times by utilizing cloud technology.

For an airlines that have passengers from all over the world then an assessment would need to be completed to understand this. Yes, airlines in general will need to comply with multiple data protection laws. This is because they would have data subjects from numerous countries. For example on a flight they could have passengers from UK, Europe, and UAE. In this instance three data protection laws would apply. This may sound overwhelming but they are very similar, so this would not be difficult to implement.

Initially we would analyse the reservation data. This will have nationality and airport that they are flying from. As the reservation system will not have the home address of all passengers then the departing airport will give the the country where the person lives. With this information we would have a good understanding of what data protection laws that would need to be considered.

We would undertake a gap analysis of the current data protection processes in place and then provide the additional policies, procedures, and controls for the airline to be compliant with the applicable laws. This would be backed by an audit to provide evidence that Datahub have assessed the organisation for the data protection laws.