Kris De Bolle is a Senior Aviation Consultant for To70 Belgium and has a 25+ year career in airport operations, from which he gained a profound knowledge of the aircraft turnaround process. He is a subject matter expert on Airport CDM, focusing on the key aspects of operational implementation, operational data sharing and stakeholder change management. China Aviation Daily took the opportunity to interview Kris during the first Chinese A-CDM Seminar jointly held by CCAA and VariFlight last month in Beijing.

CAD: It is well known that A-CDM is widely adopted by airports in Europe. How was A-CDM developed in Europe? Why is it important and what benefits does it bring to airports in Europe?

Kris De Bolle: The A-CDM concept, as propagated by EUROCONTROL, is now in place on 28 European airports. It originally started off as an ATC-centric concept mainly focusing on enhanced air traffic capacity management, but gradually the airport operators, ground handlers and airlines started to understand benefits such as operational predictability and situational awareness as a significant driver for efficient airside operations and better resource management.

CAD: What are the major challenges facing the implementation of A-CDM in Europe?

Kris De Bolle: Many European airports have interpreted the EUROCONTROL A-CDM implementation guidelines in a slightly different way, to cater for local operational characteristics and stakeholder requirements and priorities. This forms a challenge for airlines, which see themselves confronted with different A-CDM procedures on different airports in their European network. Procedure harmonization across the European A-CDM community still proves to be a challenge.

Next to this, it remains a challenge to capitalize on A-CDM implementation, especially if airports fail to dedicate time and money to operational performance reporting. Thanks to the Milestone Approach, through which the turnaround process is marked with 16 operational business events, A-CDM implementation is a great way to start collecting (big) data out of your airside operations and start improving your operational processes from a data-driven perspective.

CAD: You have worked on A-CDM projects in airports from other parts of the world, for example, Doha Airport and Dubai Airport. How is development of A-CDM system in the rest part of the world? Any lessons you've learned from your experience there?

Kris De Bolle: Airports in the Middle-East are pretty much adopting the EUROCONTROL model for A-CDM, meaning that you encounter more or less the same issues as in European implementations. Same goes for ongoing projects in South-America and South-East Asia.

A-CDM is often considered as an IT project in every part of the world, but it is much more a business transformation project in many aspects: tearing down historic silo's, working together and making operational decisions based on third party data. It requires quite fundamental changes in the daily routine of operational staff, and it is in our nature to resist against change. Thorough change management, training and awareness are crucial success factors for A-CDM in any implementation across the globe.

CAD: There are over 100 in China have implemented A-CDM system in recent years and the number is still growing. According to CAAC regulations, all airports with an annual passenger throughput of over 10 million should implement A-CDM by the end of 2019. What are your thoughts on this initiative? Have you found any recommendable practices by the Chinese airports and system suppliers and do you have any suggestions for them?

Kris De Bolle: This truly is an ambitious plan. Yet, A-CDM implementation should not be limited to large airports. Europe has seen success in projects at airports with less than 10M pax per annum, but partial deployment of the concept with focus on operational data sharing can bring benefits to even smaller, capacity-constrained airports.

The interpretation of A-CDM in China differs however from the EUROCONTROL model. Again, the main driver to implement A-CDM is predictability, but with the absence of 2 crucial turnaround Milestones generating departure predictions, I fail to see how the Chinese model currently caters for this. I would therefore recommend the Chinese A-CDM community to consider predeparture sequencing as an upgrade of the existing set-up. This increases the complexity of an A-CDM project - and the pace at which airport actually implement the concept, but it is definitely worth the investment, considering the gains in efficiency and capacity management.

CAD: What are the roles of some of the latest technologies, such as IoT and AI, play in A-CDM?

Kris De Bolle: While the human in the loop remains a crucial factor in the A-CDM decision-making process, I see a tendency towards automating the generation of timestamps, or even aircraft readiness prediction to a certain level. Mature and stable self-learning algorithms, RFID-equipped ramp equipment, smart cameras and historical data mining can speed up this evolution.

CAD: What are the future trends of A-CDM? What role will it play in a future airport?

Kris De Bolle: The scope of A-CDM is limited to airside operations and 'silent coordination', purely based on data exchange between remotely located stakeholders.

New concepts such as Total Airport Management are expanding the collaborative decision-making process to incorporate terminal and baggage processes, creating a holistic view on airport operations. These operations are preferably managed from a single location on the airport, a so-called APOC (Airport Operations Center), where all airport stakeholders are physically sitting together to steer the operations in the most efficient way.

In any case, it is my opinion that A-CDM implementation should be a prerequisite before looking into further enhancements of the stakeholder collaboration model at airports.