London Gatwick and technology provider Veovo have announced a partnership to develop an integrated airport control (IAC) system. Developed with Veovo technology partner Amorph, the IAC has been designed for practical decision-making.
Key features
Initial capabilities of the IAC will include live situational awareness through a central hub featuring flight data, passenger flow and transportation connectivity; forecasting, alerts and event triggers based on the predicted impact of changes to weather, flight schedule, baggage handling, rail services and people show-up profiles; security and check-in queue and processing analytics for improved passenger experiences; and AI-driven operational recommendations based on historical and real-time data.
At the core of the development is the Virtual Control Room, a real-time hub that highlights key data, KPIs and alerts, giving a clear view of what matters now and what’s ahead. Beneath it, the platform integrates data from across the ecosystem, predicts future scenarios and triggers actions to keep operations smooth.
This phased initiative is scaling from an initial use case to over 35, transforming how Gatwick Airport manages its processes.
By bringing together key data and forecasts, it ensures everyone – security, immigration, airlines, ground handlers, air traffic control and airport management – has an up-to-date, shared understanding of operations. This sets the stage for the dynamic AOP that will align and adjust processes in real time.
AI-powered airport management
This collaboration is intended to create a more predictive, connected environment for operational decision-making, and accelerate Gatwick’s shift to total airport management, where continuous AI/machine learning-driven prediction enables the airport to pre-empt operational challenges and intelligently respond.
“The future of airport operations lies in predictive decision-making. With Veovo, we are building a system that provides a clear operational picture and proactively guides the right actions to minimize disruptions and enhance efficiency,” said Neil Harvey, head of operations at London Gatwick. “This is about building fantastic passenger journeys, optimizing resources and improving on-time performance.”
“This collaboration reinforces London Gatwick’s commitment to innovation and sets a new benchmark for data-driven airport management in Europe,” said James Williamson, CEO of Veovo. “Our technology turns data into predictions and action, allowing Gatwick Airport to move beyond reactive operations to more joined-up, automated decision-making. It’s about creating an airport that sees ahead and takes proactive action to improve the overall performance of the airport.”
Williamson continued, “Intelligent airport control has two key elements to it that are really important to Gatwick. First, it enables their virtual operation center. It does this by bringing all the stakeholders at the airport together, both to give them better real-time data – and therefore better situational awareness – but more importantly, it starts to bring in predictive capabilities. For example, they want to understand the impact of road and rail and passengers as they arrive at the airport and their impact on security. With this solution, they can identify this and address that challenge before it happens by sending helpers or changing lane plans, etc. Ultimately, it’s building toward a total airport management capability.
“We’re kicking off now at PTE World and the first phase of the incremental delivery will deploy before summer in preparation for Gatwick’s peak summer traffic. Then it will build over the coming years to deliver management. It will start by just bringing together airside data and terminal data. Then expand to passenger flow, aircraft flow and bag flow.
“It’s been an amazing show. What’s great about PTE World is you can do 100 customer meetings over three days without having 100 flights. It brings everyone together, and that’s really important to us. It just attracts such a global audience as well.
“Yesterday, we had our first people on our stand before the show even opened, and we left the show at 7:20pm. Even then, we were only leaving when security had to ask us to leave and we had one guy doing a demo outside on a bench with his laptop.
“PTE World is the biggest show within the industry. Everybody’s here, so it’s a great time to launch products and customer agreements so we can tell the world about it.”
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