Andrew Doyle/MUNICH
British Airways has chosen Lufthansa Group subsidiary Lido to provide its new advanced flight planning system after a two-year selection process.
The UK carrier will use Lido Operation Centre (Lido OC) for all flight planning and dispatch procedures, replacing the SWORD system bought from American Airlines in the 1980s. It will become fully operational at BA in November 2001. The airline has signed a contract with the German company to use the system until at least 2008.
Lido OC is designed to provide pilots with detailed flight plans incorporating information on optimised routings, weather forecasts, notices to airmen, fuel requirements and air traffic control charges.
Kai Kosicki, Lido sales and marketing director, says one of the main advantages of the system is its ability to generate route-specific information in real time.
"The pilot will receive only the information that refers to his specific flight," says Kosicki. "The main benefit is the potential savings resulting from this optimisation."
The Unix-based hardware and software will be installed on site at BA but datalinked to Lido's headquarters in Frankfurt. Responsibility for the real-time updating of general aeronautical data is being outsourced to Lido, but the system will allow BA to input confidential information, such as the price it is paying for fuel.
Lido OC will also be interfaced with other BA systems so that it can obtain information such as the expected load for a flight and the specific aircraft that has been assigned.
Provision of navigation charts is not included in the deal and these will continue to be supplied to the airline by Racal. The contract provides for subsidiary carriers such as Deutsche BA to begin using the system.
BA declines to comment on the contract.
Source: Flight International
