Intervening in the nosedive of modern aviation

How Boeing is keeping the aviation industry in the air with WSO2 Middleware

By Dilshan Senaratne

The recent gush of aviation tragedies served to pull back the veil on a sombre reality; the aviation industry is slowly going under. For many who are closer to the heat, the news bears no element of surprise. On the other hand, the many who are further from the grapevine are only just starting to see the creaking pieces in an industry popularly perceived to be invincible.

Breaking open the skies

The earliest days of commercial aviation tragically coincide with the golden era of the industry. Traditionally airlianes were mammoth state corporations, fed by deep coffers, operating on a highly uneven playing field. Severe restrictions on flying territories, fares and seat availability created a monopoly for many state airlines. These flag bearers eventually grew inefficient and unproductive, bringing about the open skies agreements of the early 80s. 

The premise of these agreements was simple. Break open the skies for the private sector to enter the competition and try their luck against the seasoned state behemoths.

Slaying the giants

The free market has a way of shifting paradigms and prying loose the earth from under solidly planted feet. When the swarms scurry, the biggest of course fall the hardest. Over the many years of unopposed operation, the state flag bearers had grown incompetent in their business. When the upstarts arrived, there was little that could be done to stop their revolution. 

Most of the smaller carriers began their onslaught by introducing cut-throat pricing strategies for short hauls, which caught the larger enterprises off guard, unable to adjust their legacy fleets and uppity staff. The short haul overkills quickly transitioned to long haul barrages and the flag bearers were left tasting the dust, still in their pompous slumber.

Freedom at a price

The MH370 was the plummet of a spiral that’s been on a downward trajectory for decades. In keeping with the exponential demand spike of now freely accessible commercial flight, the smaller airlines now found themselves victims of their own device. The low price points that negotiated their revolutionary take to power also meant that they irreversibly capped their margins. 

The airline industry now reports margins bordering at 1% and projects to a best case scenario of a measly 2.6% going forward, abysmal for many industries; stellar for the current state of the aviation industry. As a result of the low margins, airlines are constantly overworking their employees and looking for ways to maximise their resources. Making the Dollar run the mile in aviation is tough business.

Safety however is having a harder time catching up to the demand. With pressure mounting to keep flights in the air for longer, the margins for error are narrowing dramatically. Reports are surfacing of pilots abusing stimulants, under experienced staff taking on critical roles and safety policies being overlooked in the pursuit for profit. 

Silver lining the storm cloud 

Service Oriented Architecture has been around long enough for the buzz to die down, but the results are proving their worth. Leveraging on the cloud, PaaS platforms are solving real world business problems through an integrated, off-premise approach. 

For airlines operating with razor thin margins, flight air-time is critical for survival. Less time spent on the ground translates directly to more runs made by the fleet and in turn impacts the bottom line of the carrier.

Safely facilitating air time however is easier imagined than done. As popularly brought to light in recent months, safety is playing catch up with the need to be profitable and the casualties are piling up. 

“For airlines, time is of the essence, and creating operational efficiency requires connecting people, processes, and sources of data,” Boeing Senior Product Manager Jim Crabbe, in his keynote speech at the WSO2 US Developer Conference (2013) commented, providing rare insight to the unseen backend of the aviation industry. 

Real world ready

As an industry giant, Boeing is partaking in the struggle of the airlines to scale and meet the spiking demand. Boeing Edge is an initiative undertaken by the company to integrate carriers and their fleets with the respective stakeholders. “That means the right data to the right person for the problem at hand,” Crabbe noted at the conference.

The real world application of the SOA backend is a game changer. Boeing Edge recently introduced an app for iPad which allows ground mechanics to monitor maintenance systems with reduced down time, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

“For example, we can tie in line mechanics with maintenance systems, and allow users to upload pictures and other documentation, to integrate with the back-office system of the airline.”

In an industry clambering to stay ahead of a veering curve, agility and integration are pillars of success; this of course presents its own set of challenges. 

“Some airlines are running very old applications and systems, but they work and they’re solid. The cost of moving these systems to a new state is immense, and could disrupt their operation. That’s where Boeing has taken on these challenges to help our customers.”

Commonly known as the rip and replace cost, many enterprises across a full spectrum of industries are struggling with the heavy cost burden of investing in new interoperable system and infrastructure replacements. Critical information is often contained in silent silos, inaccessible to the right people at the right time, adding to the lethargy of large enterprises when making key decisions. 

Open for open source

“It’s the idea of helping the airlines reach a stage where all of the data from different entities, and pieces of their business model, are integrated and then can functionally move into the programme to make those real-time decisions about revenues and passengers.”

For the case in point, the magic is in the WSO2 Middleware architecture. The WSO2 integration platform is a high powered integration suite able to connect across a universal set of networks, applications and services. The WSO2 ESB, a key component of the integration stack, outperformed industry giants in an evaluation that determined the open source offering is the miracle cure for all things integration.

The highly scalable deployment environment leveraging the cloud native architecture of the Apache Stratos platform offers much needed agility and real-time decision making capabilities for the airlines, which of course manifests in increased uptime and higher revenues on the long run. 

The scalability and elasticity of cloud deployed applications and PaaS services stand unrivalled in accelerating the pace of innovation for businesses competing in the modern enterprise landscape. 

The vertical takeoff 

The future of the aviation industry remains precariously poised. With the public focus sharply pointed to the open skies, criticism is easier than profit to come by. Of course the work being put in by organisations in the calibre of Boeing cannot easily be discredited.  

Significantly, Boeing performed its spectacular 787-9 vertical takeoff at the Paris Air Show in June this year. Whether the aviation industry too will follow suit in its performance, with recent advancements in innovation remains a question only time and SOA Architects can answer it seems.

(The writer is the Marketing Officer at WSO2)