CASE STUDY: Lufthansa City Airlines: A new document solution

Author: Dominik Weber, Head of Flight Operations Support & Administration, Lufthansa CityLine and Maike Upmann, Product Manager, Lufthansa Industry Solutions

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Dominik Weber, Head of Flight Operations Support & Administration, Lufthansa CityLine and Maike Upmann,Product Manager, Lufthansa Industry Solutions, share Lufthansa’s roadmap to a rapid airline launch

Dominik Weber

The new Lufthansa City Airlines was set up in close cooperation with Lufthansa CityLine, Lufthansa and other Group companies. The commissioning of support was carried out on a contractual basis. There is a real excitement to be part of launching a new airline and that’s what we want to share in this case study about Lufthansa City Airlines and especially focusing on the documents and operational documentation.

Lufthansa Group has launched a new AOC (Air Operator Certificate) called Lufthansa City Airlines. Aircraft for the new business have already been operated in the Group and were already documented in the Type Manual OM-B. Operating aircraft means having the operations documentation to hand but it does not necessarily mean that the new airline can just implement and take over the manuals. It normally takes a lot of effort in a process that can take up to three months, four months or even more with a large team to just bring all of the operational documentation together. In our case, the subject of this case study, all of that only took a short time  because we were set up with the right systems, at the right point. We’re going to tell you how we prepared for this, how we achieved it and how we have continued with it. But first, a brief introduction of Lufthansa Group.

LUFTHANSA GROUP

We’re an airline group with nearly 100,000 employees who always strive to do their best. In 2023, we sold 250,000 million seat kilometers for a group fleet of 721 aircraft including 17 different aircraft types operated by 11 different airlines, quite a complex business. In 2023, Lufthansa Group operated nearly one million flights.

Looking at where this case study is coming from; in 2018, we were discussing the necessity of digital documentation and that it’s crucial to have the documentation and operational documentation in a digital format (figure 1).

Figure 1

Lufthansa Group achieved that goal a couple of years ago and, at the same time, harmonized all documentation in the group. We’re all now XML based which is very important, especially for document distribution to flight crews, maintenance and CAMO. All of the different stakeholders are involved in this process and it means that all of our crews see similar content in a similar form. And a very important topic is compliance because, as you can imagine, creating a new airline brings with it a lot of topics regarding compliance monitoring and management.

HARMONIZING THE IT LANDSCAPE

Maike Upmann

When we look at harmonization in the Lufthansa Group, not all group airlines have reached the same level of harmonization at any time and, of course, any steps towards harmonization have to take place as an ongoing process during operations. To show you how such a system supports a step-by-step approach during ongoing operations, here is an example based on the legacy completely PDF-based process (figure 2).

Figure 2

As you can see here, it is a PDF-based Content Management System (CMS). The PDFs are distributed to an EFB application in the cockpit and to cabin crew devices. As a first step, exchange the CMS for an XML-based CMS such as Volabase CMS; then all of the PDF manuals can be migrated to XML. By doing that, you can create, as a first output format out of the Content Management Authoring System, a PDF again to be able to support the systems where the content will be viewed. The end users in the best case wouldn’t even notice that the PDF is coming from another source.

With that, you can take all the time you need to migrate all Manuals from PDF to XML. As soon as that is finished, it is possible to move to the next step and migrate the last part, the document distribution and viewing in order to fully switch to an XML-based process and, even there, you can distinguish and choose to go for the EFB process first and still support the PDF process for the cabin crew devices, generating more than one output format out of one source. Then, it’s quite straightforward bringing all systems onto the XML-based process to gain all the benefits there are for using XML-based documentation.

As Dominik said above, all Lufthansa group airlines are already on a common platform which is Volabase (figure 3).

Figure 3

That is where Lufthansa City Airlines gained the most benefit because it can rely on an existing platform and on existing documentation and all set-up processes within the Lufthansa Group. Dominik will explain how Lufthansa City Airlines has done that.

HARMONIZING PUBLICATIONS

Dominik

As already mentioned, it was crucial that all the documentation sent out was already in XML. PDF versions are really not adaptable, not flexible. If there is just one document which needs to be re-written; if there need to be any changes, such as if you are thinking to change just one name, you cannot just work with place holders or something like this; but if it is an XML base and if you have functional effectivities which we’ll look at below, it makes it very flexible and very adaptive.

In our case, we had several manuals that we could just basically adapt on a common database, including the Ground Operations Manual, a common manual where we could just put in City Airlines as a new name to use the same Ground Operation Manual as the rest of the group. We could even adjust for small differences between the airlines, because it is possible to just tag individual pages or content to adjust it to our procedures. But it is even better than that. I mentioned that we have 721 aircraft within the Lufthansa Group and each aircraft has its particular features, different equipment and different operations; having a content management system which can cover all of these different effectivities is very valuable, especially when you’re talking about transferring aircraft and, secondly, also very important are the operator specific details for every operator and AOC. Even if the group is very well harmonized, still Lufthansa operates its aircraft slightly differently than Lufthansa CityLine for example.

The good thing with Volabase is that all the needs can be aligned within generic effectivity (figure 4).

Figure 4

It means that, when we want to publish a manual, we can mix the aircraft effectivity with the generic effectivity to get to the manual, perfectly tailored and customized for the group in question, in this case cockpit crews for Lufthansa City Airlines. On the CAMO side, we were very happy that we achieved with CityLine and City Airlines one CAMO company and, currently, it’s working well.

Maike

What else can Volabase offer? Harmonization is an ongoing process and it’s important to start with the same source (figure 5).

Figure 5

In our case, data is not only displayed in the cockpit, it’s used during the flight; on the crew devices, on different EFB applications. On the ground, all ground staff have to have access to the current documentation; there is a crew portal, there are ramp agents in ground ops and then there are the MRO companies for the airline’s aircraft. When all data comes from one source, the inter-App connectivity will run smoothly. For example, if you want to look for an MEL (Minimum Equipment List) item, it is kept in the OM-B and, in case of an error transferred by the pilot from the EFB MEL to the eTLB application and that will communicate on the other side with the MRO provider and the AMOS System. If all data comes from one source, all the communication can run smoothly.

And, of course, in such a large airline group, there are multiple output formats required (figure 6).

Figure 6

Especially if you’re running a lot of Airbus aircraft, you want to rely on the Airbus Apps provided in FlySmart and Volabase CMS comes into this as well; it can be integrated seamlessly into the Airbus data chain by supporting the native Airbus XML format and you can customize the output and use it, for example, in the eQRH. That was a crucial decision for the Lufthansa Group. Also, some of the Apps are required in the cockpit and you want to maintain all your data in one system to gain the most benefit from that and to be able to use it for compliance management.

COMPLIANCE MANAGEMENT

Dominik

Figure 7

Something that might cause some people to have sleepless nights, is the whole of compliance management because compliance management is a big and important topic for every airline and I’m sure that readers have experienced a lot of audits. I’m not sure how you will be preparing for those audits but, in our case, I can tell from the past, we get Excel sheets, we get all of the references and we get the transcripts of the rules which we process and monitor. And, if we change the documentation, that means that we also have to check the references again. But luckily, this will soon be over because there is a new feature, based on IQSMS and implemented into our documentation management system and we can now finally link our references with the documentation to keep them up-to-date.

Maike

Looking at the systems (IQSMS and Volabase), both provide standard programming interfaces, being able to exchange data. All the regulations, on the left-hand side, are maintained by the provider, ASQS, and the tool, IQSMS, and they are transferred as a batch every 24 hours into Volabase CMS and are then available for linking with the specific parts in the Ops manuals. All of the linked information is then transferred back to IQSMS. All audits are done in IQSMS and, in the future, audit findings will be transferred back to Volabase CMS, so that the responsible authors and editors of the manual are made aware of the findings and can keep track of them.

How does it look in the system? Here are a couple of screen captures (figures 8.1 and 8.2).

Figure 8.1

In figure 8.1, you can see Volabase CMS with all of the regulations and the example in the blue outlined box, is linked to the 2.1.2 LH_OM-A part and that is being transferred to, for example, the audit perspective in IQSMS.

Figure 8.2

There you have all of the information at your fingertips (figure 8.2) and can even link, for example, to a viewer application here, so that you can access the responsive part of the manual to check it.

Dominik

Just imagine, when you have to prepare for an audit, you do not need to cross-check all of the references to see whether they’ve changed. You just look in the system and it automatically tells you each chapter where a potential change might be. Also, it’s automatically synced to our regulations database which means that, even if a regulation is changed, it will automatically give you an indication of the need to adjust topics or chapters; it gives you a lot of flexibility and peace of mind, especially when preparing for an audit.

Another great feature of harmonization is that, if we’re using harmonized documentation using the same database, we can also use references in the same database. This means that, if one group airline did all the effort for preparing user audit, another airline in the group can automatically benefit from it because we are all working on the same content structure. This feature is greatly appreciated and we’re looking forward to making even more use of it.

SUMMARY

To summarize all of the benefits: It should become clear to everyone why we would benefit from a common Lufthansa Group solution for our flight operations documentation (figure 9)

Figure 9

We have the same production tool with one standard for all of our Lufthansa Group manual production; we have one source for all relevant data but still taking account for individual group airlines’ processes and procedures. We can do this with the aircraft effectivity tagging and the generic effectivities; and we have one source for regulation and compliance monitoring with the IQSMS interface. This brings us the benefits of collaboration over all Lufthansa Group Companies; we can share the content across the companies and departments; and we can harmonize the manuals company-wide in order to move aircraft between one AOC and another in the fastest feasible time.

Just to give you an overview of the user community using Volabase so far. Currently, the product is implemented solely for the Lufthansa Group with eleven administrators, 82 editors and nearly 550 subject matter experts (SMEs) who generate the content. Soon, the compliance managers will be added to this group. Although Volabase is currently just used for the Lufthansa Group community, it is planned to offer it on the market so that every airline will have the option to benefit from these improvements which have been implemented into Volabase working with the Lufthansa Group whose knowledge was transferred to the product. That has been the theme of this case study, to share our knowledge and experience with readers who might be thinking about embarking on a similar program.