Real-time alerting of flight status for non-aviation suppliers in the air transportation system value chain

The air transportation system has a broad and deep value chain. Some of the stakeholders are directly part of the air transportation system and use real-time flight, airport and air traffic control data as part of their operations. Other stakeholders are several layers removed and do not have access to system status even though it impacts their business. For these stakeholders it may be outside their core competency or cost prohibitive to purchase access to a data feed and the required hardware/software infrastructure to support real-time status alerting. In many cases, the need for status alerting is only temporary (e.g. seasonal, during period of construction, or transition to new gate leasing arrangement). This paper describes a low-cost software application that can be deployed to provide real-time alerts to stakeholders whose operations are directly impacted by flight and system status changes, but cannot afford to maintain their own status alerting system. The flight status alerting system described in this paper can be configured over the web and transmits alerts via email or text messages to the cell phones of employees. Case studies are provided for: (1) alerts to adjust staffing at an airport food concession for forecast irregular operations (to generate an estimated $46K to $121K in additional annual profit), (2) alerts to investigate excessive taxiin times and gate utilization compliance. Implications and limitations of the system are discussed.