Since the early days of our relationship with George Best City Airport, going back as far as 1999, we’re proud to say that as their website developers, our expertise in solving business challenges with custom software, has become integral to their operations, their reputation and their business.

Together we worked to solidify their digital footprint and evolve their web presence by providing real-time display of flight departures and arrivals, and even developed software to keep birds from occupying the runway during take-off and landing.

Working with Etain Software has been an eye-opening experience. The quality of work, the responsiveness of staff and the flexibility across the board has been fantastic.

Belfast City Airport

The Business Problem

One area where we knew we could make a serious difference was the management of Passengers, particularly those with reduced mobility.

As an essential element of the service agreements established with each carrier, and a necessity for the airport’s own commitment to excellence in customer service, we worked with Belfast City Airport to architect the ideal solution to bring both them and their carriers a serious competitive advantage, in their people management processes and delivery of assistance to passengers of reduced mobility.

Although not the first of its kind, our Passenger with Reduced Mobility System is recognised as one of the most advanced. Created to help guarantee the timely delivery of passenger care and assistance, our custom solution also has the added functionality of instant reporting, providing evidential proof that targets are being set and achieved, service agreements have been fulfilled and European directives have been met.

The Transformation

Built on ASP.NET, our solution works by securely directing information from carrier booking facilities via a web application.

The system then holds the persona data until the booked travel date, where it is directed by airport system administrators through a network of specially adapted Sky M3 PDAs, with Windows Mobile Professional operating systems.

From these PDAs airport management can leverage built-in GPS capabilities to monitor the position of staff resources and allocate jobs according to their proximity to passengers of reduced mobility in need of assistance.

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Our Approach

Through a series of discovery meetings, operational discussions and analysis workshops, as well as their expressed interest in the Cash Management System we had developed for RMS, together Etain and George Best City Airport were able to architect and develop a similar system that could track and locate one of the most unpredictable aspects of any travel hub. People.

Our understanding of the requirement to deliver a robust, stable and simple to use Passengers of Reduced Mobility (PRM) System guided our project plan to include functional prototyping with intensive system tests and hands-on user testing.

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As a result of our close working relationship with airport management, in the development of the system, we were able to simplify the training schedule for all system administrators and operational teams.

Working on site, we provided one-to-one workshops on the practical application of the PDAs and the process maps for every job. The provision of written training materials also ensured future workforce scalability by equipping management with collateral for new recruits as necessary.

Risks & Challenges

Given the level of technology and legacy systems already in place, utilised not only by George Best City Airport themselves, but also that of their partners, namely their carriers and travel agents, it was essential to accommodate the integration and seamless communication of a range of existing systems in disparate locations.

As our solution would rely on connectivity, as well as accurate, secure data input, we worked with the airport to identify the resources and network accessibility requirements to ensure the successful operation of all the PDAs in circulation.

The Benefits

Our custom application has moved George Best City Airport into leading-edge 'connected' service provision and enabled them to streamline their delivery of Mobility Assistance in an increasingly, competitive customer relationship realm. In addition they can now effectively monitor resource availability and application against timescales and service delivery metrics, giving them improved control and evaluation of employee performance.

From enhanced control over human resources and the management of the needs of passengers, to the all-important reporting facility that provides the essential transparency and audit trail compliance, this is a software solution that will continue to propel George Best City Airport ahead of its rivals.

Do you need a custom software solution? Is your organisation ready to undertake a Digital Transformation? If you’d like to discuss a custom project or simply want to know more feel free to call us on 028 90 87 2222 or drop us an email using the contact form below. 

 
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