Jeppesen Signs Five-Year Agreement with Hainan Airlines of China based on Flexibility of Flight Planning Data Delivery Service

Jeppesen Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) services allow airlines to connect to JetPlan flight planning engine and multiple data sources

Englewood, Colo. | 16 Mar 2010 | By Jeppesen

Jeppesen recently signed a five-year flight planning renewal agreement with Hainan Airlines of China, based on the airline’s success with adopting Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) technology services that connect the airline to Jeppesen’s JetPlan flight planning engine and multiple data sources.

By implementing SOAP technology to connect with JetPlan, Hainan Airlines is now able to manage multiple operations tasks, including flight scheduling, crew management, flight plan filing and fuel price and payload database management.

In a departure from typical single-source flight critical data delivery, the unique flexibility of Jeppesen SOAP technology has allowed Hainan Airlines to develop a new airline operations control (AOC) system that integrates flight planning information from numerous data sources. The data is then presented to operations staff through a customized graphical interface developed specifically for the airline. This customized interface provides a seamless connection to Hainan Airlines’ flight operations control (FOC) systems.

“We see significant improvement in two main aspects, through high level integration and alert functions. The flight plan embedded dispatch management system has interfaces with local weather and NOTAM messages, crew scheduling, departure system and aircraft performance data, which provides strong data support to our dispatch team,” said Li Weimin, manager, Hainan Airlines Dispatch Office. “The new integrated system has a full alert function, which includes change of payload, weather minimum, fuel, special airport conditions, route changes, airport availability and ACARS download features. With these alerts, dispatch can consider the flight release factors and make correct decisions in a changing flight operation environment.”

This new system has bolstered the airline’s flight planning capabilities through the connection to the China-based JetPlan engine. The flexibility of the Jeppesen SOAP technology is critical to implementing flight planning data from multiple sources in China, as issues with local weather reporting, navigation data and flight plan filing systems are common.

“SOAP technology provides customers such as Hainan Airlines with tremendous time savings, as automated flight planning operations data from multiple sources is streamlined into one system, which greatly reduces manual input efforts,” said Thomas Wede, Jeppesen senior vice president and general manager, Aviation. “Jeppesen is expanding our flight planning operations in China, and using SOAP technology to connect with the China-specific JetPlan engine is a winning solution for implementing successful and efficient flight planning operation management.”

Jeppesen SOAP technology is constructed on a state-of-the-art services oriented architecture (SOA) platform that allows airline integration with the JetPlan engine to be easier to implement, modify and support.

For more information on the industry-leading SOAP and custom flight planning solutions provided by Jeppesen, please visit our SOAP development site.