This holiday season, American Airlines is revolutionizing post-landing procedures with its cutting-edge Smart Gating system. The trailblazing technology minimizes the amount of time just-landed planes spend taxiing and waiting for gates to free up, reduces ramp congestion and helps aircraft get to gates faster.
Leveraging the power of machine learning and real-time data, Smart Gating automatically assigns arriving airplanes to the nearest available gate with the shortest taxiing time.
“We’re always looking for ways to drive operational improvement,” Anne Moroni, American’s Vice President of Operations Planning and Performance, said in a statement. “We make gating decisions thousands of times a day. Saving precious time on the ground ensures more customers make their connections and we use our resources efficiently.”
These efficiencies are especially valuable during the holiday travel season, the busiest time of year for air travel. During the recent Thanksgiving travel period, American Airlines flew a record-breaking 7.8 million customers to their holiday destinations and ran unprecedentedly smooth Thanksgiving operations overall.
The carrier completed the week with only 55 cancellations out of over 59,000 scheduled flights, according to Travel + Leisure. And, despite a serious snowstorm that impacted the Midwest over Thanksgiving weekend, American managed to maintain zero cancellations out of its Chicago-O'Hare hub.
An advanced technology developed by American Airlines’ Information Technology and Operations teams, Smart Gating was initially tested at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)—one of the top 10 busiest U.S. airports—in 2021 and has since proven to be exceedingly valuable in terms of optimizing on-the-ground operational efficiencies.
(Photo Credit: American Airlines)
At DFW, it has allowed the carrier to reduce taxi times by 20 percent, or an approximate average of two minutes per flight. While it may not sound like much, those minutes add up, saving more than 11 hours of taxiing time daily. The implementation of Smart Gating has also cut down on gate conflicts and instances of arriving aircraft compelled to wait for gates to become by more than half.
Since then, the state-of-the-art tool has been deployed at other key American Airlines hubs, including Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Miami International Airport (MIA), Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA) and Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD, and customized to meet specific operational needs at each location.
At DCA, where ramp space is limited, Smart Gating has remarkably reduced instances of aircraft waiting at the gate, due to other aircraft blocking the ramp, by 70 percent. Similarly, at CLT, the tool has cut taxi time by nearly a minute per flight and eliminated 11 percent of on-the-ground gate changes. On a broader scale, the technology has allowed American to reduce taxi times across its network by 17 hours per day.
"Smart Gating has been a game changer at our large hubs,” said Sumit Batra, Managing Director of Operations Performance and Analytics at American. "This technology is another example of American's non-stop focus on innovation.”
Beyond operational enhancements, Smart Gating aligns with American’s environmental responsibility goals. By optimizing taxi times and minimizing unnecessary idling, the airline estimates an annual savings of 1.4 million gallons of jet fuel and 13,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
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