Hi Marco, can you introduce yourself, your background and your role in A-ICE
I am Marco Labricciosa, I am one of the founders of the company covering the operational side including the delivery, implementation and all related aspects. I am also in charge of strategic partnerships, airline database certification, IATA CUPPS working group representative. My experience lies in airport systems, I previously worked as an airport system designer for Alitalia where I took ownership of representing the company with regards to common use self-services at IATA. We created A-ICE almost 20 years ago together with two friends Claudio Costantini and Claudio Ferrari both of whom can look back at a substantial experience in the aviation industry
How would you best describe the offer A-ICE brings? What sets you apart from other market players?
Marco: “Our very first customer – when we started operations – was Milan Airports owned by the SEA Group, for which we developed a message distribution system and this is still today considered a best practice. This describes best our company and our focus, creating long term partnerships with our customers and partners. We want to be a market leader for every solution we develop, creating the most innovative technologies and integrating these for our aviation customers. Another example of our approach is our Departure Control System (DCS) a key system for airlines now used to handle over 200 airlines. DCS automates the processing of an airline’s airport management operation, which includes managing the information required for airport check-in, printing boarding cards, baggage acceptance, boarding and load control. Another solution is our W&B tooling or Weight & Balance tooling which is used for commercial operations, cargo and the military. It is an important tool that helps airlines and the military to load airplanes in the most efficient manner taking into consideration its integration with the volumetric planning tool. We thus maximize the capacity and guarantee the best balance but also help save on fuel by storing the loads efficiently. We help our customers by delivering the right tools so that during loading the handlers are guided making it so that charging the plane can be done much faster without any errors. With CLOS (Collaborative Logistics Optimization Tool) a CDM software to support loading and transportation logistic processes, we focus on optimizing the information flow of goods to be carried, supporting the preparation of standard goods pallets and the volumetric planning to optimize the loading.These are just some of our solutions which we have developed since we started operations 19 years ago. We can offer the full suite of airport solutions, from AODB over FIDS passing through the Turn-around Management system.
Marco: “To best support our customers, we have several offices in Italy, in Rome we have our development team while in Milan we have another development team and our sales office and in Verona we have a technical engineering team, besides Italy we also have offices in the UK and Washington DC. Our customers are airports, airlines (both commercial and cargo), ground handlers. We are accredited NATO ACT Tide Sprint which is a critical accreditation in the military world. I am also in charge of strategic partnerships in the airport systems world. This allows us to expand our offering and team up to deliver a best-in-class offer.”
Can you share a few cases at airports where A-ICE solutions were implemented?
Marco: “Yes of course, we have a wide variety of references so let me share some of these illustrating the diversity of our customers.
- One of them is Bolzano airport in the North of Italy where we have integrated a full suite of our airport-in-cloud (AIC) software-as-a-service, from flight scheduling to billing. A very cost-effective solution for mid-sized airports. The airport wanted to have a modular, flexible, configurable and easy to deploy solution and this is what we have implemented which was very much appreciated by the airport.
- Another nice case is the one for our long time customer, both Milan Airports of the SEA group, a partner for over 19 years now. It all started with the centralized Message Distribution System, managing all kinds of standardized and dedicated protocols and message syntax. We were also in charge of designing, developing and deploying the Ground Handling Operational Database, managing about 12 Mio pax /year. We integrated the RMS (Resource Management System) of Inform where we implemented 43 different interfaces with existing systems and supported the migration of the AODB system from the Sybase DB to the Oracle DB platform – without any interruption of operations – in 9 months’ time.
We develop and implement our own solutions but have also some very solid system integration skills allowing us to integrate our own and third party solutions in often challenging timings. After more than 19 years in the business I can proudly say that we have still to see a challenge we cannot overcome.
Based on your experience, what is key for airports to focus on to improve the passenger experience?
Marco:” for me the key word is stressless, we need to reduce the stress for passengers as much as possible. This means that the more we can automate, the better it is and this can already start when dealing with the luggage problem, which is one of the key elements that causes stress to passengers from arrival to departure. Further automation can be undertaken by looking at all the touchpoints passengers need to pass through, self-check-in, biometrics, security, etc…. the more airports can focus on automating every step of the way, the more the passenger can enjoy his time at his travel destination and at the airport. This is where we help, by creating and implementing tools that allow airports, airlines but also governments to manage all key processes from identification of passengers to plane charging, over ground handling to message and information handling. The tools are available to automate all processes and support a stressless travel for passengers.”
What do you consider as the key trends in the world of value-added IT solutions and integrated applications to airports?
Marco: “This question is for me linked to the previous one about passenger experience. In fact I see three key trends. The digitalization of the airport, impacting the passenger experience, Sustainability and optimizing and increasing the current capacity.
Digitalization: Here the objective is to improve the passenger experience, making the whole process resilient, fast and flexible by the intermediary of digital solutions related to airport operations and what the passenger can do himself. The management of passenger flows at the airports is key which means investing in self-service initiatives like touchless baggage (kiosks and passenger mobile devices), self-check-in, better performing security checks (to increase the throughput), the implementation of biometrics for traveler identification and the implementation of an APOC (AirPort Operations Centre) to speed up processes and flows.
Sustainability: As part of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) program aiming at a full decarbonization by 2050, airports will have to adapt their infrastructure to allow for different forms of mobility, setting objectives such as accessibility to airports by exploiting the various possible forms of intramodality but also the use of green airport procedures and systems aimed at reducing emissions and thus efficiency (use of airspace, autonomous vehicles, optimization of loads in aircraft). Our solution, the Collaborative Logistics Optimization System looks at reducing fuel consumption by better managing the aerodynamics of the loads, what we call “best trim”. By maximizing the volume we reduce the number of flights. Another example is “Airport-in-the-Cloud” where we can reduce the number of servers, hardware, installations, etc… by combining all in the cloud we avoid duplication of any infrastructure.
Optimizing and increasing the current capacity. Technological innovation will support the move towards a concept of ‘mobility as a service’ (MaaS) and the digitalization of airport processes aimed at fostering the interconnection of various digital systems and technologies to offer passengers a fluid, fast and autonomous (stressless) journey, capable of raising the quality of service and minimizing waiting times (biometric, smart security, contactless). Not only the passenger flow is key but also revisiting how air cargo works is key, how can more goods be transported with the same number of movements and the intermodality or delivery of goods door-to-door are critical elements to be considered.
For A-ICE the above translates into a set of programs that we are currently working on:
- Expanding our W&B or Weight & Balance offer including an Electronic Flight Bag solution
- Focus on Collaborative Logistics, algorithms to calculate the route to be used maximizing the spacing.
- AI to determine the best solution available in terms of transportation and ways of transportation.
We are leading when it comes to AI and will use AI to address the key trends which are so critical in the world of aviation.
For A-ICE – besides this clear technological choice – we see a further worldwide expansion, we have been successful in expanding on a global level and we will for sure continue on this path.
For more information on A-ICE check out this page
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