LOT Polish Airlines, Inc. now understands how a 30 minute delay in a 9:00 am flight from Warsaw to Paris can negatively impact the take-off time of a 6:00 pm flight from London to Warsaw thanks to a new analysis tool created for the airlines using data visualization software from Advanced Visual Systems.

Warsaw University's Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling (ICM) has created a sophisticated computational model of the airline's operations using the AVS/Express software development platform's 2D and 3D visualization and data analysis techniques. With AVS/Express, data from a number of diverse sources has been incorporated to analyze how weather, air traffic, baggage, de-icing, maintenance problems and other critical factors affect the airline's ability to maintain its flight schedule.

With this software solution, LOT can comprehensively analyze data and observe trends and patterns that were previously unknown. With new information, analysts can predict delays and create a number of "what-if" scenarios to determine ways to counter the negative impact of these delays. By utilizing the modular framework of AVS/Express, the flight schedule models are able to be coupled directly to the interactive visual presentations in such a way that LOT managers can easily modify the scenarios.

According to Krzysztof (Chris) S. Nowinski, scientific visualization specialist for ICM, "With the information now available to the airline with this software program, LOT is able to proactively manage their flight schedule. For example, in certain circumstances, they may make the decision to schedule more time between flights because now they can see that on certain days and at certain times during the day when flights are scheduled very tightly, a single delay can create delays across the entire flight schedule. Similarly, one can easily estimate the impact of improved ground service at a particular airport on overall punctuality of all the airline's flights."

Continues Nowinski, "This software has been readily embraced by LOT and has already demonstrated to the airlines ways to improve operations." ICM expects to deliver a new release of the software within the next few weeks that incorporates more advanced visualization and simulation into the analysis.