BELGIUM’s flagship carrier, Brussels Airlines, has streamlined its quality and safety operations by introducing an integrated safety and risk-based performance monitoring management system.
The airline – which operates 49 aircraft and has 3,500 employees – has been working with Ideagen Gael Ltd implementing its Gael Insight suite of software solutions to transform safety and operational performance.
Gael Insight is a suite of products including Q-Pulse, Gael Risk and Performance Monitor which integrate to help aviation organisations achieve operational excellence through efficient safety and risk management and in depth performance indicators.
The suite has allowed Brussels Airlines’ Safety Services Department improve safety and operations as well as anticipate and manage risks – avoiding safety issues from occurring.
Adriaan Charlet, the airline’s Safety Services Manager, said: “Q-Pulse and the overall Gael Insight solution has provided us with much better efficiency in investigating safety issues. It has also provided safety related efficiencies as well as operational reporting benefits.
“The risk management and performance monitoring capabilities in particular have been extremely beneficial for us. Risk in particular was a very important part of the overall solution – not only because we can focus on the safety issues – but also enhance our operational risk assessments. For example, nowadays we are able to carry specific cargo that requires to be handled with care thanks to being able to risk assess it and feed the results back into the system.
“Performance monitoring is the link between safety and efficiency. In the past we gathered information ourselves manually from a variety of different databases. However now, thanks to being able to monitor performance of the business through a series of KPIs, we are able to view all of that data in a blink of an eye in one central portal. We don’t need to search or look for this ourselves, the system does this for us and tells us what areas require extra attention or is performing well.”
Dirk Adriaenssens, who oversees Brussels Airlines’ Safety & Compliance Monitoring Department, said: “We invested in an integrated software suite because we required one solution to manage all of our safety and compliance monitoring activities. The solution gives us full integration of all safety issues for all departments and is also able to integrate with existing interfaces – such as our flight data monitoring system or our scheduling software – for a complete safety product.
“The largest benefit we’ve seen is that it can be used online and offline and provides us with higher efficiencies in that we now don’t have to duplicate a lot of our tasks and data. This encourages the same working methods throughout the organisation in regards to capturing safety and operational issues and other forms of data.”
Mr Adriaenssens continued: “We are now capturing safety issues more easily and working more proactively as we can detect hazards in advance even better. This has helped us not only improve safety even more here at Brussels Airlines, but has increased efficiency as everyone is using and becoming knowledgeable in one tool.”
In April, Brussels Airlines announced that passenger numbers had risen by 11.5% mainly due to the introduction of new destinations. Part of the Lufthansa Group, the airline also celebrated its five year membership with Star Alliance in December 2014.
Ashley Marron, COO of the Ideagen Group PLC, said: “We are delighted that Brussels Airlines are seeing such value in our products and services.
“Q-Pulse, Gael Risk and Performance Monitor – which comprise of the overall Gael Insight solution – allows aviation organisations to take control of their safety and quality responsibilities and allow them to anticipate problems before they emerge.
“With Brussels Airlines, we are proud to provide them with the tools and expertise to achieve operational excellence, and are dedicated to a lifetime commitment in working alongside them on that journey.”