Dubai Airports opens high-tech operations control centre

Dubai Airports on Wednesday officially inaugurated its high-tech Operations Control Centre that ensures smooth flight operations at the world's busiest international airport.
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Chairman of Dubai Airports, Chairman of Emirates airline and Chief Executive of Emirates Group, officially inaugurated the state-of-the-art facility, which oversees operations at the airport that handled 86.4 million passengers last year.
The facility is fully-equipped to handle modern-day aviation challenges and monitors airport operations in real time and visualises traffic flows to support seamless flights and on-ground operations at Dubai's airports. It enables a collaborative approach to managing airport operations by providing information and analyses based on data collated from more than 50 systems fed by seven billion data points.
The facility also allows operator Dubai Airports, government agencies, airlines and other service partners to monitor every aspect of operations in real time, as well as predict developing situations in order to respond to them more efficiently. It has 96 dedicated work stations and 123 wall screens to monitor traffic flow and ensure smooth day-to-day operations.
Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, briefed Sheikh Ahmed about the control centre in the presence of top officials from Dubai Airports and other government departments.
"We have brought all stakeholders in the aviation sector on this single platform to ensure seamless flight operations at the world's busiest airport," Griffiths said.
The state-of-the art system integrates different sections such as airfield, aircraft stands, baggage carousels, terminals, touch points, queueing, flight information display system and security. The facility hosts 120-plus airport staff and service partners from Dubai Airports, Emirates, dnata, Dubai Police, Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services, Dubai Customs, the General Directorate of Residency, the Roads and Transport Authority and Foreigners Affairs Dubai, among others.
Damian Ellacott, vice-president of the Airport Operations Control Centre, said the new facility processes seven billion data points every day to ensure smooth operations at the airport.
"We monitor and supervise, on average, 1,100 flight operations at Dubai's airports daily," he said.
He said harnessing big data has helped Dubai Airports deliver a smooth experience to some 240,000 passengers daily and achieve breakthrough service improvements, including a 40 per cent reduction in queue time since 2018 and a record 99.96 per cent baggage delivery success rate in 2019.
"From the control centre, we're able to monitor and micro-manage many parts of the operation in much greater detail than we were ever able to do before," he said.
He said the operations centre was actually opened two years ago.
"What we're celebrating today with this inauguration event is the fact that over the last two years, we've invited more and more partners into the operations centre," he added.
"We've developed a capability over the last two years, which now puts us in a position where we're making a real difference to the operation."
To a question, he said the facility also controls Dubai World Central (DWC) operations.
"Currently, we manage DWC operations from this control centre. DWC operations are clearly a lot smaller than DXB, and for the foreseeable future it makes sense that we manage that operation from this centre," Ellacott concluded.
- muzaffarrizvi@khaleejtimes.com