Offline Departure Control Snapshots for Self-Service Outages
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Solution Overview
Problem
Airline departure control systems can become unavailable due to hardware or network faults, leading to suspension of self-service operations and causing inconvenience for passengers, airports, and airlines.
Innovation Solution
An offline departure control system that monitors the status of travel services and generates snapshots of passenger reservation records, allowing self-service terminals to operate offline and update records independently when the system goes offline, ensuring continuous passenger processing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the system operates in online mode with real-time connectivity, then data accuracy and system reliability are improved, but the system becomes vulnerable to outages that suspend self-service operations
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by capturing and storing snapshots of passenger reservation records before potential outages occur. The offline departure control system maintains local copies of reservation data, enabling self-service operations to continue uninterrupted during online system outages.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates copies of the reservation records by generating snapshots that are stored locally in the offline departure control system. These snapshots serve as local replicas that can be accessed and updated during online system unavailability, ensuring continuous self-service operation.
2Reliability
If the system suspends self-service operations during outages in favor of employee assisted check-in, then data consistency is maintained, but productivity and passenger convenience deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service terminals to operate autonomously during outages by using the offline departure control system to process passenger operations locally. Passengers can independently complete check-in and luggage drop without employee assistance, maintaining productivity while the system ensures data consistency through snapshot-based operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the operational parameter from real-time online processing to offline snapshot-based processing during outages. This parameter change allows the system to maintain data consistency through controlled snapshot updates while simultaneously enabling continuous self-service operations, thus maintaining productivity.
3Ease of operation
If the system implements offline snapshot functionality, then self-service continuity during outages is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the departure control functionality into online and offline modes. The offline departure control system is a distinct module that handles snapshot creation and management, separating concerns and enabling independent operation during outages without requiring complete system redesign.
Solution Approach 2:
The offline departure control system acts as an intermediary layer between self-service terminals and the online departure control system. It manages snapshot creation, storage, and updates, mediating between online data sources and offline operations to reduce overall system complexity through clear interface definitions.
Data Source
AI summary
A passenger processing system (and associated method) associated with a travel facility in respect of travel service(s) for processing passenger operation(s) including updating passenger reservation records, comprising: an offline departure control system in data communication with one or more online departure control systems and one or more self-service terminals, the offline departure control system is configured to: monitor online and offline statuses of travel service(s); for each travel service having an online status: receive passenger data from an associated online departure control system enabling a determination of a current status of passenger records at for online passenger operation(s) controlled by the online departure control system, and generate (for new records) a most recent online snapshot of the travel service representing a state of the passenger reservation records for the travel service; and for each travel service having an offline status: generate (when entering offline status) an offline snapshot based on a most recent online snapshot for the travel service, and subsequently update the offline snapshot based on newly received passenger operation data.