Low-cost airlines save on everything but OCC: We've been to see Wizz Air's 'brain trust'

Of an airline, we passengers normally see the website and the plane we fly on. The lounge, even, if we travel in business class. But behind the scenes, far from what you see at the airport, there are 'brains' (human and electronic) that they make us leave (hopefully) on time, travel safely and arrive at our destination on time. Or that, if something goes wrong, they 'fix' it consistent with the extent of the 'wrongness'.

These people and this technology, put together, make the so-called OCC, Operation Control Center. All companies have one, because, otherwise, they could not 'function'.

Clearly, the larger the company is in terms of fleet and network or is operating in 'challenging' environmental and geographical conditions, the larger, more complex, and technological the OCC will be. Because it is obviously different to operate 50 flights a day from operating thousands. And because flying, to take an example, in Europe is different from flying over oceans or over places like sub-Saharan Africa or the Amazon rainforest.

The Flight Club was able to take a 'behind-the-scenes' look at what is happening in Budapest, where Europe's third-largest low-cost airline, Wizz Air, is based.

In this case, it is obvious, we accepted the invitation to have this otherwise unfeasible experience.

A carrier that now has 230 Airbus A320s and A321s. (which are actually under 4 different companies-Wizz Air Malta, Wizz Air Hungary, Wizz Air Uk and Wizz Air Abu Dhabi), Flies to some 200 destinations in some 40 countries In Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and operates a thousand flights a day, relying on the labor of about 8,000 pilots and cabin crew.

The place where all this complex interaction between machines and humans is coordinated is a large open-plan space that is located on the third floor of a state-of-the-art office building on the banks of the Danube in downtown Budapest, where Wizz Air has its headquarters.

About 100 people work there, rotating on multiple shifts, day and night. The OCC is divided into. half a dozen areas dealing with navigation, operations control, crew management (long-term and daily), customer care, and maintenance.

The 'heart' of operations is software called Lido, a flight planning system created by Lufthansa and also adopted by other airlines, including Wizz Air. It is he who 'decides' each day the route that each of the low-cost airline's 1,000 flights will follow, considering dozens and dozens of factors such as aircraft type, cargo, fuel consumption, weather, possible Eurocontrol malfunctions, airspace closures, strikes, geo-political situations (such as the war between Russia and Ukraine and the ongoing war between Israel and Iran).

Not only that, it also plans 4-5 alternatives to that route. The 'flight plan' is then sent to Eurocontrol, who either approves it or chooses one of the alternatives or makes changes to it and sends it back to the banks of the Danube.

"Much of our 'planning' work takes place during the night hours, when we have few planes in the air." Wizz Air's head of OCC, James Machen, explains.. Then, everything goes to operations control, which manages 'live' each and every one of the company's flights, verifying that everything is running smoothly and monitoring abnormal situations.

"In recent days we are grappling with the closure of the airspaces of Israel, Iraq, Iran and Jordan, which are having major consequences on our flights to Abu Dhabi, in terms of punctuality, in terms of crew management, in terms of longer flight duration that sometimes requires a fuel stop on flights to Europe, which we do in Larnaca or Sofia." Jordan and Israel are also two important markets for low-cost, which On the day of June 15 alone, it canceled 56 flights.

"Embarkation and disembarkation are the two most critical phases in operations, Those in which delays accumulate most frequently. There are countries that are more 'efficient' and others less so, and among the latter are Spain and Italy. Normally our turnaround times are 35 minutes for A320s and 40 minutes for A321s, but at 35 airports in our network we have increased those times to 40 and 45 minutes, respectively," Machen explains.

If something goes wrong and there is a major delay or cancellation, the 'ball' passes to the Disruption Control team that is responsible for 'managing' inconveniences for passengers, whether it is handing out vouchers for food and drinks, finding alternative flights, and booking a night in a hotel.

Of course, planes (still?) do not fly without crews. E two of the Operation Control Center's 'areas' deal with short-term crew planning (verifying that the long term one is respected) and that on a daily basis, because with 8 thousand pilots and flight attendants, it is obvious that absences due to illness or personal reasons occur every day.

All these aspects of the company's 'life' are managed, on each shift, by no more than about 30 people. Miracles of technology. Which, however, without humans (albeit few) cannot (yet) function.