Alibaba Cloud’s ET Aviation Brain Piloted in Beijing Capital International Airport

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, officially launched ET Aviation Brain at the Beijing Computing Conference today (December 20, 2017). Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA), the largest airport in China, will become the first adopter of the Brain, piloting it to optimize operating efficiency and reduce flight delays.

Frequent travelers who have experienced the painful but unavoidable delays flying in and out of BCIA are sure to be thrilled by the news that ET Aviation Brain, powered by advanced AI technologies, will help to reduce flight delays by refreshing the aircraft parking apron utilization at BCIA in as little as 50 seconds, compared to the two to three hours needed if the task was carried out by human dispatchers. The application of ET Aviation Brain will also increase the utilization of bridged aprons by 10%, saving 20,000 passengers a total of 5,000 hours every day by reducing the need to ride shuttles between aircraft and BCIA’s terminals.

With 300 aircraft parking spaces, BCIA schedules 1,700 flights each day, or an average of two landings every minute. Delays are sometimes inevitable, especially during adverse weather.

ET Aviation Brain is capable of learning basic aviation knowledge, including aircraft models, take-off and landing schedules, and the locations of the parking positions, runways and taxiways, as well as shuttle bus numbers and capacity. The Brain can then build an integrated mathematical model based on these statistics to optimize the overall operating efficiency of BCIA.

Dr. Wanli MIN, Chief Scientist of Machine Intelligence at Alibaba Cloud, said: “We are very pleased to see that ET Aviation Brain, powered by Alibaba Cloud’s large-scale computing engine Apsara and data intelligence capabilities, is being adopted by BCIA to digitalize its operations. ET Aviation Brain embodies infrastructure and solutions for aviation digitalization in China, all in the cloud. We look forward to wider application of the technology and to developing further vertical solutions for other industries.”

ET Brain is Alibaba Cloud’s proprietary AI program that aims to help different verticals to tackle real-world challenges and unleash their development potential. Today, Alibaba Cloud’s ET City Brain, ET Industrial Brain, ET Medical Brain, ET Environment Brain and ET Aviation Brain offer an array of services for its clients in enterprise, city administration and other professions.