At ToolPioneers, we're excited to share an enterprise-grade application we built for a prominent Canadian Air Transportation player. This robust and scalable solution was developed using Retool in weeks, instead of months or years, to manage flight operations and airport operations seamlessly.
App Purpose
Our application is designed to provide comprehensive management capabilities for both flight operations and airport operations. Let's delve into the key features and functionalities that make this application an essential tool for enhancing operational efficiency and strategic planning.
Live Flight Schedule
The Live Flight Schedule feature displays all incoming flights, providing details such as flight status (on time or delayed) and landing airports. With low latency results fetching using server side pagination, users experience minimal delay in accessing updated information. Additional functionalities include:
Refresh Table: Easily refresh the table to view the latest flight data.
Download Data: Download flight information for offline use or further analysis.
Apply Filters: Utilize custom filter options to search and filter flights based on criteria such as carrier, route, aircraft type, gates and more.
Live Capacity Parameters
To ensure optimal passenger flow management, the Live Capacity Parameters feature allows monitoring of:
Current Operating Hours: View the current operating hours of the airport.
Arrival Rates of Passengers: Check real-time passenger arrival rates to manage flow efficiently.
Airport Capacity: Monitor the current capacity of the airport, including security capacity.
Occupancy Ratios of Airlines: Analyze the occupancy ratios of different airlines for optimal resource allocation.
Scenario Manager
The Scenario Manager empowers users to simulate various 'what if' scenarios under different conditions. Key functionalities include:
Scenario Creation: Users can create, edit, and save planning and test scenarios. Simulate situations like runway and gate closures, airline delays, or limited airport operating hours by modifying capacity parameters across Operating hours, Arrival Rates, Airport Capacity and Airline Ratios tables.
Scenario Filters: Apply filters based on routes and airports and define operational dates on which you would want to test the scenarios.
Technical Integration: Scenarios are saved to a Snowflake instance, allowing users to view and run saved scenarios, simulate conditions, and see the results.
Live Insights
Real-time insights provide a current view of airport congestion, passenger numbers, and flight arrivals. This feature includes:
Visualization: Meaningful charts to visualize demand, queue length, and mean wait time. Users can customize charts by adding or removing PBS elements for easy comparison.
Role-Based Permissions/Access
To ensure secure and focused data access, our application implements role-based permissions:
Higher Management: Can only view insights to get a high-level overview of operations.
Airline Managers: Access information relevant to their specific airline using row-level security.
Airport Planners: Can view information pertinent to their specific airport.
User Experience and Efficiency of our Retool Operations Sol
The app combines practical functionalities with an intuitive interface.
The dark mode theme enhances readability and reduces eye strain.
The nested left-side navigation bar allows users to quickly access different functionalities.
The Retool table component allows easy inline editing, deletion, and addition of new rows to ensure data accuracy.
The Retool table allows various data types to be displayed, including integers, strings, date-time, multiple tags, HTML, images, buttons, and boolean values
Retool's chart component, based on the Plotly Library, allows users to view and understand various interactive charts.
Custom filter and scenario manager features improve operational efficiency by allowing proactive planning and real-time adjustments
Technical Robustness
Built with robust backend integration using Snowflake for data management and scenario storage, the application ensures high performance, scalability, and security.
Conclusion
Our application provides an end-to-end solution for managing flight and airport operations, enhancing both operational efficiency and strategic planning capabilities. By leveraging Retool, we created a powerful tool that meets the needs of various stakeholders while ensuring secure, role-based access to critical information.
Experience the difference with ToolPioneers, where we build custom tools at 10x speed, helping you overcome inefficiencies and streamline your operations. If you’re looking to enhance your company’s processes with custom applications and want to learn more about how we can help your business, feel free to reach out.