Cockpit-IT: AI-supported innovation in aviation industry

Jens Technau and Tom Theurich, who founded Cockpit-IT, are revolutionizing IT service management for aviation companies with AI-supported technology. Their vision: to lead aviation software industry into a new era of efficiency through optimized IT operations and improved uptime.

With their startup Cockpit-IT, Jens Technau and Tom Theurich develop user-friendly software solutions for the aviation industry. Their main focus is on Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs), which replace traditional paper documentation. They also focus on backend systems supporting flight data management. Their main product, smartOFP, automates flight preparation and consistently complies with international standards. Its technology helps airlines to organize their operations efficiently and in compliance with regulations.

The story of Cockpit-IT starts in 1990, when Jens Technau, a pilot and computer scientist, was developing EFB systems for airlines. At SunExpress, he met Tom Theurich, an aviation engineer and also a pilot. In 2021, they founded gate startup Cockpit-IT. Today, their customers include prestigious companies such as BMW, Lufthansa and a number of smaller airlines. Their platform, based on machine learning and data analysis, increases the efficiency of these customers by up to 30%.

In this interview, Jens Technau shares his insights on how artificial intelligence plays a role in his startup:

INCREASING EFFICIENCY BY MEANS OF AI WITH SMARTOFP

The name of our main product, smartOFP, an EFB (Electronic Flight Bag) application, already says a lot: From the very beginning, the app aimed to be more than just an animated spreadsheet. This sets it apart from many competing products. Our Electronic Flight Folder (EFF) has a comprehensive understanding of flying. This means it doesn’t just give information like “We are passing waypoint x”. It also provides contextual information. This includes, for example, geography, weather and airways in the surrounding area. It is also able to provide qualified information and recommendations.

In the future, we would like to offer our customers AI-based recommendations to optimize their flight operations. This includes the ability to save fuel, identify undiscovered optimization opportunities in route planning, flight speeds as well as ascent and descent rates. We also help to analyze excessive fuel consumption and evaluate the relevance of reserve fuel and its weight for efficiency.

COKPIT-IT INTEGRATES AI USING CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS

In our smartOFP app, we use clustering to identify patterns. This allows us to analyze and visualize dynamic data such as weather conditions and spatial and temporal flight trajectories. For example, pilots can recognize strong changes in the frequency range of certain flight parameters within a few seconds. However, it becomes harder with long-term weaker but constant changes. It is even more challenging to identify interactions between slowly changing values. One example is when the fuel quantity above a waypoint is still in the green range. This means that it is actually above the planned value. But then it continuously decreases. It will therefore fall into the red zone at a predictable point in the future.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

After being called dead for decades, the development of AI has made enormous progress in aviation over the last years. A kind of parallel software universe has grown up. Conventional development approaches do not work well with AI. The use of machine learning requires a rethinking away from familiar, deterministic methods such as object-oriented programming or SQL. Understanding these new methods is challenging. The transition to probabilistic thinking and mental processing of many dimensions is difficult. Thanks to new chat AIs, we can learn directly from them. They explain themselves perfectly and have infinite patience. Anyone who invests enough time in AI has access to first-class knowledge.