Airport Integration of Operational Systems, Passenger Processing & Baggage Systems

Development and Supply of Reflighting Capability, UltraReflight

BA awarded the contract to Ultra in December 2005, site acceptance tests were completed in September 2006.

UltraReflight provides operator-controlled reflighting capabilities for BA and BMI at London Heathrow Airport.

London Heathrow Airport is the world's busiest international airport, handling nearly 70 million passengers per year. 

Scope of work

• UltraReflight software development and customisation
• Integration with existing Heathrow third party systems such as the BA Operational Data Warehouse, BA Corporate Directory, SITA Bag Message, SITA WorldTracer, BA Flight Information System (COSI) and FedEx
• Classroom and hands-on user training
• Full project management

UltraReflight functionality

ThinClient

• Operator present reflighting
• Remote reflighting
• Bag grouping
• Courier airway bill printing
• Load limit modification
• Cancel rush bag
• Reports
• Contingency – the ability to reflight a bag via a courier
• Administration
• Out of system bags – displays a list of the bags that can and cannot currently be reflighted and are logged as out of system

ThickClient

• Alarm and logging viewing and configuration
• Database table modification
• User configuration

J2ME scanner application

• Sending of QOH messages to WorldTracer- used within WorldTracer to identify that a bag is presently at a station
• Reflighting of a bag
• Bag grouping
• Send BPM – used to generate a BPM at a location such as a security screening point.

Multi-site support

A single instance of UltraReflight can support more than one site, so that two or more airports can be operated from the same system. In this case, data for both sites is contained within the same database.  Alternatively, two instances of UltraReflight can be replicated on the same pair of servers to offer two completely separate and independent application instances.  In this configuration, the application software associated with one site can be shut down without affecting the other running instance.

Network printer support

The UltraReflight application supports the following network attached printers types which can be used to print Full Expedite, Overlay Expedite, Full Reprint, Full Reval and Airway bills:

• IER506/508/512
• Toshiba SV4D/T
• Zebra FDX2348 Plus
• Intermec PF2i EasyCoder

Automatic & remote reflighting

In the scenario where a BHS provides UltraReflight with a BPM notification the instant a bag becomes missed, UltraReflight can automatically perform a reflight within three seconds. It generates all required messages to ensure that the bag is delivered to the correct flight for transportation to the customer.

If the automatic reflight cannot be performed, then remote users can specify the reason that the reflight can occur and perform the reflight remotely. If a reason for reflighting cannot be ascertained then remote users can instruct the BHS to deliver the bag to a problem bag area to be dealt with by an operator on-site.

Reflighting by courier

UltraReflight allows destination airports and even complete countries to be placed into "contingency" mode. When operating in contingency mode UltraReflight will attempt to reflight the bag to these contingency destinations via a courier such as FedEx. Messages are exchanged with the chosen courier as required and an Airway Bill is generated for attachment to the bag. Messages are sent to WorldTracer indicating that the baggage has been sent by courier.