Technology can bring the promise of efficiency, cost savings and improved services. In a networked system, like aviation, common data formats that are recognized across an industry are critical. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) Standard Schedules Information Manual (SSIM) format is one such format that enables airlines to easily access and work with global schedules data.
As Cirium is a leading provider of Schedules data, in this article we will take a comprehensive look at IATA SSIM format and how airlines use it. For Cirium customers, SSIM is the foundation for profitable routes, efficient networks and a great traveler experience.
What is the IATA SSIM Format?
IATA SSIM is a standard format that airlines use to exchange flight schedules that enable itinerary creation, and other schedule-related functions with GDSs (global distribution systems) and other aviation stakeholders. The SSIM format includes structured data elements such as flight numbers, departure and arrival times, airport codes, aircraft types, and other information. These elements are defined in a specific order that forms a structural hierarchy. The SSIM format is flexible and can accommodate variations in flight schedules depending on flight frequency, days of operation, aircraft equipment, and seasonal variations.
How is the IATA SSIM Format Used?
SSIM is a critical cog in how airlines communicate and exchange data. Airlines use the SSIM format to exchange schedule and route data with GDSs and other stakeholders. GDSs use this data to sell airline tickets, update flight schedules, and manage airline inventory. The SSIM format is also used to update airport and air traffic control systems with the latest flight information.
Airline operations teams use the SSIM format to develop and manage flight schedules, monitor route performance, and analyze trends in the aviation industry.
In addition, airlines also use the SSIM format to share codeshare and interline agreements with other airlines.
Benefits of Using the IATA SSIM Format
The SSIM format offers several benefits to airlines, GDSs, and other stakeholders. First, it ensures standardized and consistent data across all airlines and systems, which reduces errors and increases automation. Secondly, it supports automated data synchronization between airlines and GDSs, which reduces the time and resources required for manual data entry. Finally, the SSIM format allows for faster and more accurate updates to flight schedules, which enhances reliability and improves customer satisfaction.
Challenges of Using the IATA SSIM Format
Despite its benefits, the SSIM format also poses some challenges for airlines. One of the biggest challenges is the high level of expertise required to develop and manage SSIM data. For example, it is a fixed-position (non-delimited) text file, harping back to mainframe days, with various record types, requiring special ETL tooling making it difficult to properly ingest and parse. Additionally for most analytics purposes, the SSIM is not turnkey, in that it uses summarization to reflect ranges of flight operations across time periods. And, there can be certain levels of data overlap within SSIM that may need to be deduplicated or otherwise interpreted properly for analytics. This can result in higher training and staffing costs for airlines. Finally, there is the need for frequent updates to the data due to changes in flight schedules or route changes, which can take longer than expected to implement.
Cirium is keenly aware of these challenges and has worked tirelessly with airlines around the globe to ingest, process, correct and normalize schedule data. Our team of experts support airlines and their stakeholders around the globe to help customers unlock the full potential of SSIM and schedule data more broadly.
Future of the IATA SSIM Format
The aviation industry is constantly evolving, and so is the SSIM format. IATA is constantly evaluating changes and enhancements of the SSIM format that will improve data structure and ensure better integration across airlines, GDS systems and other stakeholders. Future enhancements should hopefully offer greater flexibility and reduce the need for manual data entry. With the rise of automation and artificial intelligence in the aviation industry, the SSIM format is likely to become even more important in the years to come.
Overall, the SSIM format is a critical tool that airlines use to manage their flight schedules, exchange route data with GDSs, and ensure consistent and reliable service for their customers.
As the aviation industry continues to evolve, the SSIM format will play a critical role in facilitating automation, enhancing efficiency, and providing reliable service to millions of passengers worldwide. Cirium is committed to the industry and supporting our customers around the globe. Learn more about Cirium schedules data.
If you would like to learn more about Cirium SSIM, other schedule data options or how schedule data can be fused and enriched with Cirium broader data portfolio that powers the aviation industry, please schedule time with one of our experts.
Cirium’s CO2 emissions calculations, commended by American Airlines and Virgin Atlantic for accuracy, are now available in Cirium Sky
The Cirium Sky, aviation data warehouse, provides secure cloud access to Cirium’s comprehensive datasets
Cirium Sky democratizes data and unifies it in one place enabling it to drive operational efficiencies and faster decision making
The air travel industry now has easy access to the most accurate carbon emissions data from the aviation analytics firm, Cirium, through its new aviation data warehouse, Cirium Sky.
Jeremy Bowen, CEO at Cirium said: “We developed Cirium Sky to offer a single-source solution to the market, where businesses can access Cirium’s extensive data warehouse in the cloud, at any time or place.
The level of precision and accuracy of Cirium’s CO2 emissions calculations for flights far exceeds estimates available today and accessing this data via Cirium Sky enables our clients to fulfill their sustainability objectives faster and more cost effectively.”
Cirium Sky enables our clients to fulfill their sustainability objectives faster and more cost effectively.
Jeremy Bowen
As the aviation industry rebuilds from the impact of the pandemic, the need for businesses to report on their Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) footprint has increasingly taken center stage.
Reducing aviation’s emissions will require for airlines, airports, Air Service Navigation Providers (ANSPs), aircraft financiers and manufacturers, and travel companies to use accurate data which considers many variables that can impact a flight’s emissions, including but not limited to, aircraft and engine specifications, airline schedules and actual flight operations.
Andrew O’Connor, VP of Journey and Sustainability at Cirium said: “We have seen a lack of consistency in the flight emissions reporting so far, which has driven less consensus on agreed metrics to be used to measure emissions effectively.
The Cirium team is on a mission to establish the standard for accurate carbon emissions data and are focused on historical and predicted fuel burn and emissions per aircraft, the flight and the cabin seat class. These building blocks are core to almost all aviation sustainability use cases.”
These building blocks are core to almost all aviation sustainability use cases.
Andrew O’Connor
Cirium Sky leverages the latest technology to democratize data and unify it in one place to enable businesses to identify operational inefficiencies, lower costs, reduce financial risks, and identify new service opportunities.
With the availability of comprehensive historical and predicted aircraft fuel burn and CO2 emissions data, Cirium Sky offers the most complete and deepest range of aviation datasets in the industry, including global schedules and connections, flight status, air traffic management, weather, global aircraft fleet, and fares and passenger traffic
The accuracy of Cirium’s data and analytics is supported by strong data partnerships with over 900 airlines, airports worldwide, ADS-B satellite tracking, Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and more.
About Cirium Cirium® is the world’s most trusted source of aviation analytics. The company delivers powerful data and cutting-edge analytics to empower a wide spectrum of industry players. It equips airlines, airports, travel enterprises, aircraft manufacturers, and financial entities with the clarity and intelligence they need to optimize their operations, make informed decisions, and accelerate revenue growth.
Cirium® is part of LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, a RELX business, which provides information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. The shares of RELX PLC are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RELX.
System Wide Information Management (SWIM) is a global Air Traffic Management (ATM) industry initiative to harmonize the exchange of aeronautical, weather and flight information for airspace users like airlines, airports, and other stakeholders. Where implemented, SWIM is essential to providing the most efficient and safe use of airspace, managing air traffic around weather, and increasing common situational awareness on the ground. Through effective exchange of flight-related information, airspace users and controllers have access to the most current information that may be affecting their area of responsibility in real-time. SWIM helps improve decision-making and streamline information-sharing for improved planning and execution.
The benefits of SWIM to enable better and faster decisions through information sharing and enhanced situational awareness are unquestionable and overall SWIM implementations enable the ATM systems around the globe to accommodate the growing aviation demand enabling safe and efficient air travel.
However, airlines and other aviation stakeholders face challenges in their attempts to fully realize the power of SWIM due to;
The increasing complexity of the data in terms of volume and breadth, with estimates of annual global aircraft data production reaching 98 million terabytes by the year 2026
The difficulty in integrating legacy SWIM technologies which have been in existence for almost 20-years is challenging
The costs in time and infrastructure necessary to ingest, normalize and model the data into a usable format.
Ultimately, understanding how SWIM fits into an organizations’ digital-transformation strategy is an important, foundational strategic element. Combining SWIM data into their business intelligence initiatives can bring a much needed 360-degree view of flights that benefits an airline’s operation, safety, forecasting, customer satisfaction and more.
At Cirium we are focused on making SWIM more accessible and easier to integrate into an airline or other aviation stakeholders’ digital initiatives. While real-time situational awareness is the primary benefit of SWIM, that data is packed with tremendous historical insights. Solutions such as Cirium Sky, a managed data warehouse for airlines, make SWIM more accessible and fuses that data with comprehensive schedule and related flight information such as flight status, fleet information, weather and more. With all this fully contextualized data available in near real-time and historically with modern interfaces, aviation stakeholders can better integrate SWIM throughout their organization.
SWIM in Action
Traffic Management Initiatives (TMIs) are one core components of SWIM and are programs that ATC may use to balance demand and capacity to ensure the safety and efficiency of a national airspace. These initiatives can take a few forms; ground stops, ground delays, airspace/airport closures – depending on the need and situation. Some TMIs are used to manage excess demand at a congested airport. Other TMIs are used to manage traffic issues in the enroute environment. While TMIs apply to the day of operation to make tactical decisions related to flights, a great deal can be learned from post-flight analysis to identify patterns which can aid in the creation of better plans/schedules or inform prediction models to drive more accurate ETA/ETDs and manage disruptions more proactively.
Here is a simple example of how Cirium Sky can deliver insights to Airline Operation Analysts on the impact of ground stops (a TMI in which aircraft that are instructed to remain on the ground at their origination airports due to a constraint at their destination airport) or Ground Delay Program (a TMI that delays aircraft at their departure airport to reconcile demand with capacity at their arrival airport). Flights are assigned departure times, which in turn regulate their arrival time at the impacted airport.
In our example, Lisa is a post-operations analyst for a major US airline. She is tasked with analyzing the impact of several TMIs in the US for the month of September 2021. Leveraging a simple dashboard, she created and powered by Cirium Sky, she can view the TMIs issued across the US for the month representing 18 ground delays and ground stops, directly impacting 1,060 flights across 74 operating carriers – resulting in 37,794 delay minutes.
Lisa notices TMI activity issued for Las Vegas (McCarran International Airport) and wants to analyze what occurred. By clicking on LAS she can see that during this period there were two TMI issues for WIND conditions impacting a total of 304 flights across 31 operating carriers resulting in 10,262 minutes of total delay with an average delay of 48.18 minutes per impacted flight.
Further, by leveraging the available SWIM data via Cirium Sky, Lisa identifies affected routes, a breakdown of the flights impacted by operating airline, delay minutes by airline and a breakdown of disruption type.
Additionally, she can visualize the disruption impact direction (arrival or departures) and disruption outcomes for the impacted flights including cancellations or diversions.
Finally, Lisa can drill down into flight detail. She notices that 16 impacted flights resulted in diversions and can easily see the detail of those 16 flights.
The results of her analysis can inform the airline’s planning and operations efforts and prepare teams to better handle similar situations in the future.
As you can see from this single use-case, it becomes clear how SWIM data combined with schedule, flight, and fleet data fits into an airline’s digital transformation strategy. SWIM data provides important contextual data that helps analysts fully understand where and when TMIs are likely to happen, how they impact operations, and helps to improve their ability to anticipate and adapt to them.
SWIM provides much more information and insights beyond TMIs, with data spanning air traffic flow management, clearance times, taxi-times, runway utilization and more can provide an organization the ability to drive more efficiency, maximize utilization, create more resilient flight schedules to minimize the impact of disruptions while delivering high on-time performance.
Cirium is committed to help the aviation industry achieve its digital transformation goals. Please contact one our representatives to discuss how Cirium can facilitate your digital transformation.
The Problem: Airports need to know if a flight is arriving later than its scheduled time, as that will impact operations and passenger services. A late-arriving flight may result in inadequate staffing at terminals and a poor passenger experience. The key challenge for airports is, they don’t often know a flight will be arriving late until it enters their airspace. Very often, airports resort to checking the status of flights manually through 3rd party resources or websites. This may mean too little time for airports to react and make informed decisions.
The Solution: Cirium offers real-time flight tracking and monitoring of flights globally. We curate flight status data from over 600 data sources. Using Cirium’s Flex API services, airports can stay on top of changes of the flights, at origins or throughout journeys. An airport can choose to “pull” the info by calling Cirium Flight Status API based on frequency needs, or receive them as “push” alerts using Cirium Flight Alerts API tailored to relevant flight events, on a real-time basis. There are 20 flight events to select from, including cancellation, diversions, delays, tail number changes, gate changes and more.
If an airport wants to track a group of flights instead of individual flight, they can use Operational Batch Alerts to monitor a large group of flights and receive relevant alerts throughout the day through a combination of specific airlines, departure or arrival airports. With the current pandemic situation, many airlines choose to cancel flights at the last minute. This solution will help airports gain early awareness of any flight deviations or irregular operations.
Key features of Operation Batch Alerts:
Intelligence; a real-time push of flight status updates by a group of flights
Timely notice of schedule exceptions and irregular operations across a group of flights
Notify users of specific events across group of flights while filtering out irrelevant notifications
Easy and simple flight notification rule configuration via the API
Airports face challenges in providing complete arrival flight information to passengers. They can offer updates on departure flights at their airports, however may not have visibility on inbound flights from origin airports. In some cases, airports do not have the API capability to transmit their flight data into their digital channels such as mobile application and websites. Cirium’s Flex API services can help to overcome this issue and power airports’ channels with real-time flight updates.
Below are two airports in APAC who use Cirium Flight Status API to display status of the arrival flights via their mobile application and website.
Cirium Helps Airports Determine Greater Accuracy in Billings for Landing and Usage Fees
The Problem: Airports struggle with compiling landing and usage fee bills for airline tenants utilizing their airports. Airports currently rely on reports submitted by tenants based on published schedules. However, airports have noticed some airlines routinely operate different aircraft than indicated in schedules on specific flights. This results in airports not billing for and collecting correct fees from airlines.
The Solution: Cirium can deliver historical flight data for an accurate audit on the reports submitted by airlines. Using Cirium’s Premium Airport Analysis Workbook, users retrieve details of flights historically flown in and out of an airport. The Workbook offers multiple dashboard views to address different analytical needs for airports. Two dashboards are particularly useful to airports in understanding aircraft landing and usages: Arriving/Departing Flights and Gate Utilization by Airline.
Cirium’s Arriving/Departing Flights dashboard shows historical flights flown in or out of a specific airport. User may refer to graphical bars charts on this dashboard to understand the number of flights arriving/departing at the airport, broken down by hours of the day across a date range. Each bar also indicates the breakdown of flights that have landed, cancelled, diverted, etc., which are color-coded. To find greater flight detail, users can refer to the table list on the right of the dashboard which includes details such as flight number, tail number, scheduled departure/arrival time, estimated or actual departure/arrival time, delays, and, more importantly the actual aircraft equipment used for the flight (highlighted in the red box below). This is extremely useful to airports in determining the total weight of the each aircraft that landed at their airports.
Other than landed weight of the aircraft, airports could charge different rates based on where aircrafts are parked (e.g. at a specific terminal or gates). The Cirium Gate Utilization by Airline dashboard shows the overall utilization of gates by different airlines at a specific airport. Users can readily determine the number of aircrafts parked at different gates, across different terminals, across a date range (highlighted in the left red box below). Users may also identify where airlines parked aircraft by airline groupings and turns at each gate (highlighted in the blue box below).
The Problem: Premium lounge operators require greater insights. It’s a constant struggle especially for large operators to gauge potential demand for premium lounges. Operators would like to be able to forecast the number of customers who may visit, in an effort to right size supply chains, staffing and reduce costs and spoilage.
The Solution: Cirium can deliver airport historical customer informatics to lounge operators to use as an input into planning and forecasting. Using Cirium’s FM-Traffic database, users can determine how many premium-fared passengers have historically flown from an airport. Using this information, the lounge operator can make demand assumptions from the premium passengers (in addition to “other” passengers who may purchase access).
For example, one data pull finds all passengers for an airport (Los Angeles-LAX, in this case) for the months of May and June 2019. We would likely use these months to forecast May and June of 2020 (in a non-COVID-19 world). We then select the IATA code for the airline a lounge serves.
We see an airline had an average of 17,647 total departing passengers per day, in June 2019. Now we need to determine how many of that set would have access to a particular lounge by virtue of being a first or business class ticketed passenger.
With a second data pull for only First Class and Business Class passengers, we see 1,324 of American Airlines’ 17,647 daily passengers (or 8%) could potentially require lounge access—and that is not factoring economy passengers who may have access through other means.
Users may repeat this exercise, to refine results for international passengers only, in the event the lounge is only available to them.
Cirium Helps Security Services at Airports Determine Times of Day When There May Be Peak Demand at Checkpoints, Allowing for Adequate Staff Preparation
The Problem: Airports struggle at times with long lines at security checkpoints while other checkpoints are empty at the same time. Long security lines may cause issues for both travelers and security staff.
The Solution: Cirium delivers detailed information concerning the number of departures—and departing seats, per hour of the day at any given airport. By utilizing the Level of Ops Report in either Cirium SRS Analyser or Cirium Diio Mi, users determine when security lines may be busy, and can staff checkpoints appropriately. The below example shows Dallas-Love Field has some clear-cut “busy hours” during the day and the security agency can use this data to appropriately staff for potential demand a few hours before these departures.
This is probably the most simple case, as Dallas-Love Field is a small, one-terminal airport. What about airports with multiple terminals like Phoenix Sky Harbor?
A little bit of research tells us that American Airlines, British Airways, Condor Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Volaris, and WestJet operate at Terminal 4, with a number of other airlines operating from Terminal 3. The user of the Level of Ops report can easily filter for airlines in Cirium SRS Analyser or Cirium DiioMi and find potential “busy times” in each terminal. The below example will give those staffing checkpoints in Terminal 4 an idea of when they may expect longer lines—unless they staff to appropriately handle the crowds.
This exercise can be repeated for airlines operating from Terminal 3. If able, the security organization can move staff from one terminal to the other, if the potential for checkpoint congestion differs by terminal.
Cirium Can Help Airports Plan Airside Expansion
The Problem: Airports struggle with expansion planning. An airport handled about 900K passengers last year. This year the airport projects a slight increase in passenger volume. Airport capacity has been reached and the need to explore runway expansion, terminal building and apron to accommodate for much larger wide body aircraft to carry more passengers. In this scenario, the airport has already expanded the airport twice prior to recruiting new airlines to serve the airport. They would like to be able to forecast the number of passengers coming through and be able to adequately supply the demand, not just for the short term but for the long term too.
The Solution: Cirium can deliver airport historical scheduled and traffic information to use as an input into expansion planning. Using Cirium’s FM-Traffic database, the user can look at historical trends of carriers flying into the airport, going back to 2014, broken down by airline, passenger share, pax volumes in/out of any specific airport among other granular points via the O&D report and selecting the ‘Annual Time Series’ for the travel period. Using this information, lounge operators can make assumptions as to the demand of airport facilities such as the terminal and gates. Users can also determine how long and what kind of material to use to construct and expand the runway and apron, to accommodate larger aircraft.
The data pull shown below sorts out passenger numbers flying into an airport since 2016 (Kigali International Airport-KGL, in this case). This historical yearly trend analysis can help to forecast passenger numbers into KGL for the next 5 years ahead.
In this example, KGL airport had an average increase of 81,584 in total passengers per year from 2016 to 2019. This helps to gauge expansion of airport facilities (apron, gates, terminal, runway and car park).
Cirium Helps Airport Hotels Determine Times of Day When There May Be Peak Demand for Rooms, Gyms or Shower Facilities to Prepare for Adequate Staffing and Provision of Services
The Problem: Airports struggle with hotel planning. An airport is struggling to find a fine balance between supply and demand for hotel facilities. Additionally, it may be difficult to plan hotel maintenance during down time periods when guest numbers are low, to allow infrastructure improvements without significantly affecting guest services.
The Solution: Cirium delivers detailed information concerning the number of arrivals—and arriving seats, per hour of the day at any given airport. By utilizing the Level of Ops Report in either Cirium SRS Analyser or Cirim DiioMi, users can readily see when an airport is scheduled to be busy so as to plan their resources appropriately, including staff, quantity of rooms and other leisure and business facilities for guests. The Level of Ops Report below shows London Gatwick airport-LGW has some clear-cut “busy hours” during the day.
The results populated below show LGW is scheduled to have the highest number of arriving scheduled seats for the month of December 2020 at 8am, 9pm and 10pm local time.
Users may then increase key facilities such as room inventory availability, and, maintenance of the airport hotel ahead of time.
