Croatia’s Combis reaches new heights with iFlight

The airline and airport industry is possibly one of the most closely watched sectors in the world — which is hardly surprising in view of the devastating effects that even the simplest mistakes can have. Millions of people travel by air every day, placing a huge amount of responsibility in the hands of airline and airport operators. Customer service is also a difficult balance to get right, as delayed or cancelled flights are generally greeted with impatience at best and anger at worst.

Such delays are, unfortunately, likely to remain an inevitable part of flying. Yet what can airlines do to ensure they provide the best service possible to their customers, including up-to-date information on the status of flights? First and foremost, airlines and airports can implement new internal systems and procedures that help them to pinpoint and eliminate faults and potential bottlenecks, and improve service quality and safety standards.

Combis, the ICT subsidiary of Hrvatski Telekom, has come up with a novel solution to help airline and airport operators do just that. Back in early 2016, Combis established a programme called NeoStartup to promote a fertile and collaborative environment for the development of new and innovative solutions. Two developers called Marko Radoš and Mario Rudman embraced this new start-up culture to create iFlight — an innovative IT solution for aircraft that incorporates systems for managing safety and quality at airline companies and airports. Importantly, iFlight also enables operators to comply with even stricter safety regulations from the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA).

First customer win
Combis has already overcome one of its primary challenges: it has successfully implemented the iFlight solution at its first customer, Croatian passenger and charter airline Trade Air. Speaking during the recent 11^th Combis Conference that took place in Šibenik, Croatia, in September, Hrvoje Akmadžić, who is head of safety and quality at Trade Air, said iFlight has enabled his company to simplify the procedures in its safety and quality management systems. He described it as an innovative, user-friendly solution that also meets the strict safety requirements within the aeronautical industry.

“Before iFlight, we used numerous tables that were being edited by a large number of people, which restricted system efficiency and increased error probability. The implementation of this system provided Trade Air with an active safety system, with status notifications and a detailed insight into safety indicators of flight operations,” Akmadžić said.

Looking beyond Croatia
Since then, Combis has gone on to install iFlight at two further customers — this time in markets outside of Croatia. The second implementation took place at Mostar Airport in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the iFlight system will simplify the internal procedures of the safety management system and speed up progress in that segment. The third system implementation was achieved at SCAT Airlines in the Republic of Kazakhstan. SCAT Airlines, which connects Central Asia with Europe, has 17 aircraft in its fleet. By using the iFlight solution, it has been able to establish a modern system for safety and quality management that also brings it into line with European regulations for air traffic safety.

Both Mostar Airport and SCAT Airlines opted for the entire iFlight safety and quality management system (iFlight SMS & QMS) — a cloud-based application that can also be customised according to the customer’s requirements. For example, different modules can be added for reporting, risk management, data analysis, documentation, and quality management. Additional features including a survey module, mobile applications module and other specific modules are also available specifically for air operators.

A clear winner
Mladen Maras, director of the application development division at Combis, indicated that iFlight was clearly a winning solution from the outset. “We believed in the idea and the potential of iFlight from the beginning and I am proud that the solution is recognised not only in the domestic market but also in the region and distant Kazakhstan,” he concluded.