Developed by Smarter Airports, the AIRHART platform, designed to harmonise fragmented IT systems, has been rolled out at Munich, Copenhagen, and now Heathrow Airport. Airside talks to the company’s CEO, Daniel Ezban, about the potential of its AI-powered technology to transform airport operations.
Alongside the aircraft, terminals and runways lies a part of the airport ecosystem that is somewhat more overlooked, yet just as crucial – IT systems. These form the digital backbones of airports, managing everything from flight schedules to turnaround coordination.
Yet inefficient legacy technology and scattered, siloed solutions are pervasive in these systems, potentially driving up costs and limiting opportunities to improve the passenger experience.
In an environment where safety is critical, a technical glitch can mean more than time wasted, but potentially a total shutdown. It is hardly any wonder, then, that airports have traditionally been slow to embrace change.
However, with new technologies emerging rapidly, including those integrating artificial intelligence, many airport authorities are tentatively exploring the opportunities that digital transformation can bring.
Smarter Airports, a joint venture between Copenhagen Airport and Netcompany formed in 2019, is one organisation presenting a new approach. With its Airport Operations Orchestration Platform (AOOP), AIRHART, the company aims to transform operations at airports and help them to navigate multiple challenges: limited capacity, growing passenger volumes, and increasing operational complexity, to name a few.
AIRHART connects all the different stakeholders in the airport and allows them to work with the same set of data, thereby ensuring that all airport operations take place in a coordinated way.
“We like to use the term orchestration, because it’s actually very similar to how you view an orchestra,” says Daniel Ezban, CEO of Smarter Airports and global enterprise lead director at Netcompany. “You have different musicians who are each experts at playing their instruments, but you do need a conductor, both to interpret the composer’s music and to make sure that everyone plays in harmony.
“This system plays the role of the conductor, allowing the airport to have a centralised view of all the different processes that go on in the airport landscape, and make sure that handovers between groups happen smoothly and seamlessly.”
The technology was first developed in 2018, in close collaboration with Copenhagen Airport. “It was something that was born out of frustration at Copenhagen,” says Ezban. “They had very high digital ambitions, but they couldn’t really find anything on the market that could meet these.”
“Right now at Copenhagen, you have more than 6000 people working on the same system across 50 different organisations […] we wanted to focus on developing the glue that tied together different expert systems that could grow over time and that would enable the airport to tackle problems right now, and also future problems that they were not aware of yet.”
The platform has since been rolled out at Munich Airport, and at the end of last month, Heathrow selected the AIRHART platform as its digital backbone, aiming to strengthen transparency and collaboration across its multi-terminal operations.
AIRHART can be deployed within a matter of months, initially operating in parallel with the existing system so the company can monitor for any discrepancies. The full transition to the new platform is then completed gradually, in a series of small steps.
“We like to [compare it to] doing heart surgery while running a marathon.”
“We’re doing a phased implementation at Heathrow, because what we’re dealing with here is extremely critical systems,” says Ezban. “We like to [compare it to] doing heart surgery while running a marathon.
“We are not just touching on something on the top. We are at the core of how the airport operates. If this system is down, the airport shuts down.
“We are also helping Heathrow to decommission existing systems that are costly and that they want to get rid of. Making sure that you have the right balance between reducing risk on one hand, and being able to decommission existing systems with the savings that come with that on the other, [is important].”
As the UK’s only hub airport, Heathrow is under significant pressure to tackle challenges related to growing passenger volumes, while already operating at 99% capacity. Ezban says that AIRHART can offer significant benefits to airports with stretched resources like Heathrow by helping them to manage operational complexity.
“Heathrow is excelling in operating a two-runway airport – nobody does it better,” he points out. “Gatwick does the same thing, as a single-runway airport. That is why the world is actually looking to these exact two airports in terms of how to run an efficient operation.
“I’m not expecting that what we are bringing here will be a quick fix to the capacity constraints that they already have, but it will definitely help them in terms of minimising buffers and allowing for much more optimised planning.
“Most importantly of all, [with AIRHART] they are actually able to react to any deviation that will happen, in real time, on the day of operation. And that’s a capability you need when you’re running such a tight operation as these two airports already are. Every second, every minute counts in terms of efficiency gains.”
Besides optimising decision-making and delivering cost savings, AIRHART offers other benefits for airports. Notably, the system’s AI integration equips it with predictive capabilities, allowing it to draw on data from across the airport to standardise processes and anticipate issues before they arise.
“[Airport operators] can start acting much more based on data, rather than being dependant on somebody who has been on the job for 20 years and can anticipate exactly what will happen,” says Ezban.
“They need to rely on data from many different stakeholders. To bring all of that together is super complex; things tend to be done in silos, and handovers are very manual. It’s a phone call, it’s a radio message, it’s somebody writing a note.
“An airport is an ecosystem; whatever happens in one part of the airport will affect what happens in a different part of the airport. What we’re doing here is providing a set of tools to be able to orchestrate these processes and make them available for all the different stakeholders in this ecosystem.”
The platform also offers extensive capabilities for managing airside operations. At Copenhagen, AIRHART supports more than 100 different airside processes, ranging from stand closures to construction, wildlife management to AI-assisted turnarounds.
A full digital twin provides access to a 3D visualisation of the entire airport, including a live view of airside equipment in operation. Moreover, a task management app allows users to reassign staff from one flight to another, guided by AI-driven insights derived from data across the entire airport ecosystem.
“We take that AI insight generated in the platform, and we close the loop by feeding it all the way out to the individual sitting with a mobile device in a truck, in a car, or on the apron,” explains Ezban. “We are all talking about AI and how that will change the way we run airports, but if we forget the last mile, that an individual actually has to change the way they work based on the AI models, then it is not worth much.”
“Let’s say we want to look at taxi times from when an aircraft has touched down until it’s at the stand. You can have an AI model calculating that based on historical data and also the existing radars and transponders, thereby making sure that we always have the best possible data and representation of the truth.”
A key point of differentiation for AIRHART is its flexibility and capacity to allow collaboration with real-time data, filling a gap in industries beyond just aviation. The platform has now been introduced in multiple sectors throughout Europe, including transport, logistics, rail and supply chains.
The flagship technology can therefore continuously grow and innovate without relying solely on investment from airports. Ezban believes that this is one reason why Heathrow decided to select AIRHART over competitor products, alongside the company’s continuous efforts in organising forums for cross-industry clients to come together and exchange ideas about the platform.
Moreover, its deployments at other airports have allowed the company to apply key learnings to Heathrow. One such insight is the need for modern airports to have a platform that is flexible enough to replace existing legacy systems that may be limiting possibilities for growth, while running an innovation track in parallel.
“[Airports] are not tied into a roadmap governed by us,” says Ezban. “They have the freedom and the possibilities to build things themselves, or go to a third-party vendor. All that is a way to ensure that the power stays with the airport, and they can grow the use of the platform at their own speed.”
This approach also allows airports using AIRHART to see how others are applying the technology, share best practices, and introduce new capabilities more quickly with the support of Smarter Airports. “The thinking is that you have a big ecosystem, a group of airports collaborating and driving innovation,” says Ezban.
Last month, Ezban was announced as the new CEO of Smarter Airports, having been a part of the venture for five years. What are his main priorities as he takes on the role?
“Working with an airport like Heathrow is opening a lot of potential possibilities for us, so that is definitely a scaling exercise that we will be initiating now,” he says.
“It’s also very important for me to underline that AIRHART is not only for hubs, it’s also for smaller airports who want to get started with the concept of orchestration.
“The idea here is that we have different levels of engagement – you can have AIRHART as a simple standalone solution supporting one airside process, whether it’s wildlife or stand closures. Or you can go all the way, as the bigger airports have done, by transforming the whole system landscape.
“In 2026, we will focus very much on bringing the Airport Operations Orchestration concept into mid-sized and smaller airports, not necessarily big, complex transformations such as what we’re doing in Copenhagen, Munich and Heathrow.
“[We are looking at] airports which already have a good and steady operational system landscape, but would like the benefits that you get out of orchestration and a unified and connected system like ours.”
