A ground handler sells punctuality. Yet its teams often discover a delay when it has already happened, and learn its cost the next day, once the airline has coded the minutes. Turnpilot is ground handling software designed to reverse that order: see the turnaround in real time, act before the delay exists, prove what happened.
What station teams live with today
The station manager
Delays surface in the next morning’s report. Hours then go into arguing delay codes with airlines, using evidence pieced together by hand. Comparing the station with the rest of the network is hard, because every station keeps its own spreadsheets.
The ramp supervisor
Flights are arbitrated over the radio. “Where’s the tug?” “Who has the loader?” Part of every wave is spent looking for information rather than making decisions.
The baggage team leader
There is no certainty that every cart for a flight has left the make-up area, or that no bag has been left behind. Sometimes that only becomes clear when the holds are about to close, too late to avoid a bag left behind or a last-minute offload.
Ramp, make-up and gate agents
Instructions are given verbally and recorded afterwards, on paper or a tablet. Noise, gloves, rain and glare make office-style tools useless on the apron.
The SLA and billing manager
Services rendered must be justified and wrongly attributed minutes disputed, with scattered information. Some services actually delivered go unbilled for lack of a record.
Ground handling software, module by module
- A real-time station view — Every turnaround at the station, ranked by risk, showing passengers, baggage, equipment and aircraft status for each flight. That is turnaround control.
- The apron map — Know where every piece of equipment and every cart is, without the radio, and reassign with confidence using the apron map and GSE tracking.
- Baggage and holds — Bags expected, sorted, loaded: the right count before the holds close, flight by flight, with baggage and hold loading.
- The ramp app — One task at a time, readable with gloves on, even without a network. Agents see their next move, not a dashboard: see the ramp app.
- Images and evidence — Time-stamped images owned by the operator, where existing tools don’t look: see cameras and evidence.
- SLAs and delays — Every coded minute comes with its chain of evidence, ready to export for disputes and billing, with SLAs and delays.
A day at the station with Turnpilot
- Before the wave — The supervisor opens the station view. Flights at risk stand out immediately; alerts are ranked by impact on departure time.
- During the turnaround — An alert flags an equipment issue on a flight. Turnpilot proposes an action; the supervisor accepts or declines it. The task goes straight to the relevant agent’s device.
- Before the holds close — The baggage team leader sees the count per flight. A cart is missing: the map locates it and an agent is sent.
- At departure — The TOBT is updated from actual progress, not an estimate made from memory.
- At the end of the day — For every delayed departure, the station manager finds the time-stamped timeline of the turnaround, and disputes the minutes that were not caused by ground handling, with the evidence to back it.
The system proposes, people decide: every alert explains why it appears, and every decision remains your team’s.
Built for the ramp, built to be adopted
A ramp tool only exists if it is used. Turnpilot never asks for input the system can infer; whatever remains takes a single action. Tasks are shown with IGOM terminology and pictograms, for crews that are often multilingual.
The tool is for running operations, not for monitoring people. Crews are informed up front, and dialogue with their representatives is part of every deployment. The principles are set out on the security and data page.
From the stand to group management
Once several stations are equipped, management sees the same delay indicators everywhere. The causes of attributable delays can be read station by station, and what works at one station can be passed on to the others.
Turnpilot sits on top of your existing systems without replacing them: your rostering, your billing, your check-in and baggage tools stay as they are. Deploying a station takes weeks. To see what you can expect, read about the benefits and how we measure them with your own data.