e10 Airline Catering Solutions

Airline Catering or Inflight Catering is an important touch-point between the Airline and its Passengers. The customers’ overall flying experience and Airline Brand Image are highly influenced by the quality of the inflight meal. Studies conducted by various industry associations have highlighted the fact that passengers consistently rated catering and on-board services as a key factor from a list of parameters for choosing an airline.

Airlines operate with thin margin. With severe competition among Airlines, unstable Fuel prices, static passenger count, airlines flying on the same route increasing - every airline is in fierce competition for the same pie. Airlines which are operating on a low margin are forced to look at avenues for saving every penny possible, to operate the Airline profitably.

Airline Caterers who solely depend on Airlines, its Revenue and its Margin need to constantly reinvent, innovate and provide services at a competitive price despite raise of the input cost. With limited option or flexibility in getting higher price, the major focus needs to be on Customer satisfaction through delivery of meal preference, innovative menu planning cycle, efficient processing, effective monitoring of cost of each process, to reduce wastage seamless process integration, etc.

In the ever volatile situation, Airline Caterers face the following challenges:

• Airlines provide flight operation schedules to Caterer but this is not FINAL. The list gets updated based on the New Bookings Cancellations and with each update the Pax Load provided earlier also changes. This will update the DBLminus 6 hours before departure for some Airlines.
• Caterers serving different Airlines need to ensure that the Respective Airline Menu Agreed, Menu Portion, Equipment, Magazines Newspapers, etc. are provided and services of other Airlines are not mixed up. Assembly line Cart Management needs to be well structured as mix up can lead to confidence deficit and loss of business.
• Airlines provide booking details to Caterer but this is not FINAL. The list gets updated based on the New Bookings Cancellations and with each update the Meal Preference provided earlier also changes. The updates take place till minus 6 hours before departure for some Airlines.
• Even though Airlines have their own specific Menu, quite a few ingredients are common to these disparate menu requirements. Material Requirement planning needs to consider the combination of Common items as well as Airline Specific Items. Excess or Miss-out can lead to issues in services.
• The Invoicing is based on actual uplift and the billing cycle can vary according to airlines. There are multiple divisions involved in Airline in clearing the invoice – Confirmation of Catering Delivery Note by the Cabin Crew by each Service, Verification of confirmation as attachments to the billing by Operations, Verification of Contract terms by Finance, etc. Billing support, back-up record, application of Contract Terms, etc. are all to be thoroughly followed by the Caterer.
• In addition to the Meal Services, Caterers in general provide onboard Alcoholic Beverages which are typically Custom Bonded Goods. Comprehensive measures required to provide details at any point of time on the status of goods – onboard, in warehouse, in cart, etc.
• Part of a day like late evening or night might have higher number of departures and arrivals as against during the day. This also needs to be factored.
• Vehicle planning is another area that needs to be planned as these HI-LOADERS are expensive and in situation where there are multiple departures and arrivals at short intervals, the planning of vehicles and drivers should ensure that the services are not delayed.

Airliner Catering Industry requires a thorough planning to the minutest level, a flawless execution and back-up plans for any contingency. There are multiple touch points and the flow of activities with ownership at each logical level should be clearly defined. In the chain of activities wherein output of one process becomes input of another process, the information flow should be seamless and validated.

Kinai-has been designed by hands-on experts who spent long years with leading Caterers and has been perfected by implementing in a major Airline Caterer who operates in multiple sectors. The solution team was guided by BOA (Board of Advisors) comprising Industry leaders who managed/turned around billion dollar catering majors. The unique processes and methodologies adopted by these leaders that gave Unique advantages form the basis of business logic/rule definition in e10 – Airline Catering, End to End integrated ERP with 25 modules for all the business functions.

Please take a few moments to visit our product page and understand how our solution can help you in:

• Bids management linked to instant and actual cost with comparisons of past history
• Planning and forecasting
• Effective contract management vendor selections
• Establishing Controls through Process Streamline, Workflow with Seamless Integration, Uniform Process on best recognized business process, Standard Validation, etc.
• Enabling Compliance to Statutory, Industry Standards, Contractual, Legal, etc.
• Centralized management of Procurement and Recipes for Menu Planning with Menu rotation
• Flight operation mechanism to track the scheduled unscheduled flights with their meals
• Daily Booking list generation with Production Chart till CDN is issued
• Assembly with Cart Management, Loader Tracking, HR, payroll, costing, Accounts with seamless integration
• Complete QC module (QHSE) Compliance with HACCP processes for Recipe and Critical Control Points (CCPs) within the Recipe Instructions
• Bringing Efficiency through Improved Work-flow, information based Planning for reduced Inventory Cost, Ageing Analysis on the outstanding for better collection efficiency, Procurement efficiency through optimizing order quantity and vendor performance, Man-power efficiency through optimum planning, etc.
• Accessing a Pre-built Analytics specific to Airlines catering industry like Cost per meal information systems