AeroCloud, startup software for airport management used by large numbers of airfields worldwide is gaining momentum. It has reached new scope by raising $ 12.6 million in a Series A round of funding. This solution was founded in Chester, U.K. in 2019. Manchester and Eindhoven airports in Europe are working with this Cloud management solution. At this point, the service in the U.S. cooperates with Tampa International and John Wayne Airports processing about 150 million passengers entering on the board annually.
It is worth adding, that the company gives stakeholders the capability of accessing data via the cloud with supporting functions for general airport procedures such as automated gate allocation for flights and optimizing spare gate capacity to boost income. Moreover, AeroCloud applies robotics to supply its clients with forecasts using archival data like the calculation of passengers at a particular time of the year.
CEO and co-founder George Richardson mentioned that this system with AI makes easy all operations in air stations, thus teams can plan less and act more. “Airports have a set of tasks requiring varying degrees of human interaction on a day-to-day basis. With AI, we can reduce that cognitive load on individuals and teams, and assist with freeing up an airport`s time to focus on other priority challenges“ he said.
The important feature of the platform is gathering key data. This function assists in defining currently boarded individuals on a specific plane, aircraft departure, and leaving on time.
An in-built automatic function of reassigning gates to inbound planes in delay cases is also provided. Such situations, according to Richardson’s words, are happening many times with the company`s clients, and “AI can always beat the human head to a solution“ he said.
To underline the potential of the management platform for newcomers, the CEO shows the importance of the data. To dispel thoughts that the airport management market might seem a somewhat niche vertical. “You may see a niche in terms of the number of airports there are in the world, but the potential of the niche is significant - we see a market worth $20 billion,” said the owner due to gained numbers of competitor internal analysis.
AeroCloud includes legacy incumbents such as Amadeus and SITA. The firm wants to supplant the long-established status quo, so it calls for its cloud-native credentials to become a central selling point for would-be new customers.
Richardson added that their competitors had old-school software because, for the airport environment, it was greatly challenging to accept change, that's why they still stayed with original conditions. As well, he noted that on-premises legacy solutions made a difficulty in accessing data, thus promoting data was siloed through homegrown tech stacks. For the airport field, it is a large problem. Getting all data and information on the same page provides saving time and reduces manual work.
AeroCloud does processes that the operations team has been doing for the past years manually. Now, with the automation of those procedures, workers can be concentrated on other important things.
It is worth attention that Amadeus, a $25 billion AeroCloud competitor, recently stated intentions to take itself to the cloud under the three-year modernization effort.
Now, AeroCloud had raised around $3.4 million. Another part of the $12.6 million profit is intended for new funding in order to accelerate the implementation of its plans, and continue its steps to “displace lethargic incumbents”. The company also has the goal to increase its client base, and double its headcount to 80 during 2023.
Furthermore, the team believes that attracting cargo air traffic post-Covid and drone implementation in the next 5-10 years will bring significant advantages.
