Huawei – Asia Pacific Aviation Forum 2020 (Online)

Asia Pacific Aviation Forum 2020 was organized by Huawei on 2^nd July 2020.  In the era of 5G and AI, innovations in the aviation industry will transform operational efficiency.  Therefore, Huawei arranged this online forum with the title named “AI & 5G Rebooting Aviation”.

The first speaker was Mr. Lee Yiang Ming (CIO, Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad) and his topic entitled “Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad's Digitalization Journey”. They would like to enhance airport efficiency and applied very high concentration on AI such as facial recognition, CCTV, space security, etc.

The second speaker was Mr. Alan Newbold (Director, Arup Global Digital Aviation Leader) and his presentation named “Digitalization of Aviation”.  He share his experience that led many projects in aviation especially on digitalization of airports and assisted them to re-start after this fall under post Covid-19 pandemic. 

Mr. Newbold proposed three phases to recovery that is reduction of cost to support minimum operation in Phase 1 indicating survival is critical. In Phase 2, rebuilding passenger confidence were important that demonstrated safe airport and transportation.  The Phase 3 is to adopt a new normal using data driven decision making for new business and operating model.

And then he briefed to develop integrated models including “Next Generation Operation”, “Asset Optimization”, “High Value Project” and “Sustainable Operations and Development”.  He also mentioned Digital Twin in asset optimization that creating a virtual representation of a physical space at scale. 

Finally, Mr. Newbold mentioned business moving towards becoming data driven that we needed to build our capability and employed those digital technology for cost reduction, operation efficiency and disruption management with excellent digital skills combined together.

Mr. Zheng Hongfeng (CEO, VariFlight) was the third speaker and his topic presented was “Rebooting Ground Operation with AI Technology”. He said that Covid-19 caused a crisis in the aviation industry such as weak demand, reduced capacity and cash flow shortage.  China’s civil aviation industry was currently in the recovery stage after the epidemic. 

Then Mr. Zheng briefed the basic theory of AI that involved three important modules – Sensing, Thinking and Acting.  He also mentioned the trend from Internet (2005) to Mobile Internet (2010) and going to Digitalization (2015) and now to become Intellectualization (2020).

At the end, he concluded that digitalization is the basis of intellectualization. 2020 is the first year of intellectualization and we are all on the starting line.

The last speaker was Mr. Liu Juanyong (Chief Engineer, Enterprise Wireless Marketing and Technology Sales Department, Huawei) and his topic named “Application of 5G Technology in Smart Airports”. 

Firstly, he introduced 5G global trend including network, device and subscriber.  

Mr. Liu told us 5G smart phone would boom in 2020 and Apple also announced in the second half of 2020.

Finally, Mr. Liu introduced how 5G benefit on Airport Safety and Efficiency, as well as, application on airport shuttle bus.

Lastly, a video to introduce digital application in Beijing Daxing International Airport was showed.

At the end, it is Q&A Session.

Reference:

Huawei (HK) - https://e.huawei.com/hk/

Asia Pacific Aviation Forum 2020 - https://e.huawei.com/in/special_topic/event/2020q2/2007_AP_Aviation