The first major goal was to publish pairings for the A320/MD80 Cabin fleet in just three weeks. The team achieved this – and more! The new pairing solutions provided 7% savings on direct costs (compensation for overtime, allowance and hotels) from the first month. The team also proved the long-term savings (after dimensioning crew resources vs. production) to be 6% of the total crew costs!

Ville Iho, Assistant VP Crew Resources at Finnair, said that the launch of the Crescendo pairing project has been a great success.

"Our pairing expert planners worked very closely with the Carmen team. Thanks to a dedicated effort from both parties, Finnair's bottom line will benefit from considerable savings. The return on investment will be shorter than 4 months and the system will produce cost reductions from day one."

Tomas Klemets, Director of Implementation at Carmen, said that the main goal of Crescendo is creating business benefits as early as possible."Once this is done, there are funds available to improve the initial installation afterwards. The approach is slightly more expensive, but considerably more profitable."

It is crucial to agree on a clear allocation of tasks between the Carmen team and the client. The client should only focus on the planning results during the Crescendo phase. Due to this, all system training, documentation, report and improvements in user interface configuration etc, are set aside to review at a later stage. Another vital factor for success is that Carmen has full access to experts from the clients in order to avoid possible delays because of the lack of expert knowledge or decision power.

The Finnair pairing project will now continue to take remaining fleets into production and is expected to conclude in the spring. Meanwhile, Finnair continues to benefit each month from the cost reductions provided as a result of the project.