Galley Guide: Paperless on Board

A conversation with Oliver Tappe and Martin Buchholtz (Business Analysts, LSG Group)

“Crews will love the Galley Guide App, we have no doubt about that,” said a convinced Oliver Tappe and Martin Buchholtz, both LSG Group business analysts. “The Galley Guide makes life much more convenient for flight attendants, which should have a positive impact on the onboard service as well.” Crew members usually have to trawl through paper-based lists to find out whether a particular item is on board. After that, they have to try and actually find it. No easy undertaking at times. It’s hard to imagine just how many different places there are for stowing items on board a large aircraft. “For example, the 71 bottles of tonic water carried on board an A380 flying from Frankfurt to Hong Kong are stored in 21 different places on the aircraft,” said Buchholtz. “This does mean you need to cover less distance in the aircraft, but it can be difficult to keep track.” Having to rely on paper-based lists that do not detail where items are located is enough to stress out even the coolest of flight attendants.

Assigned storage locations on board an aircraft:

• FRA-HKG / A380-800: 432
• FRA-JED / A330-300: 205
• FRA-LIS / A321-100/200: 53

The LSG Group’s experts hope to remedy this with the Galley Guide app, which is currently being tested on Lufthansa flights. With the app now installed on the airline’s tablets, crew members can digitally locate any catering product loaded, either by clicking on a particular storage location or directly via the search function. “You can then find the tonic water you’re looking for quite quickly,” explained Tappe. There are many benefits to this. Even during hectic periods, the crew can focus on the inflight service and quickly deal with even unexpected or more unusual passenger requests. The crew also benefits from the additional data provided, such as related wine recommendations and background information on particular products. “All of this information is just a click away during service. The crew can use the time saved to even further improve the service quality,” said Tappe. “Everyone benefits from an even smoother workflow, based on systematic process digitization.”

“The Lufthansa test flights will end in late summer and we are already looking forward to getting feedback from the crew members who have been testing our app on board,” commented Buchholtz. “We could see right away the interest in the app from the download figures – more than 1,000 downloads within a very short time frame. Crew feedback is essential to us. It will help us better understand how well the app performs in actual use and give us an insight into what might be further improved. All of our customers will benefit from this!” There is no end in sight to the possibilities. Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that crews will soon be able to say goodbye to printed Information.

The LSG Group Galley Guide…

• is a new service for the crews of our airline customers
• is currently being tested in actual operations by Lufthansa
• is an app which can be used on the crew’s work tablets
• shows all goods loaded by the LSG Group on board an aircraft, including their location
• offers a quick search function and provides additional information