Mphasis and Copa Airlines Host Quantum Computing Challenge for Airline Optimization

Insider Brief

• Mphasis and Copa Airlines hosted an international Quantum Computing Challenge that asked university teams to solve a passenger re-accommodation problem using quantum and classical optimization.
• The competition began with 22 IIT teams in India, followed by a second phase involving six Indian teams and three teams from the University of Calgary and University of Lethbridge using Copa Airlines data.
• Participants developed end-to-end solutions covering passenger prioritization, alternate flight ranking, passenger reassignment and performance evaluation, with three solutions shortlisted for presentation to Copa Airlines leadership.

PRESS RELEASE — Mphasis, (BSE: 526299; NSE: MPHASIS), a global AI-led, platform-driven technology solutions provider, in partnership with Copa Airlines, recently hosted a Quantum Computing Challenge, an international innovation contest. The challenge brought together teams from various Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in India and the University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge in Canada to solve a real-world airline optimization problem using next-generation quantum computing.

The challenge focused on disruption management by addressing the passenger re-accommodation problem, a critical airline process involving reassignment of passengers to alternate flights during schedule disruptions due to demand shift, seasonal routes, or cancellations. Traditionally solved through well-established mathematical optimization techniques on high-performance classical computing system, the problem was reimagined and resolved in this challenge using quantum computing with the focus on improving the speed and accuracy at scale.