Finland is making moves to integrate artificial intelligence at all of the country’s 21 airports.

The country found even its small airports were seeing the same problems plaguing major airports around the world: delays, overcrowding and disgruntled passengers. The country’s tourism numbers, particularly in Lapland, are booming, so small airports are struggling to fit a higher-than-normal number of planes and traffic.

“Adding more resources would not make any sense since, outside the holiday season, the airport only receives one or two flights a day,” explains Henri Lehtonen, project lead, Finavia, the state-owned company that runs Finland’s 21 airports. Instead, the airports are now optimizing the parking of planes using a first-of-its-kind automated parking plan.

The plan informs all airport operations, from deciding bus routes to allocating check-in counters to giving landing permissions. The AI system uses data science to build a mathematically perfect plan in mere seconds based on all available flight data. It also weighs rules and preferences, such as assigning non-Schengen planes to gates closest to the passport control.

The new system is producing impressive results. During a holiday traffic peak in December 2018, the system reduced airport-related flight delays by 61 percent and the average delay time by 66 percent. It also lowered carbon dioxide emissions by cutting down on the likelihood a plane would have to circle an airport before finding parking.

After a successful pilot, the technology will get a rollout at other airports.