The fact that airline executives are
not aware about the full impact of disruptions on airline costs and overall business
performance is mainly associated with complex and dynamic nature of airline business and fragmentation of the existing information
systems. Current applications like scheduling and network planning, operations control, aircraft maintenance,
departure control, crew planning and various optimisation solutions are
designed to satisfy individual planning and operational functions.
Consequently, improvement decisions are made to predominantly serve to achieve departmental targets where
even the best solutions do not guarantee the best system results. System integration and optimisation appear to be the biggest hurdles.
Integration of basic operational software applications has
always been on vendors’ agenda despite airlines’ scepticism. A senior
operations executive at a Big Three US carrier said that the ‘dream of
completely integrated system that provides intelligent real time
decision-making in Station Operations Centre, maintenance and airport operations
is just that – a dream. There is a notion that at some point in the future this
has to converge in an integrated system but it’s just not out there. The
decisions we make today are far more complex than the systems are integrated to
handle’.
Airlines and vendors have put in lots of effort to optimise
the process of schedule recovery, but not many of their solutions have proved
to be reliable and used in practice to their true potential. Some of the most
costly airline disruptions have been caused by implementation of optimisation
tools and ocassional software issues.
Airlines can make improvements in operational efficiency as long as they invest
in workable solutions, rather than wasting their time and money developing the
impossible. A Sabre’s Chief Scientist said over 20 years ago: The issue in operations is that you
have a pretty complicated set of flows for aircrew, passengers and aircraft. There
are an awful lot of possible solutions or recovery strategies for each
component. If you are looking for a typical US domestic hub with complexes of
40 flights out, you’re talking literally billions of possible solutions out
there. Not surprisingly, identifying the best solution, whether in terms of
recovery costs or passenger service impact, is just impossible. Even airlines
with the best data processing systems tend to look at some relatively simple
localised solutions that may work for a particular hub at a particular point in
time but that may have some downline impacts either for that particular hub later
in the day or tomorrow or at other stations around the systems.
It is obvious that major improvements in the development of fully
integrated information systems are still not in sight. The situation is pretty
much the same at the other end: airline executives are still not much aware about the effects their decisions have on operational performance. Their
efforts to establish these links are sporadic and mainly subjective.
From these points of view, the situation may seem incurable.
But, what if we start seeing the disruptions from a different perspective? What if instead of just being immersed in a
myriad of daily problems we step above operational to a strategic
plane where operational plans are conceived? With the support of the right
tool, we would be able to see a bigger picture about disruptions, how they come
into existence, and identify those with biggest impact on airline cost and
quality of service.
We will surely be much more selective about where our
attention goes, which can give us more time to focus on problems that really
matter. We will also be able to better understand internal relationship,
recognise airline, airport and ATC limitations from a higher perspective, and do something about it.
This new approach to still
unexplored area of airline management (described in my book Beyond Airline Disruptions )
opens up new opportunities for airline executives to act selectively and efficiently,
continuously improving operational
performance and quality of services.