The "New Normal" in Airline Operations - Part 2
linkedin
May 21, 2020
The global airline industry has been hit by a new virus and is going through its biggest crisis ever. Several airlines went into bankruptcy or voluntary administration and some may not survive. State owned airlines will get government financial support. The silver lining might be a „new normal“ in airline operations with several changes for the future.
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Tags: Innovation, Management, Leadership
Why Do Airlines Burn Money Every Day? What They Can Learn From Formula 1 Racing Teams
Jasenka Rapajic
January 06, 2020
Aviation has always been a tricky business and these days it seems to be trickier than ever. One after another, airlines are disappearing from the industry landscape, either by losing identity or in an old-fashioned way – running out of money.
Numerous attempts have been made to explain the reasons for these systemic failures and, deep down, they all have something in common: the way airlines interact with the randomness of their operations does not correspond to what strategists and decision makers expect.
The disconnect between strategy and operations has become the main (still unrecognized) cause of growing operational disruptions, work inefficiencies, uncontrollable rise in costs and passenger dissatisfaction. Flight disruptions are still considered as purely operational issue, despite the fact that the majority of their underlying causes have strategic and cross-functional origins, invisibly shaping the quality of day-to-day operational decisions.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Flygskam – Airlines to take note! Can Carbon turn Oxygen for the Airline Industry?
IBS Software Blog
September 02, 2019
According to a recent survey, one in seven people will shun flying even if it means using more expensive and less convenient alternatives. By now, you would all have heard of Greta Thunberg, the teenage activist who has thrust climate change into the spotlight. And by extension, the adverse impact that the aviation industry is having on the environment. The words flygskam, tågskryt, Att smygflyga, #jagstannarpåmarken may not be familiar to most, but with the increased public awareness of climate change, the English equivalents – "flight shame", "train bragging", "flying in secret" and "I stay on the ground" – are becoming popular especially in social media. What started off as a Swedish-born anti-flying movement is fast spreading worldwide mainly in Western Europe, Scandinavia, the US, Canada and Australia.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Global Airline Think Tank in Berlin
LinkedIn
July 01, 2019
The recent 3rd edition of IBS’ OPS 2020 event has been organized at Pullman Berlin Schweizerhof in Berlin on 16-17 July 2019.
54 airline operations, hub management, crew scheduling and planning optimization experts from 14 airlines, 11 countries and four continents (Australia, Europe, East-Asia, North-America) got to the German capital and made OPS 2020 Berlin the largest ever. The very first OPS 2020 has been organized 2017 in Dubai.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Airline operations: What should replace the legacy systems?
IBS Software Airlines can reduce their carbon emissions every day now. No need to wait until 2030!! https://blog.ibsplc.com/airline-operations/flygska
October 03, 2018
As was explored in the previous blog post in the series, obsolete legacy systems are usually the result of a dangerously myopic IT strategy. Overcoming the heavy cost implications of migrating away from legacy systems could begin with looking at a cloud based approach. But that is only the first piece of the entire structure; it is critical for the new age platform to recognize and have the capacity to enable certain principles that are inherent for the business practices we can foresee for the next generation.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Legacy systems: Why do we still tolerate them in airline ops?
IBS Software Blog
October 01, 2018
It is estimated that airline disruptions cause losses of $60 billion each year on a global scale. As per the latest Air Travel Consumer Report published by the United States Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings, over 20% of all flights in all US airports experienced delays in the time period covered (May 2018). A good 7% of these are attributed to late arriving aircraft, while another 5% are due to factors which are within the airline's control.
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Airline crew shortages: Key reasons and the solution - Part 2
IBS Software Blog
September 07, 2018
While there is quite some consensus on what constitutes the ideal airline operations management platform – one that is capable of reducing/eliminating the airline's crew rostering issues, there is greater diversity in what the current platforms on the market are offering. It makes sense therefore to list down what may be considered as ideal for airline operations management.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Managing weather-driven disruptions to airline operations
IBS Software Blog
August 16, 2018
Some parts of the Indian subcontinent – one of the fastest growing markets for aviation in recent times – are being lashed by torrential rainfall which has flooded one of the key airports in the region. The official website of the airport cites an average of over 170 flights per day, serving close to 25,000 passengers – imagine the cost of having a week long downtime, as the estimates currently suggest.
Despite some predictability in the weather in recent times due to advances in big data, there is almost nothing controllable about such natural disasters. But the next best thing is rapid mitigation of the disruption, and the best friend of airlines in this scenario is undoubtedly the availability of accurate and accessible information. The only "planning" possible in this scenario is to have a reliable IT infrastructure in place that provides reliable and complete data to your airline operations, as well as the ability to seamlessly integrate all the key systems together for rapid deployment of any strategic responses.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Hurdles in modernization of airline operations management
IBS Software Blog
July 12, 2018
My airline can spend more than $200 million every year on disruptions due to lack of operational efficiency
The global airline industry can afford to write off $25 billion p.a, of which at least 50% can be easily saved!
I can forgive my current OCC tools for their inefficiency. I don't care about customer service!
If you agree with the three statements above, then please feel free to stop reading this blog post right now. We understand that we are not providing you much value by saving the operational losses, compensation (EU261) costs, rescheduling expenses, etc. and plugging other leakages. But if those numbers are significant to you, spending two minutes to read this could be greatly valuable to your airline – value that can be demonstrated on your balance sheet!
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Can airlines afford to be gender neutral in fatigue management?
IBS Software Blog
June 27, 2018
For the first 8 or 9 hours in a shift, the accident risk is constant, but after 12 hours, the risk approximately doubles and after 16 hours, it trebles.
Shift-workers, particularly those on rotating shifts, have a higher incidence of sick leave, a higher rate of visits to clinics at the work site, and poorer scores on a variety of measures of health.
62% of shift-workers complained of sleep problems, compared with 20% of day-workers.
The above statistics, released by the United Kingdom Health & Safety Executive, probably has nothing to do with airline operations directly. But it has everything to do with people – like the highly trained pilots who fly the aircraft, the terribly overloaded operations control staff who help get the plane in the air, and the much under-appreciated cabin crew members who not only pamper passengers with their service but also ensure their safety in an emergency. Sharpening the tools for their job primarily means keeping their minds and bodies in a state of high alert on a constant basis.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Disruption 2.0: What lies in store for future airline CEOs?
IBS Software Blog
May 29, 2018
Nothing moves fast in the airline industry…well, except the aircraft!
It is no longer a game of big fish and small fish, especially since we see startup companies bringing down established Goliaths almost every single day and in every single industry. Today, it is the fast fish that defeats the slow fish. The key is innovation, and the stakes are at an all-time high!
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Pilots on demand: Airline staffing strategy of the future?
IBS Software Blog
May 08, 2018
Airline companies generally have the odds stacked against them; operating a flight on time without any untoward incidents is the result of meticulous planning and implementation, offering very little room for error. Some issues reveal themselves early enough to be solved by an astute operations control (OCC) professional, but sometimes they occur without warning. One particularly troublesome issue is having a flight full of passengers getting ready to taxi down the runway and take off into the skies, only to realize that two of the most important people onboard (the pilots) cannot – or just will not – fly the plane which they are scheduled to.
The underlying reasons could range from unavailability of sufficiently rested crew to a pilots' strike like the multiple incidents in Europe recently that made headlines. Failure to predict the problem is one thing, but simply not having the resources to fix it is another. There is probably only one scenario that is even worse – knowing that the resources exist, but not having them within grasp when you need them the most. But the good news is, solutions are materializing for these issues!
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
The hidden value of loyalty in airline disruption management
IBS Software Blog
February 16, 2018
When the officers of The Titanic – while facing the mother of all disruptions to service delivery - had a tough choice to make about which group of passengers would get a better chance at survival, they evidently applied a principle:
Offer maximum assistance to the cream of the crop.
Yes, that is an extreme example, and those were very different times. We have more mature, tangible and less discriminatory metrics to evaluate customers today. So in modern business, the principle translates to this:
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Sales, Customer Loyalty
The holy grail of IROPS recovery: Information and Collaboration
IBS Software Blog
January 15, 2018
There are three universal truths in commercial aviation:
1. Delays cost money and goodwill; we can afford neither
2. Information is wealth – distribute it honestly and sincerely
3. United we stand, divided we fall (no pun intended)
Contrary to popular belief, airline companies, passengers and travel partners have one thing in common: None of them want a flight to be delayed. That's right, no airline in the world is happy to delay a flight; not only does it cost them a lot of money as penalties and additional charges, but it also makes their customers hate them and trust them less – and that's only what's immediately obvious.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Sharing information for Collaborative Disruption Management
IBS Software Blog
October 11, 2017
In the movie The Matrix, there is a chilling scene where one of the crew members looks at a black screen full of green numbers and characters, and starts describing the virtual characters he sees through them – most memorably, the pretty girl in the red dress. He knows, because he created her. But no one else can see her in any form other than the massive amount of code and bits that appear on the black screen.
That is the best description you can imagine, for the legacy systems that still plague the Operations Control Center (OCC) of many airlines around the world. Yes, some of these otherwise modern airlines still use those black screens with engineers and operations controllers manually sifting through the green numbers. Fuel burn, passenger connections, airport restrictions, crew changes, slot allocations, maintenance issues, time lines and many other metrics got lost in these screens because few people could understand them. Forget scalability, even sustenance was a big issue!
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Digital technologies are disrupting airlines‘ Operations Control Center — Here are the buzzwords
LinkedIn
September 15, 2017
Since 2008 years I have been visiting several airline Operations Control Centers (OCC or SOC or NOC) around the world. What I see is pretty much the same everywhere: airline ops and crew controllers sitting in front of a multitude of Information technology (IT) systems with many different screens. “Five Star” airlines, low cost airlines or legacy carriers - all these airlines still deploy technology and data provisions of the 1990s at the heart of their complex operations. The rigid, old IT systems are not connected with each other and in some cases even just show green letters on a black background. This outdated tech is still in use, as recent as in the summer of 2017.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
R.I.P Airline Gantt Charts
IBS Software Blog
July 04, 2017
The forerunner of the Gantt chart was created in the mid-1890s by Karol Adamiecki, a Polish engineer. A decade and a half later, an American engineer and project management consultant named Henry Gantt made a modified version of the chart which gained great popularity around the world, particularly in industrialized Western nations – thus the name Gantt chart. When the Gantt chart became a common tool among airline users in the 1990s, the Operations Control Center (OCC) was transformed to what it is today.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Airlines Need to Consider the Human Limitations of Fifty Bits — Here‘s why
LinkedIn
April 24, 2016
In my earlier posts I have mentioned why airlines burn money every day (summing up to global annual delay costs of 26 bn USD, in average more than 230 million USD per airline!) and that airlines #inmyindustry should instead consider Management by Exception, in order to avoid operational disruptions. The most on-time airlines in the world use already sophisticated technology in the Operations Control Center.
Today, I would like to put the focus more on the human brain limitations of digesting tons of information during airline decision making. The human brain is a master piece of the evolution and a biological wonder. However, human beings have limitations when it comes to conscious decisions. Many decisions are based on gut feelings or are heuristic approached.
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Eye Tracking – Support for operations controllers
Lufthansa Systems Blog
April 21, 2016
Lufthansa Systems today announced the new Eye Tracking feature for its innovative NetLine/Ops ++ operations control solution powered by eye tracking technology leader SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI). Analyzing eye movements can support the complex work of operations controllers, improve the quality of their decisions and help airlines save time and money.
The operations control center is responsible for monitoring flight operations and managing schedule changes – both planned and unplanned – in a way that minimizes their effect on passengers. Operations controllers may have to keep an eye on six monitors at a time which show current flights and information about potential disruptions. This is a huge challenge, and intelligent software solutions such as NetLine/Ops ++ provide substantial support here.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Lufthansa Systems Chooses SMI Eye Tracking to Improve Flight Operations Outcomes
PNR News
April 21, 2016
SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) is partnering with Lufthansa Systems to combine its renowned eye tracking with the NetLine/Ops ++ airline operations control solution.
The union of these leading technologies will allow Lufthansa Systems' customer airlines to measure and enhance the effectiveness of their on-screen alerts which pre-empt costly disruptions. These include weather alerts, air traffic control issues and pending missed connections.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
SMI Tracking Helps Lufthansa Avoid ATC Disruptions
Display Daily
April 13, 2016
year,
Lufthansa Systems - the German IT provider aiming at the aviation industry - has chosen to use eye-tracking from SenoMotororic Instruments (SMI) to increase awareness of alerts.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Airline Crews are disconnected from Passengers’ Social Media - here‘s why.
LinkedIn
April 30, 2015
Airlines use social media channels like #twitter, #tumblr, #instagram, #facebook, Google+ and #LinkedIn just to name a few, in order to promote their travel services. Airlines post pictures from destinations and aircraft. Airlines play games via social media with their passengers. Airlines respond to requests and complains received via twitter, facebook, Google+ and so. Airlines use social media channels to inform passengers to go on the airline website to get the latest flight updates.
Airlines treat their VIP - very important passengers - very special. Frequent travelers, business class and first class passenger have lounge access, get priority boarding and special treatment.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Airlines burn money every day!
LinkedIn
April 15, 2015
Since 2008 I'm visiting #airline Operations Control Center (OCC or SOC) world wide, in Europe, Asia, America and Africa. In total hundred and nineteen (119) different airlines OCC‘s in 69 countries around the world. Low cost airlines, regional airlines, network airlines, cargo airlines, charter airlines. Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4 and Tier 5.
Reading the daily airline news and eleven years later, I'm still trying to understand why airlines burn money and unnecessary fuel every day!
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
ITS 2020, Singapore 16-18 March 2020
LinkedIn
January 29, 2020
ITS 2020, Singapore 16-18 March 2020 https://insights.ibsplc.com/ibs-travel-summit-16-18-march-2020-singapore
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Interview about OCC, digitization and what airlines can learn from F1 teams
Astute Aviation
October 22, 2019
Aviation has always been a tricky business and these days it seems to be trickier than ever. One after another, airlines are disappearing from the industry landscape, either by losing identity or in an old-fashioned way – running out of money.
Numerous attempts have been made to explain the reasons for these systemic failures and, deep down, they all have something in common: the way airlines interact with the randomness of their operations does not correspond to what strategists and decision makers expect.
The disconnect between strategy and operations has become the main (still unrecognized) cause of growing operational disruptions, work inefficiencies, uncontrollable rise in costs and passenger dissatisfaction. Flight disruptions are still considered as purely operational issue, despite the fact that the majority of their underlying causes have strategic and cross-functional origins, invisibly shaping the quality of day-to-day operational decisions.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Redefining Airline Operations and Crew Tracking
AGIFORS Crew
April 10, 2019
In this presentation AGIFORS Crew attendees will get to:
• Learn about airline operations and crew tracking dynamics
• Understand evolution of airline operations, and the requirements of digitization
• Learn about using situational awareness in airline operations and crew tracking
• Learn how leading airlines are redefining their entire operations now
• Understand the benefits of a digital airline operations and crew tracking platform
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
A New Approach of Recovery for the Airline Industry
AGIFORS Operations
May 22, 2018
The ever changing factors that contribute towards effective management of disruptions and recovery is evidence enough that the solution lies in empowering and assisting the users with timely information and intelligent tools, rather than leaving it to a press-of-the-button universal solution. It must be instead an IT system designed to help the ops controllers in making decisions during severe disruptions, rather than trying to create a tool designed to replace their expertise. The ops controller will be guided through the entire situation and has full visibility on all relevant factors and disruption impacted aspects. The user applies the possible options and gets immediate feedback about the impact on connecting passenger, crew and aircraft rotations. Completing the recovery scenario with trade-offs and several options, the staff now has a real-time holistic view on the recovery solution.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
The Dawn of the Digital Era
AGIFORS Operations
May 23, 2017
Airlines are slow in adopting new technologies and face the challenges of the digital age.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
The Social Connected Traveler
AGIFORS Operations
May 17, 2016
Social media is there since more than ten years. Facebook was created 2004. 2016, most airlines still use social media primarily for marketing purposes, to play games with passengers or promote new routes. Contrary to airline passengers who massively use social media to complain about bad airline services, disruptions like late departures or arrivals, cancelled flights, missed bags, missed connections or bad inflight experiences. Airlines have to react then on these social media published complains and get back to the passengers. It's time to swap from reactive to proactive disruption management in general and consideration of the social connected passenger in particular. What's the impact of a happy airline passenger who positively tweets to his thousands of followers? Airline operations control can focus on potential disruptions with affected social connected travelers.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
How the lack of technology worsens airline disruptions: Eye witness account and analysis
IBS Software White Paper
February 05, 2019
It is said that doctors make the worst patients, because they tend to know too much about what's going on at the other end of the table and are therefore constantly interfering to ensure they get the best level of service possible. Often they have their own opinions about how to improve the service to a level far superior to what the doctor on duty and his/her team are managing to provide at the moment. The same story applies to almost any industry, when a supplier/enabler has to assume the role of a customer/user for a specific service or product.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Connected airline ecosystem: Need for a reliable digital platform
IBS Software White Paper
January 09, 2019
Civil aviation was an early adopter of computers, with reservation systems going electronic as early as the 1950s with the Semi-Automated Business Environment pioneered by American Airlines. Other airlines followed this example and set up their own systems, and in due course computerized reservations became the norm in this industry which was already technology-intensive from an infrastructure perspective. But the industry was simply unable to sustain this momentum beyond a certain point.
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Tags: Emerging Technology, Sales, Ecosystems
Collaborative Disruption Management
IBS Software White Paper
August 15, 2018
A consolidation is taking place in the airline industry, with multiple airlines coming together as groups for strategic reasons.This happens either through capital acquisition or marketing partnerships, whereby the brand identity of each airline is maintained whilefleets and crews are managed by the group. Schedules are harmonized and coordinated amongst the group members, allowing passengers tosmoothly connect from one member airline to another at the respective individual hub.
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The Holy Grail of Recovery and Optimization
IBS Software White Paper
March 13, 2018
on delays and consequent passenger compensation claims. A whole industry has sprung up around airline disruptions, with the promise of helping passengers to claim the money due to them in this way. EU regulations like EU261 result in six figure sums of money in compensation, and IT is often the only solution to avoid disruptions and enable airlines to get back on track quickly.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Sales
Situational Awareness Technology in Airline Operations
IBS Software White Paper
November 13, 2017
The Operations Control Center (OCC), although invisible to passengers, manages several complex aspects of airline operations, such as the expensive fleet of modern and old aircraft, large number of crew members, detailed maintenance cycles, optimization of fuel burn, ATC communications, airport slots and so much more. This is enabled by a complex Information Technology (IT) system, which in many cases is so outdated that it would greatly disappoint a customer who believes he/she is flying with a 'five star' airline.
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The Next Evolution of Airline Operations: Eye Tracking
IBS Software White Paper
April 04, 2017
Can modern technology help airline operations control centers totake better decisions?
Airline operations controllers worldwide discuss "Situational Awareness", but in their daily operations they insist on “seeing it all” before taking a decision. But science has an explanation for why this isn't a good approach.
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Op-Ed: The hidden value of loyalty in airline disruption management
ITS 2020, Singapore
Redefining Airline Operations
