A Different Future Is Coming into View for the Airline Industry. A Time for Airlines and Investors to Get Ready!
Beyond Airline Disruptions
April 02, 2023
I recently attended the 'Investing in Aviation - Europe' conference organized by Ishka, where investors and airlines met to discuss the challenges of creating a more sustainable future for the aviation industry. The conference provided an engaging opportunity to hear from leading institutional investors and airline executives on their perspectives and strategies.
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Tags: Leadership
The Role of Feelings in Shaping Business Success
Beyond Disruptions Blogs
December 11, 2022
In business, when we talk about change we associate it with change in form, in things we can measure, and ultimately with monetary value. But change is much more than that.
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Tags: Culture, Management
Can Social Media Help Airlines Better Understand Passenger Experience?
Beyond Disruptions Blog
August 20, 2022
You may remember the story about a passenger, a professional musician Dave Carroll who was denied compensation for his broken guitar. He put in some effort to make his case published on social networks and managed to artfully break the seemingly unbreakable wall of denial set by the airline's Customer Service.
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Tags: Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty
It takes brave leadership to get an airline or an airport out of crisis
Jasenka Rapajic
July 06, 2022
Airlines are trapped in a system that has no future and need to find the way out themselves. In such a complex and dynamic industry, looking at disruptions as strategic misalignment between plans and reality is a natural way forward, even if it may be uncomfortable for some. If approached wisely, disruptions can reveal systemic pain points that should be taken as a call for change.
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Tags: Leadership, Business Strategy, Ecosystems
What Overambitious Airline Planning Has To Do With Crew Shortages And What Can Be Done To Make Things Better
Astute Aviation Consulting
June 21, 2022
The real reasons behind crew shortages we have been seeing over the last few months run much deeper than those associated with the pandemic. In what follows, we will focus on a fundamentally important but commonly misunderstood root cause of crewing problems: the disconnect between strategy and operations.
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Tags: Management, Change Management, Business Strategy
How to align operational and system performance to offer better service at lower cost?
The Media Bulletin (TMB)
October 08, 2021
Times are hard for the airline industry. And yet, among the many challenges lies an opportunity to ask hard questions about ourselves and about people we serve and work with, to dig deeper into what it is we can do to improve things that matter to us.
Unpredictable market recovery, combined with inherent, hard-to-control business complexities, have put leaders and strategists under enormous pressure to find ways to keep their businesses afloat.
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Tags: Management, Leadership, Business Strategy
How To Align Operational And System Performance To Offer Better Service At Lower Cost
The Media Bulletin
October 08, 2021
I felt honoured to be invited to write an article for The Media Bulletin. I chose the much talked about subject of the disconnect between strategy and operations. Despite so many great ideas circling around for decades, there are little signs of putting them successfully into practice, especially in complex and dynamic organisations like airlines. The reason: generic ideas need to be accompanied with workable specifics of each organisation and problems they are facing in real life.
In this article I described some specifics including hints about the framework for connected decision making in airline organisations aimed at providing better service at lower cost.
I hope that the example of relational action map based on the real life problem seen from different perspectives will inspire you to start thinking differently about the misalignments between strategy and operations and that it will get you closer to solutions that best fit the needs of your organisation.
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Tags: Business Strategy, Innovation, Leadership
We Have To Plan For Disruptions
Jasenka Rapajic
July 16, 2021
Air travel disruptions are here to stay and may take many different forms. So, we have to plan for disruptions.
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Tags: Customer Experience, Management, Customer Loyalty
To Merge, Or Not To Merge, That Is The Question
Jasenka Rapajic
February 26, 2021
While decisions about whether or not airline mergers are an existential necessity are still in the air, it's time to take a deeper look at their shadow side, to understand how they touch the lives of employees and passengers, and what is their impact on cost and service quality.
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Tags: Leadership, Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions
What It Needs To Align Strategies With Operational Capabilities And Why It Is Important
Jasenka Rapajic
February 03, 2021
Leaders and strategists are faced with an ultimate challenge: how much, when, and where to start increasing operation at time of extreme uncertainty and growing indebtedness.
There will be lots of experimenting and testing and with it a high dependency on operational feedback to validate such decisions and act swiftly to avoid prolonged exposure to losses.
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions
Which diagnostic approach and tool do you use to determine the state of health of your organisation? Are you a specialist or a Sage?
Jasenka Rapajic
January 30, 2021
Whenever faced with a hard-to-answer question, I look for analogies. In this case I found the following quote from Fritjof Capra's book 'The Turning Point' inspirational and would like to share it with you.
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Tags: Culture, Business Strategy
What Airline Passengers Really Want
Jasenka Rapajic
January 22, 2021
It is obviously not easy to understand what passengers really want if airlines cannot guarantee that their flight will depart on time and that they won’t arrive to their destination overstressed, no matter the price they paid for their journey.
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Tags: Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty
Is it better having a big bag of dots or a handful of insights?
Jasenka Rapajic
January 06, 2021
Choosing which way to go once market starts recovering will be a tricky business. Old habits of collecting data from disconnected sources and interpreting them subjectively won’t work this time. We are entering the era insights needed to connect and interpret the data as objectively as possible while narrowing the focus on things that matter.
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Tags: Culture, Innovation, Management
Airline Leadership: The Way Forward
LinkedIn
January 04, 2021
It is now certain that things we cannot control will take some time to settle. As much as it is not easy to live with uncertainty, this time gap is giving us an opportunity to adapt to new ways of thinking about our work. As we have already experienced, the way we used to define strategies, to plan and make decisions, will no longer work. We are dependent on feedback from the real world for which we found ourselves unprepared.
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Tags: Innovation, Management, Leadership
The Way Forward
Jasenka Rapajic, Astute Aviation
December 30, 2020
It is now certain that things we cannot control will take some time to settle. As much as it is not easy to live with uncertainty, this time gap is giving us an opportunity to adapt to new ways of thinking about our work. As we have already experienced, the way we used to define strategies, to plan and make decisions will no longer work. We are dependent on feedback from the real world for which we found ourselves unprepared.
The thing is that we have to find our own way out of this crisis. There is a lot of great advice around on what and why we need to change. But what is really missing is HOW to do that amidst the heightened state of uncertainty and complexity that have, to a lesser extent, always been a part of the airline business. So, the question is how to build a more resilient organisation that can survive the forthcoming adversities?
The answer is actually relatively simple...
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Tags: Management, Leadership, Business Strategy
Furloughs and Layoffs - the Southwest Airlines Way
Beyond Airline Disruptions
October 07, 2020
Gary Kelly, chairman and CEO of Southwest Airlines Co., outlined steps Monday the company plans to take in attempt to prevent furloughs and layoffs through 2021.
Back in July, Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) committed to no furloughs or layoffs through the end of 2020. The fate of the Southwest's employees beyond this year was unknown...
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Tags: Leadership, Risk Management, Business Strategy
'The Pike Syndrome' Revisited
Jasenka Rapajic
October 04, 2020
A dark cloud is hanging over the airline industry. 'Extreme uncertainty' coupled with 'complexity' have become words that keep many paralyzed and even content with old habits that offer them security, however false.
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Tags: Business Strategy
Risk vs Uncertainty and How to Make Better Predictions
Blog Beyond Airline Disruptions
September 27, 2020
When faced with unprecedented uncertainty, we need to find ways to make our predictions more reliable. This assumes understanding the difference between risk and uncertainty. Companies that can make this distinction usually perform better than others. In practical terms, they are more capable of narrowing the gap between plans and reality and can tolerate uncertainty with greater ease.
So what is the difference between risk and uncertainty?
I am reposting my blog published in 2014 because it is more relevant today than at time when it was originally written.
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Tags: Management, Risk Management
A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making
Jasenka Rapajic
August 30, 2020
If you are a leader at any level struggling to understand why your best intended decisions don’t work as expected, the chances are that you are mixing up the contexts in which you are making these decisions.
You certainly know that your actions depend on the situation, and that you can make better decisions by adapting your approach to changing circumstances. The question is which approach to use in a particular situation to avoid making the wrong decision when faced with systemic complexity and extreme uncertainty?
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Tags: Business Strategy, Leadership
What can be learned from the sustainable success of Southwest Airlines that retained its superior investment-grade ratings in times of extreme uncertainty
Jasenka Rapajic
August 19, 2020
Southwest Airlines, Ryanair, and easyJet are the only three airlines that retained investment-grade ratings from S&P Global Ratings, after the credit rating agency downgraded a host of carriers and slowed the pace of its air travel recovery forecast. In a report published last week, S&P analysts said that superior ratings come from the low-cost model, “robust liquidity”, and greater relative exposure to healthier short-haul and leisure markets.
What these kind of ratings don’t tell us is that the superior ratings come mostly from immeasurable values which are beyond hard facts, things that drive sustainable growth and success, like leadership, culture, relationships with employees and passengers.
This is what the unwavering success of Southwest is made of. Unlike any other airline, it has been profitable every single year between 1972 and 2019, and this year it tops the league of the most successful airlines in times of extreme uncertainty.
Let's share some powerful insights of Herb Kelleher, ex CEO and co-founder of Southwest Airlines...
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Tags: Business Strategy, Culture, Customer Loyalty
Connect and Collaborate to Disrupt Disruptions
Astute Aviation Consulting
July 27, 2020
The profile of operational disruptions is changing. This time they are dominated by frequent strategic adjustments resulting in unknown, yet avoidable losses generated by slow and often less than appropriate response to changes in market demand. So far, the way we used to connect and collaborate to reduce disruptions haven't been successful and this needs to change.
The question is, how can we reinvent collaboration and become the co-creators of the new connected, resilient organisation where strategy and operations become closely linked? What is the role of people and technology in making this happen?
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Tags: Customer Loyalty, Leadership, Management
The Leadership Challenge: How To Survive Indebtedness, The Next Pandemic Hurdle For Airlines
Beyond Airline Disruptions
June 14, 2020
Only a few months ago airlines stepped into 2020 ready to be bigger and better than their competitors, buy more fuel efficient aircraft, fly more - even to busiest airports, carry more passengers with more seats in the cabin, increase retail revenue to compensate for higher costs of their operation, and hope for a more profitable year ahead. No one could have imagined that only a few months later the COVID pandemic would bring the system to a halt and that the magnitude of the current crisis would be set to leave a big mark on the future of air travel.
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Tags: Leadership, Risk Management, Business Strategy, COVID19
Can Bridging The Gap Between Theory And Practice Speed Up Collaborative Decision Making at Busiest World Airports?
linkedin
December 28, 2019
My interview with Sergio Martins, Director Air Traffic Management - Latin America, Saab Group
Major hub airports are running out of capacity needed to meet the growing demand for air travel, and many others are facing the same problem at their busiest times. And still, traffic growth at capacity constrained airports continues, accelerating the risks of disruptions with far reaching consequences on airlines, passengers, environment, and on the safety of air travel. In these circumstances, easing this problem means either limiting the volume of traffic to manageable levels (doesn’t seem feasible in the foreseeable future), waiting for strategic adjustments to take place, or freeing up some airport capacities by improving efficiency in decision making on the day of operations.
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Tags: Emerging Technology, Innovation, Management
Why Do Airlines Burn Money Every Day? What They Can Learn From Formula 1 Racing Teams
linkedin
October 28, 2019
Jasenka Rapajic in conversation with Daniel Stecher, VP Airline Operations, IBS Software
Astute Aviation Consulting - Insightful Interviews
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Tags: Emerging Technology, Management, Business Strategy
What is wrong with regulation EC261? Who is really responsible for its enforcement? Why is it disliked by both airlines and passengers?
linkedin
September 19, 2019
How much we can learn from it about how the system works, what doesn’t work, and what to do to about it?
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Tags: Emerging Technology, Management, Business Strategy
If You Think You Understand Airline Costs, Think Twice
linkedin
July 22, 2019
Did you know that analysts claim that every year 2 trillion dollars is wasted globally due to poor implementation of strategy? The question is how big is the share of the airline industry, and what is it that drives the poor implementation of strategy, pretty visible through increased disruptiveness of air travel and unexplainable rise in costs?
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Tags: Digital Disruption, Innovation, Business Strategy
Why airlines should invest more in schedule slacks
Jasenka Rapajic, Astute Aviation Consulting
June 16, 2019
In times of extreme uncertainty investing more in schedule slacks can make the difference between success and failure. Here is why...
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Tags: Business Strategy, Change Management, Risk Management
How to Switch from Legacy to Systems Thinking and Make the Work Really Work for Airlines and Passengers
Astute Aviation Consulting
December 20, 2017
I had a great privilege to interview John Seddon, a rare system thinker and practitioner who proved that by managing organisation as a system can bring profound improvements in areas of revenue, cost, customer service, employee morale and capacity to innovate.
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Tags: Business Strategy, Change Management, Culture
Is Airline Hubbing At Low-Fare-Low-Quality Sustainable? Are easyJet and British Airways Testing the Limits of Passenger Tolerance?
linkedin
July 21, 2017
When a low fare airline chose to set its main base at one of the most congested world airports, and a major legacy airline based at one of the most congested world airports starts offering low-fare services to its customers, it doesn’t need think tanks to say that they have chosen a very risky path ahead. These are the paths of two major carriers: the low fare easyJet ('big@Gatwick'), and a legacy, Heathrow based British Airways, aspiring to bring lower fares to its customers.
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Tags: Management, Business Strategy
The La-la Life of Delays - Isn’t It High Time to Rethink Flight Delays and Reinvent Their Role in Aviation Management?
linkedin
June 24, 2017
Flight delays live in La-La land, way off from real world. In La-La land things look rosier. In La-La land of delays it is possible to...
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Tags: Management, Leadership, Business Strategy
Are Airline Megamergers Becoming United in Losing Passengers They Can No Longer Afford to Serve? Does This Explain the Doctor Dao Story?
linkedin
April 25, 2017
On Sunday 9th April Doctor Dao, United Airlines’ passenger, was violently dragged out from his seat just before the departure of his flight UA3411 from Chicago to Louisville. He was chosen to leave the plane against his will to make room for four unexpected employees of a partner airline who needed to get to Louisville by Monday morning to crew another flight. United originally characterized the flight as overbooked, but later said that was (obviously) not the case.
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Tags: Digital Disruption, Management, Mergers and Acquisitions
Do You Really Understand Your Business?
linkedin
April 04, 2017
Every decision we make shapes our future and future of our organisation. We may not be aware of this because we are conditioned by traditional practices which are obscuring our views of interconnected reality. The bigger and more complex our company, the less competent we become, and our business more vulnerable to even the smallest unforeseen disturbances. We are suffering from the pike syndrome.
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Tags: Risk Management, Business Strategy
A Time for Thought About Airport Congestion
linkedin
January 28, 2017
Is it time to soften these borders and improve the 'end product'?
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Tags: Business Strategy
Can a Bit Of Southwest’s ‘Secret Sauce’ Help European Airlines Rise Above Challenges Linked To Airport Capacity Constraints?
linkedin
January 17, 2017
In his recent CNBC interview, the current CEO of Southwest Airlines Gary Kelly described the ingredients of company’s ‘secret sauce’ to competitiveness as follows:
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Tags: Culture, HR, Business Strategy
The Disruptive Nature of Regulation EC/261
linkedin
April 26, 2016
Can responsibility for passenger compensation be more equally shared among those responsible for flight delays?
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Tags: Customer Experience, Digital Disruption