Rethinking Airline Success: Insights from My Conversation with Alex Dichter

While working on the second edition of Beyond Airline Disruptions back in 2017, I set out to find people with deep industry knowledge -those unafraid to challenge the status quo and speak openly about the systemic issues making airlines the biggest losers in an industry where suppliers and partners continue to profit. One of them was Alex Dichter, then a Senior Partner in McKinsey’s London office and leader of the firm’s global Airline, Travel, and Aviation practice. I reached out to Alex, drawn by his unorthodox insights and bold articles that questioned institutional thinking, especially around the factors undermining airline financial performance and their fragile relationship with passengers.

The timing of our conversation was not accidental. At that point, airlines were showing historically high profits, but many of us working closely with the industry knew that this financial performance was masking growing structural weaknesses.

Eight years on, much of what Alex shared still resonates and in many ways feels even more urgent.

Following is a lightly edited version of that interview, revisited for today’s context.

Financial Metrics: Are They Telling the Truth?

JR: Airline performance reports are built around disjointed KPIs, often distanced from the operational reality. ROIC (Return on Invested Capital) has become a key benchmark. Is it the right one?

AD: Most frontline employees don’t think in terms of ROIC. They focus on local drivers: cost per departure, check-in automation, etc. and that’s as it should be. But at senior levels, ROIC can be misleading.

For example, maintenance costs are often deferred in accounting. Buy a new aircraft, and for five years you show almost no maintenance costs - so ROIC looks great. But each hour flown still brings you closer to a major check.

Labor costs work similarly. A junior pilot earning $60K might be making $160K in year twelve. So you can show high ROIC for a while without making decisions that are healthy in the long run.

Then there’s the bigger question: does the airline industry as a whole create value? Shareholder returns are poor. But for owners and founders, the story’s different. Many succeed by using leverage, generate quick value, then exit leaving long-term challenges behind.

The Expansion Trap: Growth Without System Thinking

JR: Why would low-cost airlines shift to congested hubs like Gatwick, where disruption risks are high? Meanwhile, legacy carriers are quietly pulling back.

AD: It’s often about demand stimulation and dominance. Most airlines earn the bulk of their profits in cities where they control capacity. That creates an arms race to be “number one.”

But most airlines don’t fully grasp the operational risks of these moves. They make decisions based on long-term averages and rules of thumb. The irony? The data is there. We can predict disruption patterns and redesign schedules accordingly. But it hasn’t yet become part of everyday decision-making.

Outsourcing and the Quality Gap

JR: With more than 60% of cost structures outsourced, how do airlines control service quality?

AD: Technically, there’s no reason an outsourced provider can’t perform as well as an internal team. The issue is how you outsource. There are two models: input-based (you pay for hours, transactions) and outcome-based (you pay for results). The latter is more sophisticated and much more effective.

The real challenge is cultural. Too many providers in ground handling aren’t well equipped. But this isn’t just about outsourcing, it’s about airlines taking ownership. Quality is not a tech problem. It’s an organisational and cultural problem. But again, the data exists.

Passenger Experience: Falling Between the Gaps

JR: As airport congestion rises, passenger experience deteriorates across all classes. Do airlines stop caring once a ticket is sold?

AD: Some things need to change. Passengers need clearer information about risks, missed connections, delay probabilities - not just legroom.

Operationally, every airline would prefer 90-minute connection windows. But they lose market share if they offer them. Passengers pick the shortest option, even if it’s less reliable. So tight connections stay.

Airlines are, in a way, responding to customer preferences, but it’s a fragile equation.

So Who Will Change First?

JR: With lower fares, higher anxiety, and longer delays, who should change: passengers or airlines?

AD: Ultimately, it’s about informed choice. If passengers are given clearer visibility into risks, some will make different decisions. And that, in turn, will shift airline behavior.

I’m eager to see what comes next, especially given the ongoing confusion between Artificial and, in this case, Integrative Intelligence.

Here is the link to the orignal version of our conversation published in 2017: Are Airlines Using the Right Metrics to Run Their Business—or Is Something Missing?

Isn't it time to change the rules of this Congestion Game?

We Need Practical Wisdom to Solve Real-World Problems

Isn’t it high time to start healing the airline industry from purely data-driven decision making disconnected from reality and consequently, from the human side of business? What is missing is practical wisdom, which Aristotle taught us is the combination of moral will and moral skill.

Get inspired by the following excerpts from Barry Schwartz’s TED talk ‘Our Loss of Wisdom’.

Real-world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined, and the context is always changing. 

A wise person is like a jazz musician - using the notes on the page, but dancing around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situation and the people at hand.

A wise person knows how to use these moral skills in the service of the right aims - to serve other people, not to manipulate other people. And finally, perhaps most important, a wise person is made, not born.

Wisdom depends on experience, and not just any experience. You need the time to get to know the people that you're serving.

You need permission to be allowed to improvise, try new things, occasionally to fail and to learn from your failures. And you need to be mentored by wise teachers.

Questioning the Future of Disruptive Air Travel

Who truly owns reports on flight delays? Their impact ripples across passengers, airlines, airports, and the industry as a whole - but who are these reports actually meant to serve, and why do they often lack clear accountability? 

Drawing on insights I shared years ago, I revisit this critical topic to ask: Are things getting worse? And if they are, how might their effects on passengers shape the future of air travel?

Join me as we dig deeper into an issue that holds undeniable influence over the future of the airline industry.

Here is my article published seven years ago:

Flight delays live in a La-La land, way off from the real world. In La-La land things look rosier even when they get worse.  

In European La-La land of delays it is possible to: 
 

• Publish flawed delay reports even when industry officials deny responsibility for delay data accuracy, reliability, and integrity 
• Ignore the existence of passengers in delay reports  
• Suspend official Consumer Reports on flight delays 
• Let incomparable, make-believe reports circulate freely across the industry, be used to support a wide range of decisions and as a marketing ploy 
• Undermine strategic value of delay information in balancing profit and service quality   
• Lose sight of the core purpose of aviation business    

 

In La-La land it has become common and ordinary to deny truth about delays and instead engage in creation of confusing reports so that the by-products of hub concentration and inefficiencies remain unknown – right up to the moment when accumulated problems erupt, triggered by predictable but unforeseen events and reveal the vastness of system weaknesses. 
 
Here are some insights and facts on fallacies in delay reporting. 
 
On scope 

The opportunity: taking the very best of delays  

To understand delays as indicators of forthcoming problems, we need to step above operational environment, so that we can see what drives changes in planned operations, cost, and revenue loss, their true origins, and their impact on passengers. Further, we must be aware about interconnections between data and people involved in these processes. We also need to keep monitoring the effectiveness of investment in schedule buffers, additional aircraft, crew, and maintenance resources needed to keep punctuality at an acceptable level. In this way, we merge the elements of cost and service quality into a single system – something that segmented information systems and legacy practices cannot provide.

The reality: missed opportunity 

Of all these integral elements of delays, current metrics is narrowed down to delayed departures and arrivals. Even this data is not consistent and reliable due to the stretchy references and possibilities for subjective inputs.  

On responsibility 

There are no rules and no responsibility for quality and accuracy of delay reports. Instead of taking a leading role in improving industry standards, regulators and industry organisations have become the observers and critics of the chaotic state in punctuality reporting, as shown below. 

On disclaimers 

CAA UK ‘The information contained in [CAA punctuality] reports have been compiled from various sources of data. CAA validates this data, however, no warranty is given as to its accuracy, integrity, or reliability. CAA cannot accept liability for any financial loss caused by a person’s reliance on any of these statistics’. (report active) 

European Commission     The information contained in [European] Community Quality and Punctuality Indicators Table has not been adopted or in any way approved by the European Commission’. ‘The European Commission does not guarantee the accuracy of the information made available, nor does it accept responsibility for any use made thereof.’  (report suspended) 

On abolishing Consumer Report  

‘The [AEA punctuality] report is based upon a voluntary commitment by the members to provide consumer information according to a set of commonly defined standards…AEA cannot guarantee the accuracy of figures [not in line with these standards] and indeed has reason to believe that they may represent entirely different performance criteria.’ (This note was a regular part of AEA Consumer Report before it was suspended in 2007). 

On secrecy 
 

‘Whilst punctuality of commercial aircraft operations is one of the key measures of airline and airport performance, consumer access to punctuality data aggregated across the EU for both airlines and airports is very limited’… ‘Data reporting on a pan-European basis is primarily limited to airline de-identified monthly reports produced by EUROCONTROL's Central Office for Delay Analysis (CODA)’ which keeps the data ‘under strict confidentiality and no attempt is made or permitted to identify the performance of any individual airline’ (EU officials). 

On (dis)trust 

European Commission does not guarantee the accuracy of the information given in their commissioned report ‘Annual Analyses of the EU Air Transport Market 2011’, carried out for the Directorate General for Mobility and Transport in the European Commission (includes punctuality & delays), nor does it accept responsibility for any use made thereof'. 
 
On accuracy 
 
What are the reasons for such strong denial of responsibility coming from industry officials? How much does the absence of standards for delay reporting, especially the use of schedule references, distort the truth about delays?

The following example can give you some ideas: 
 
On 18 December 2010, a small amount of snow fell over London, enough to cause chaos at Heathrow, unprepared for not so unusual winter conditions (short of snowclearing eqipment!). Massive flight cancellations and long delays affected about 800,000 passengers stranded worldwide (no schedule slacks, no chance to rebook, no information). It took Heathrow 7 days to recover, while neighbouring Gatwick was back to normal in two days.   
 
Here is how this major event was recorded in CAA’s monthly report. 

 

 

This kind of insight is only possible during events of a bigger scale that expose otherwise hidden causes and consequences of disruptions to public scrutiny. 
 
The Heathrow paradox  
 

Heathrorw is the world’s busiest two-runway airport operating at 98% capacity at all times, so any disruption has an immediate impact on some of 1300 flights per day. Instead of the expected decline in punctuality, Heathrow reports the improvement over the last decade, indicating that punctuality can grow with congestion, but can it really? 
 

 

 

 

The punctuality of British Airways doesn’t quite match the Heathrow reports. Nor does it match the CAA 

 Statistics. 

 

 

And this is what you cannot find in Heathrow punctuality reports: 
 

• 54% of 224,497 incoming flights were held in holding stacks in 2010. By comparison, 14% of Gatwick incoming flights were held in stacks and 5% at Stansted. 
• 18 million arriving passengers were kept circling in holding patterns for up to 20 minutes on a normal day and 45 minutes in bad weather. 
• Airlines wasted around £65 million on fuel while stack in the holding queues. 
• Airborne holding at Heathrow amounted to the equivalent of having approximately 10 aircraft grounded at airport each day. By comparison, in 2004 the equivalent of 5 British Airways aircraft a day were circling in airborne stacks above Heathrow. 

 

The game of obscured references: 

 
Can you explain the following difference in on-time departures reported by flightstats.com and flightontime.info? 

 

 

 Or, who really topped the OAG rank table for medium airports in 2016? 

 
 
 

 

Unlike the CAA who denies responsibility for data accuracy, OAG, the reseller of airline and airport information, doesn’t do so. Considering the messy state of delay references, one can question the OAG claim that they ‘provide accurate, timely and actionable information and applications across the travel sector to the world’s airlines, airports, government agencies, aircraft manufacturers, consultancies and travel related companies. 
 
On punctuality league tables  
 

Who really tops punctuality league tables, why, and for how long considering their short shelf life? Should the big data 'recyclers' be kept accountable for the misleading delay information and for putting the company’s reputation at risk? 
 
In the absence of regulation and standards, airline and airport punctuality rankings have inevitably become influenced by subjective assumptions and interpretations of the data compilers and resellers, driven mostly by their commercial interests. By ignoring diversity and lacking the transparency of benchmark criteria and information they have made a mockery of quality – an invaluable measure of airline and airport performance. Data compilers like Skytrax, AirHelp, OAG, GEE Operations Solutions, flightontime.info, and flightstats.com support and feed off each other's data (many withdrawn in the meantime). They have found partners in the mainstream and social media who market their flawed products and spread the misinformation further. No wonder that some airlines are now looking for legal help. This situation will only get worse if the creation of an industry framework for delay reporting and Consumer Reports keeps being postponed. 

On role of delay reports in decision making 

Despite the evident inaccuracies, obsolescence, and inconsistency, delay reports are being used widely across the industry. The question is what can strategists learn from delay reports and how can they adapt plans to provide better service at lower cost than competitors? 

Let's say you expected punctuality to be 78% but it was down to 72%. What do these figures mean anyway? What do you know about the situation that created these delays? How efficient are schedule buffers? How efficient and productive are the aircraft? If you want to improve punctuality effectively, you need to know this information. When you look at 78%, the information is not there. When you are told punctuality is 72% instead of 78% all you know is that you missed your target. 

Answering these questions requires a fresh, integrative approach to decision making that stretches from operations to strategy. All we need to do is to combine the very best of data we already have and find a better way of using it.  

On rethinking delays and reinventing their role in the airline management 

Delays hold important messages. They can help with determining the trend and direction of the industry’s many facets. Failing to accurately monitor and interpret these messages is like failing to measure drift and determine wind speed and direction while in flight. It is important to alter the way we think about delays. 
 
On reflection - what is your action plan? 
 
Are you ever going to look at delay reports the same way as you did before? Are you going to let them obscure your vision of reality or make delays your allies that help you understand the true value of your actions from a wider perspective? Are you prepared to bridge the gaps between segmented parts of the system, between assumptions and reality, understand their interconnections and measure progress? 

Are you ready to reconsider your approach to delay reporting? Will you avoid letting them distort your perception of reality, and instead view delays as opportunities to gain a broader understanding of the true value of your actions? Are you ready to connect the dots between segmented parts of the system, reconcile assumptions with reality, comprehend their interactions, and measure progress?