Time To Rethink Our Relationship to Technology

As software improves, the people using it may become less inclined to sharpen their own know-how. Applications that offer constant prompts and guidance can contribute to this; simpler, less “helpful” tools often push people to think, act, and learn more deeply.

Some years ago, information scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands asked participants to carry out complex analytical and planning tasks using either rudimentary software with no assistance or advanced software offering extensive support. The results were striking. Those using simpler tools developed better strategies, made fewer mistakes, and built a deeper understanding of the work. By contrast, those using more advanced software often found themselves aimlessly clicking around when faced with difficulty. The very tools designed to help had, in effect, short-circuited their thinking and learning.

 

Even the most sophisticated software lacks the common sense, ingenuity, and judgment of a skilled professional. Whether in cockpits, offices, or examination rooms, human expertise remains indispensable. Insight, intuition, and real-world experience learned over time cannot simply be replicated by algorithms, as Nicholas Carr has argued.

 

In the airline industry, this raises an important question: To what extent does an algorithmic mindset, one that overlooks the dynamic, interconnected nature of airline business contribute to rising losses, particularly those linked to disruptions in planned operations?

 

Simplifying complexity by focusing on the often invisible yet persistent systemic causes of disruptions is an art. The true role of technology is to support this process by making such realities visible, highlighting critical pain points, and enabling timely, informed action to minimise the impact of disruptions. 

These days we have an opportunity to challenge the system complexity at any level by taking AI as an enabler of human-centred technology.  As for the airline industry Systemic Reality Check is designed to support this integrative process on the practical side.

 

https://beyonddisruptions.blogspot.com/2023/07/cutting-through-complexity-practical.html

Unscheduled Maintenace - A Leadership Blind Spot That Can Be Healed

Think about reality of issues related to unscheduled maintenance as one of the most costly, obvious, yet not fully visible reasons behind  operational disruptions. What often remains unseen is the unintended collateral damage created by growth strategies designed to impress unsavvy investors, while losses in the core airline business remain masked by retail or other non-aviation revenues. The impact inevitably seeps into organisational culture.

As for the maintenance realities, they keep being shaped by strategies that prioritise fleet and network expansion, often without understanding their side effects including operational disruptons and their impact on costs, passenger experience and ultimately revenue. This signals a disconnect from operational reality that fuels growing losses.

The problem is aggravated by delay reporting practices that force deeply interrelated causes into simplistic IATA formats, where nearly half of disruption reasons are labelled “reactionary,” detached from their multiple systemic origins. This prevents those determined to make better decisions from doing so. 

Getting out of this industrial trap can start small:

Select just a few fact based initial maintenance-related reasons of disruptions.

Scan how wide they ripple across the network.

Observe how long the effects last.

Measure the schedule adjustments required to bring aircraft back on track.

And most importantly, capture the full cost and revenue impact, including the consequences on passengers. 

          Relational Action Mapping is a next step followed by Progress Monitoring.

In a wider context, this requires leadership conscious of complexity and of the airline’s capabilities needed to overcome it. It points to the need for a new role of system integrator/boundary spanner that channels decisions that benefits the system by connecting data, people, and processes near real time. 

Consider this practice as a first step toward more coherent, systemic decision-making. 

Questioning Strategic Reality

These questions come from lived experiences. They highlight strategic pain points that if unattended add up to growing losses related to the core airline business. 

Are airlines and tech experts ready for it?  

Here is a hint: It is all about working together to turn complexity into simplexity driven by regular systemic reality checks,  ultimately translating operational issues into the language spoken in boardrooms. In essence, this is a leadership challenge based on the evidence-based framework.

Here is more on the practical side:

Systemic Reality Check

Breaking Through Airline Compensation Denials

Here is the story about how passenger ingenuity can outpace rigid and unsustainable rules that prevent them from claiming their right for compensation. 

This real life story is about musician Dave Carroll, a United Airlines passenger whose guitar was destroyed by the airline’s baggage handlers and who was denied compensation for the damage. Eight months later, after receiving a final “no” from United, he wrote a song publicly exposing the airline’s customer service and brand. It quickly went viral and, according to mainstream media “within four days of the song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines’ stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10 per cent, costing shareholders $180 million.”

United eventually backed down, stating that the company would “use the video internally as a unique learning and training opportunity.”

The massive publicity finally triggered a compensation offer to the passenger which, at his request was donated to charity. 

It happened in 2009 and, as of November 2025, it reached over 30 million views on YouTube only (still growing), adding to popularity of his book ‘United Breaks Guitars - The Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media’.

The question remains: is it social media that passengers must use to protect their basic rights, or is it up to airlines to work harder to minimise the number of unpleasant passenger experiences and show more respect for customer claims when things go wrong? And, by doing so, increase their revenue. 

But here are bigger questions: who should drive this kind of innovation? 

Is it airlines, passengers, or both? 

And also, can experience driven AI be able to support that effort and create synergy?

Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

What Siloed AI Is About

Just wondering how long it will take for airline leaders to realise that siloed AI in operations doesn’t improve coordination, it often makes it worse. When flight operations, maintenance, crewing, and ground handling optimise separately, the outcome is more fragmentation, not more control. Siloed AI doesn’t create intelligence. It creates faster confusion.

The bigger question is what this will do to debt-funded expansion?

The only way to receive timely warning signals, and take collective action before losses appear, is to embed a Systemic Reality Check: a continuous feedback loop that enables introduction of integrative, human-centred technology.

More about it

Embracing the Economics of Loyalty as a Profit Driver

Have you ever thought that saving a customer can be ten times more rewarding than finding a new one? This is what Seth Godin refers to as 'economics of loyalty', and here is why:

"The us/them mindset of most corporate customer service is simple:

1.      When you can, get it over with
2.      If at all possible, evade responsibility?

Which means that when things go wrong, you’ll likely encounter a legalistic mentality that begins and ends with 'it’s out of our control'.

There’s an alternative.

Have you ever thought that saving a customer can be ten times more rewarding than finding a new one? This is what Seth Godin refers to as 'economics of loyalty', and here is why:

'The us/them mindset of most corporate customer service is simple:

1.      When you can, get it over with
2.      If at all possible, evade responsibility

Which means that when things go wrong, you’ll likely encounter a legalistic mentality that begins and ends with 'it’s out of our control'.

There’s an alternative.

It begins with understanding the economics of loyalty. Saving a customer is ten times more efficient than finding a new one. If it costs an airline $1,000 of marketing and route development to acquire a first-class business traveller, it’s worth at least $10,000 in customer service to keep one.

And it continues with a simple tactic: Instead of defining the minimal legal requirement, outline the maximum possible action you could have taken.

Because the race doesn’t go to organizations that do the minimal legal requirement. The race goes to those that figure out what they could do. And do it.”

Just wondering, what would the ratio be if this economics of loyalty is applied to employees? What if the decision to keep a valued employee is ten times more rewarding than finding a new one?

This is the kind of insight that emerges from a context-specific Systemic Reality Check, where patterns of value, loss, and loyalty become visible, now increasingly supported by a customised use of ChatGPT-5 to become a part of my Astute Aviation Consulting offer.

What Are the 5 Key Indicators That AI Isn’t the Answer?

The following Parallaxis article taps at the core of todays AI overhype and brings us all down to reality:

Sometimes it takes greater leadership to "not" do a thing than it does to succumb to the pressure of going along with the crowd. This is just as true in business as it is in high school. Most (all?) leaders want to be seen as innovative and technologically savvy. This, combined with the pressure to "not be left behind the Al wave (craze ?), creates a compelling urge to implement Al for something in your business. And that is a recipe for disaster.

The smartest Al strategy begins with knowing when not to use it. Technology is a multiplier-not a replacement-for disciplined thinking, well-designed processes, and human judgment. Using Al without clear operational problems to solve often results in Al theater, projects that impress but deliver no measurable value. Focus on improving data quality, automation maturity, and human decision systems before starting your Al journey. Al should be the last tool added, not the first.

Read the full Parallaxis article https://www.parallaxis.ai/blog/5-key-indicators-that-ai-isnt-the-answer

Insightful Interviews: In Preparation For Integrative Decision Making

Over the years, I’ve journeyed through the uncharted areas of the airline business, discovering how the missing links between data, people, and processes quietly fuel rising costs and passenger dissatisfaction. Recognising these patterns has strengthened my resolve to uncover and address the deeper systemic gaps that, once understood, can pave the way for a more connected, resilient, and human-centred industry.

This journey led me to meet leaders who share the same curiosity, those willing to exchange their experiences spanning strategy, operations, and technology.

I’m sharing these conversations again at a critical time for the airline industry, which needs to broaden its understanding of the diverse and interrelated issues that are surpassing human abilities alone. Together, these insights point to the need for integrative, human-centred technology to make this transition less painful and far more meaningful. All that tuning to practice of Systemic Reality Check.

These interviews came at a time when I was looking for more down-to-earth, to-the-point insights while writing the second edition of ‘Beyond Airline Disruptions – Thinking and Managing Anew’.

You can access my conversations with fresh thinkers here:

Can a Tech-Driven ‘Happiness Blanket’ Really Improve Passenger Experience?

About a decade ago a major UK airline had started trialling a hi-tech blanket – known as the ‘happiness blanket’ – which uses neuro-sensors to measure the electrical fluctuations in the neurons of passengers’ brains, and changes colour depending on their state of mind.

The senior executive commented: This is the first time this technology has been used by any airline to help shape how service is delivered onboard an aircraft. He explained that the happiness blanket is a new way for the company to investigate how their customers’ relaxation and sleep is affected by everything onboard, from the amount of light in the cabin, when they eat, to what in-flight entertainment they watch and their position in the seat.

I still wonder if those ‘happiness blankets’ were ever used to measure the mood of passengers experiencing long delays. If so, how did it affect their loyalty?

Just thinking…  could today’s AI do any better at measuring passenger happiness? 

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.