Improving Collaborative Decision Making at Busiest Hub Airports Appears to Be The Last Resort To Minimise The Impact Of Growing Disruptions. Can Bridging The Gap Between Theory And Practice Speed Up This Process?

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.

With the latest option in mind, I came across articles written by Sergio Martins, Director Air Traffic Management - Latin America, Saab Group, pointing to the opportunities for improvement on airports´ airside. What makes these articles stand out is that they provoke rethinking and refinement of current practices encompassing relationships between airports, airlines, ATC and ground handlers. And all that being expressed with passion and eagerness to contribute to so much needed improvement in efficiency of decision making in one of the most complex areas of airport and airline operations. His views are supported by his firsthand experience in multiple areas of air transport industry, including air traffic control, flight operations, air/ground communications and airport management systems, enabling him to see problems and solutions associated with airports’ airsides from the wider perspective.  

Sergio kindly accepted my invitation for an interview and felt enthusiastic about sharing his insightful knowledge related to overcoming existing obstacles that cross organisational and geographical boundaries. We will be covering the airside issues in general, as well as those faced by airports in Europe, US, and Latin America to show the diversity in approaches to improvement in efficiency and service quality of airport and airline operations.

So, here we are. I hope you are ready to embark on a journey of discovery of an area not so simple to grasp, but well worth understanding not only by operations specialists but by airline and airport leaders and strategists and also policy makers across the industry. 

JR: To start with, could you explain what are the main obstacles to improvement in airport operational efficiencies?

SM: Historically, private airport concessionaires have focused in optimising processes and procedures within passenger terminals, while failing to touch a critical, complex and high impact component of their business – the airport apron, commonly referred to as “airside”. The problem is that most resources currently involved in airside procedures are managed by numerous players (airlines, ground handlers, airport operator, air traffic controllers) performing a wide range of complexly interrelated tasks. Although all such those theoretically pursue a common objective - optimum on-time performance, clear leadership and ownership of airside operations are still to be established, under the framework of a commonly agreed modus operandi, which should account for local/regional aspects while sticking to a clear set of general principles.   

JR: This lack of coordination and collaboration has certainly contributed to growing airport and system inefficiencies which triggered actions for setting the standards and guidelines for collaborative decision making at industry level. The resulting concept - A-CDM (Airport Collaborative Decision Making) was initiated in Europe in 2004 and first deployed at Brussels Airport (2010) and Munich (2017). FAA has its own similar concept S-CDM (Surface Collaborative Decision Making), and ICAO adopted the concept and broaden it.

Let’s start with Eurocontol´s A-CDM born as a result of a joint venture between ACI Europe, Eurocontrol, International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO). It is said that A-CDM basically aims to connect the airspace management optimization carried out by Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management Centres (ATFCM) with ground-based services. Initial results have confirmed that when enhanced by combination of airspace and airport processes it can result in reduced delays, better predictability and optimum use of both airspace and airport resources, potentially increasing the capacity of participating airports. This all sounds very promising.  How well are these initiatives embraced by airports and airlines? 

SM: Over the last few years the whole air transport industry simply fell in love with the collaborative spirit promoted by A-CDM ‘culture’. It has become a buzz word. There is no single meeting, conference, seminar or trade show addressing the air transport industry where A-CDM is not glamorously welcomed as something being successfully implemented everywhere by everyone. However, few people actually understand the major cultural/behaviour paradigm shift demanded by actual implementation of A-CDM operating mode, way beyond sharing information and promoting enhanced global situational awareness.

What needs to be understood, sooner rather than later, is that fully transparent information sharing and optimum level of common situation awareness across the whole airport community are actually the foundation upon which a wholly new way of operating an airport must be introduced – the A-CDM Operating Mode. It is fair to say it makes little sense for an airport to start planning A-CDM introduction prior to engaging a major effort towards deployment of a robust information sharing platform which, in my personal view, must include surface surveillance technologies. I truly believe that the most important airside related information to be shared amongst all stakeholders, to enable all the beauty of A-CDM, is the real time visual monitoring of aircraft and vehicles over the airside. The whole set of collaborative applications developed by the industry to promote enhanced situation awareness at airports is drastically improved when industry standard surface surveillance technologies are implemented.

JR: Your approach to A-CDM obviously adds a practical value to the original theoretical model.

SM: Well, my proposed approach is not so much innovative bearing in mind that Eurocontrol clearly states in its A-CDM Implementation Manual the following:

“Information Sharing is the first Concept Element, which creates the foundation for all other functions, while being beneficial in its own right. Therefore, it is essential to implement this element, before other Airport CDM Concept Elements and functions, in order to achieve a smooth implementation of the succeeding Concept Elements.”

What it clearly suggests is that before any long term commitment with the enforcement of the so called “Best Planned, Best Served” paradigm, proposed by A-CDM Operating Mode, via TOBTs (Target off-Block Times) and TSATs (Target Start-up Approval Times), airports stakeholders do have a homework to do – to deploy solid information sharing/situation awareness foundation, which then, may or may not lead to full A-CDM implementation, which requires a complex and time-consuming cultural and behaviour change. That´s all about sacrificing individual flexibility on behalf of global availability, balancing on-time performance with predictability concerns.

In short, what I am particularly convinced is that some type of surface surveillance technology is a must whenever efficient airside management is to be pursued, no matter who is in charge of managing aircraft and vehicle movements within the airside, be it ATC or Apron Control Centre. Surface surveillance has widely demonstrated its ability to save hours of aircraft taxi time, reduce fuel consumption and cut CO2 emissions, not to manage improving passenger experience by drastically raising the level of airport and airlines´ predictability. 

All those benefits might be achieved with a combination of:

·       Common-use Database - known as ACISP (Airport CDM Common Information Sharing Platform)

·       Cooperative surface surveillance, continuously feeding ACISP with critical real time information on aircraft and vehicles´ movement within the airside

All the above may (and should) be done prior to enforcing TOBT/TSAT policy to airlines, as that´s most critical aspect of A-CDM implementation – the reduction of airline´s flexibility in exchange for higher global availability of airside resources.

Another interesting way to support my statement is to focus on ICAO´s Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP), with emphasis on two specific Aviation System Block Upgrades (ASBU) - Block 0 (reference date 2013) 

•  SURF - Basic Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control Systems (A-SMGCS) provides surveillance and alerting of movements of both aircraft and vehicles at the aerodrome, thus improving runway/aerodrome safety. Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) information is used when available (ADS-B APT).
•  A-CDM - Implements collaborative applications that will allow the sharing of surface operations data among the different stakeholders on the airport. This will improve surface traffic management reducing delays on movement and manoeuvring areas and enhance safety, efficiency and situational awareness.

It is an obvious conclusion that, for any airports raising runway/aerodrome safety concerns, due to the complexity of its operation, real time position information should be a part of the ‘surface operations data’ to be shared amongst stakeholders, as a means to reduce delays on movement and manoeuvring areas.   

JR: Can this be illustrated by some examples?

SM: To illustrate how it works in real world, we can mention the results achieved in the US, in particular at Atlanta International Airport back in 2010, after implementation of a common-use surface surveillance platform (no formal CDM Operating mode, implemented):

With the deployment of Saab´s Aerobahn Surface Management System, fed by a ground based multilateration network in 2010, Atlanta has created a collaborative environment where all stakeholders (airport, airlines and the FAA) have a common platform to improve overall airport operations. In 2012, Atlanta saved 36,400 hours in taxi time and 64,400 hours in schedule delay per year, saving airlines $97 million annually with delays at their lowest level since measurement began in 1990 (10.1 per thousand operations).  This reflects a 21% improvement in addition to a 54.7% delay reduction achieved in 2011. Furthermore, Saab´s surface surveillance platform, with its advanced event alerting functionality, prevented long on-board delays saving 300,000 passenger days during those years.

Other deployments include: Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, New York-JFK, New York-LaGuardia, New Newark, Philadelphia and Phoenix. Major airlines as American Airlines, Delta and United are also prominent customers/users.

JR: The US approach seems to be more effective which must be associated with conceptual differences between A-CDM and S-CDM. If so, what prevents Europeans from following these steps?

SM: Air Traffic Management in US and Europe have a number of differences which cause their CDM initiatives, not to be so easily interchangeable, although both initiatives seek for the same results and require from airlines and ground handlers, high level of predictability with regards to flights´ readiness time. The one thing which remains valid for any and all CDM initiatives is that higher global availability of resources is achieved as a result of tighter flexibility levels enforced to stakeholders.

One of such major differences is that while in Europe, airside management is undertaken by Control Tower, through the Air Traffic Controller at the “ground” operational position (although no “control” service is actually provided within the Apron), in US, aircraft and vehicles within the Apron are monitored and supported by the “Apron/Ramp Control Centres” – normally operated by the airport operator itself or third parties hired for the provision of the service (quite often major carriers undertake such role at their main hubs.           

JR: Let’s talk about Latin America. How much is it opened for implementation of A-CDM? 

SM: Two main aspects are to be addressed, with the aim of understanding the challenge of airside management improve in Latin America:

Historically, airports in Latin America, were operated by state owned entities, as part of their “mission” (a pretty military concept). Under such scenario, things as profitability and competitiveness were not so relevant, as airports existed to provide the community with safe airport operations.

Airport privatization wave raised a new scenario, where private/profit driven concessionaries are challenged to efficiently serve private airlines, which are supported by private ground handling agents. All of this takes place within a fairly competitive environment, where airports compete with each other for airlines´ preference. Now, airport service efficiency directly impacts on airports/airlines´ profitability, which is their ultimate goal, as private entities.   

Under the new scenario, the need to tear down the frontier between airport and air traffic control is a must and airside lies right in the centre of the challenge to be faced by airport stakeholders. It´s important to acknowledge that aircraft operation within the apron area and around the gates involve the use of multiple resources – trucks, buses, cars, personnel, gates, etc., in a physical space not owned by anyone - air traffic controllers provide only information outside manoeuvring area. In short, Air Traffic Control manages runways and taxiways and airport concessionaire manages passenger terminal. The one-million-dollar question is, how to join all stakeholders into a single coordinated effort to improve the efficiency of airside procedures and that´s what A-CDM (Airport Collaborative Decision Making) and all other CDM driven initiatives are all about.  

Unfortunately, a number of regional issues have been dramatically affecting Latin American stakeholders´ ability to properly assess A-CDM related opportunities and requirements.

It is widely recognized that any A-CDM initiatives, including preliminary gap analysis, should engage all stakeholders as of day one. This basic concept has been recognized by all guiding documents of associations and organizations including ICAO, IATA, ACI, etc. However, that´s not how things have happened in Latin America, where individual stakeholders (typically Airport Operator or ANSP) unilaterally decide to develop an A-CDM program. As a rule, little engagement of those expected to be the main potential beneficiaries of A-CDM - airlines and ground handlers and that is precisely in this contradiction which lies the major risk of A-CDM deployment processes, characterized by unbalanced participation of different stakeholders.

To make it even worse, as previously highlighted, A-CDM, as well as any other CDM related operating model is based upon reduction of stakeholders’ flexibility in the booking of resources, as the means to generate higher global availability levels.

Another point of concern is the fact that, unlike United States and Europe, where meteorological conditions have led ANSPs (Air Navigation Service Providers) to deploy ATC Surface Surveillance (A-SMGCS) platforms for safety reasons at most medium/large airports, Latin American airports have virtually assumed blind airside operation as a standard, once no surface surveillance information is available. That dramatically affects stakeholders´ situation awareness, which makes it even harder for airlines and ground handlers to reach the level of predictability they need to seriously candidate for A-CDM implementation.

JR: From airlines’ perspective, planning block times on routes operating through congested airports and airspace includes complex tradeoffs. Enforcing such changes at one airport without understanding the consequences on other parts of airline route network has already been met by their resistance. Could you explain in more details in which way A-CDM affects this process.

SM: In traditional pre-A-CDM operation, airport resources are allocated based upon a “first called, first served” policy. That means airlines (and their ground handling agents) do their best to eliminate/minimize possible delays with no information exchanged with airport and ATC, with regards to imminent delays. That causes poor allocation of airport resources, due to the lack of visibility on predicted readiness time of each flight.

What A-CDM and its Target Off-Block Time (TOBT) and Target Start-Up Approval Time (TSAT) policy enforces is the continuous information exchange between airlines and airport operators with regards to each flight´s estimated readiness times. That allows airport operator and ATC to build a realistic start-up/push-back/taxi/take-off sequence, which proves supported by airport infrastructure and airspace availability. This is all about operating as fast as realistically possible while ensuring maximum predictability. The operation paradigm than changes to “best planned, best served”.

JR: Unhappy with some of A-CDM rules, European airlines have decided to form an Airline Airport Collaborative Decision Making Group ('AACG') in 2015 (supported by IATA) to tackle many unharmonized European A-CDM processes and procedures that added complexity, and in some cases inefficiencies and delays within airline operations. This signals that the whole process is still far from being fully harmonised and implemented in Europe. How long do you think the full implementation of A-CDM operating model can take? 

SM: If we assume that stakeholders are going to make a well-informed, joint decision to collaborate (for duly understood and acknowledged reasons), and accept the flexibility reduction imposed by A-CDM operating model and it´s actual implementation, quite optimistically, we are talking about two years; not to mention radically changing culture and behaviour of hundreds of thousands of people within the whole airport community... and beyond (regulatory agents, customs & immigration, etc.).

JR: There are so many valuable information related to these processes that can help with better planning and management of airline resources, adjustment of strategies, and also improve the visibility of reasons for disruptions caused by service providers. Can it be adjusted for decision making outside of operational environment? Is such information already available?

SM: This information can be provided. In the case of Aerobahn platform, apart from supporting immediate decision making, it can also provide number of tools required for post-operational analysis at various organisational levels, from operations through scheduling, network and strategic planning. This can help with:

• Improving schedule efficiencies and block time planning

• Maximizing runway, taxiway and gate/stand utilization

• Decreasing delays & heightening performance during irregular operations

• Reducing emissions

• Identifying trends and recurring operational problems

• Better forecasting of the impact of future operational events

• Understanding of usage of airport resources, enabling verification of related fees

• Improving post-operational analysis leading to automation or process improvements

• Facilitating long-term planning

JR: To wrap it up, what would be your message to those unsure about the benefits that new approach to collaborative decision making at airports can bring to the industry?

SM: Worldwide, privatization of airlines and airports is leading the profit driven entities to an obvious challenge - how to achieve the best cost/benefit ratio out of limited infrastructures. It is not a coincidence that A-CDM related discussions are flourishing everywhere, quite often ahead of time and lacking technical expertise. This seems to be the 21st century stakeholders´ intuitive strive to go for maximum profitability.

Under the light of such scenario, it becomes evident that, no matter which specific concept of operations stakeholders agree to adopt at a given airport, predictability is going to be the key for success! That is critical for the governance amongst airlines and ground handlers. As time goes by, airlines will be challenged to share more accurate information on their readiness times, with the owners of airside and airspace, at the risk of not counting on essential resources for their operations when they actually need them. Let's see where it all goes, as time goes by. At least, I remain absolutely convinced that collaboration is the way to travel… not the destination!      

I would like to thank Sergio for his insightful views on regulatory and technical aspects of airport collaborative decision making. The biggest challenge will continue to be the improvement in communication between people at frontline and between those responsible for strategic adjustments. These are the places where merging the best of human and technology capabilities can help with disrupting disruptions while waiting for the next leap in industry development.  

What Colour is Your Organisation?

In his fascinating book ‘Reinventing Organizations’ Frederic Laloux says that every time humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness in the past, it has invented a whole new way to structure and run organizations, each time bringing collaboration to a new level. These colour codes represent evolutionary breakthrough in collaboration. Southwest Airlines epitomises the green model. What colour is your organisation?hashtag

Why Do Airlines Burn Money Every Day? What They Can Learn From Formula 1 Racing Teams

If you are an existing or aspiring leader regardless of your hierarchical rank, this is a rare opportunity to understand what happens when airline strategies and plans meet reality on the day of operations. You will be taken on a journey by Daniel Stecher, your fellow leader and influencer, with deep knowledge of the past and present relationships between operations and technology and new opportunities for improvement.

You will get a clear understanding of the role of technology in extending human ability to deal with operational complexity, especially in OCCs where speed, scope, and relevance of information is crucial for delivering the best possible outcome including cost and service quality. Also, it may help you see the role of OCC from a new perspective - as an active participant in providing feedback to planners and strategists, becoming part of the plan-do-check-adjust strategic loop. I hope that this unconventional, spontaneous interview will inspire you to take a more active role in making this evolutionary process possible, and with it the long-term success of your airline.


Interview with Daniel Stecher, VP Airline Operations, IBS Software

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.

​This means that, for example, every time an airline decides to expand its operation to congested airports, increase aircraft utilization by reducing schedule buffers or shorten the turn-around times, it puts lots of additional pressure on operations control centre. This risks an exponential increase in changes to planned schedule, with all of the (unreported) consequences this can have on overall results. ​

As things stand, OCC’s are not adequately equipped to cope with high influx of changes that make their work even more complex, exceeding human capacities to handle them. Outdated technologies restrict the scope and speed of this process making improvements hard, perhaps impossible to achieve.

Most airlines have become too slow to respond and adapt, and this needs to change. And change includes adjustments where the interplay between human abilities to cope with complexity, and benefits offered by new technology are recognized and skilfully managed. How can this be achieved?

In search for answers I couldn’t think of anyone better able to answer this question than Daniel Stecher, a leading-edge operations and technology expert, fresh thinker, and enthusiastic leader who inspires change and is willing to share his insights.Daniel’s all-round knowledge and deep understanding of operations and technology comes from his first-hand experience at a major European airline and at a leading provider of airline software. He gets his messages across in many ways by visiting airlines, speaking at conferences, writing, blogging, tweeting, all this with rare ability to explain complex problems in a way that can be easily understood.

I asked Daniel to explain what it takes to bring together the best of what interactions between people and technology can provide.

I hope you will be inspired by this spontaneous and insightful interview with Daniel.

(JR-Jasenka Rapajic, Astute Aviation; DS-Daniel Stecher, IBS Software)

JR: Flight disruptions continue to grow faster than what airlines can perceive, and have ability to control. Still, they keep expanding even to most disruption-prone areas, unaware of the full consequences of this strategy on operations, cost, and revenue. They expect that, in the end, operations centres will somehow make it all work.

Being at the crossroad between disruptive strategies, disrupted schedules and disrupted passengers, the question is how do people in Operations Control Centre (aka IOC, OCC, SOC, NOC) cope with complexity arising from this situation which is not going to change in a foreseeable future?

DS: There is a nice quote from an industry friend who told me: people working in OCC’s don’t know what they don’t know’. That I think puts in one sentence the main issue and challenge for OCC’s because everything is pretty much reactionary and based on gut feelings and what has been planned based on a picture of future optimized weeks or months ago is suddenly not coming through. It is no longer relevant because the people who built the schedule, and the people who made the roster are unaware of the sources of disruption including technical problems, sick crew members, congestion at airports, and so on. The consequences are that, compared with the original plan, only 70-80 % flights on average operate as scheduled.

The first question is why don’t airlines make more realistic plans? This is because they are planning with forecasting models based on the past, whereas with predictive analytical models they could have a better understanding as to what is happening in operations and end up with fewer disruptions. Also, every year deviation from plans becomes the norm and every new annual plan becomes a fresh start. This is how problems accumulate and remain unnoticed in year on year company reports.

Secondly, more and more people are traveling and are affected by disruptions which have an impact on their personal lives, their business lives, their vacations, and, in the end, costs us all a lot of money. These disruptions also have environmental consequences because there is a lot of unnecessary fuel burnt which together with traffic expansion further increases CO2 emissions.

The question is how long will airlines be able to sustain this situation? I would say they are not working in a rational manner and I foresee some real changes in the industry.

JR: Airlines spend lots of time and effort on optimizing individual departmental functions. This frequently does not benefit the entire organization, and can even cause additional disruptions. The problem is that the dynamic, non-linear nature of disruptions doesn’t fit into the rigid structures of airline information systems and management reports. This leaves strategists and planners deprived of real-life feedback, hence an opportunity to spot and remove bottlenecks in workflow. In these circumstances, optimising disruptions as they happen seems like a daunting task. How does all this look from an OCC perspective?

DS: There is a lot of emphasis on the optimization of the various planning processes but very, very few airlines focus on the optimization of disruption management. Even though industry estimates vary, some figures indicate that cost of disruptions worldwide has reached a $60bn figure. There are some disruption related figures like compensation to passengers experiencing disruptions, especially in Europe. It has been estimated that over the last three to four years trillions would have been owed to passengers if each qualifying passenger had claimed compensation. If airlines had been forced to pay it by law, some of these airlines would have gone bankrupt based on the previous disruptions for which they were responsible.

And yet despite all this, very, very few airlines have changed the way they operate, the way they plan, and the way they attack disruptions. Everything is pretty reactionary, depending on the person who is on shift. When Jo is on shift, the decision making is completely different compared with when Angela is on shift. And the next day, Diana is on shift, so the best decision making is not always visible. This makes it difficult to avoid the effect of disruptions on passengers, aircraft, crew, airports and other stakeholders.

JR: How well are OCC equipped with tools that can support these complex decisions?

DS: You need good technology. The bottleneck for airlines is that they don’t have technology in place which follows the concept of smartphones.  So, we need to bring the concept of smartphones into OCC. Smartphones are highly integrated. You don't have to look for the data. The data is already there. There are plenty of apps which provide you with the relevant data. In the airline business it's the other way around.

When somebody needs the information, they try to find the source of this information using paper-based booklets where something is explained or have to call somebody, or whatever, and that's why things are very slow. A lot of information is not available in real time – which is why decision making is suboptimal - some data are missing some data are out of date.

My little smartphone is a good example of how complexity can be managed. Twelve years ago, while traveling to the US I had four devices: a camera for photo taking, a navigation system to get me from A to B, a cell phone to communicate, and a portable PSP to play some games. And then, if I took a picture and wanted to send it to somebody, I had to download it from the camera to the computer, connecting to it with a cable, and if it was not charged, then that was delayed, and then I couldn't send it via email to somebody. If I wanted to send my location - that was very complicated!

Today, all these things are done automatically. The software is developed in such a way that the device is thinking for the human being. We humans are not capable of grasping more complex problems. We can keep in mind up to seven items at one time. We are not made for multitasking, especially when we are under stress, so a tool such as a smartphone is very helpful because it can manage our entire lives. It allows me to connect with every airline system in the world, I can organize my finances, and it helps me with managing plenty of pictures. I've taken more pictures than I have ever taken in the past. So, it is not two Daniels or three Daniels required to manage the multitude of pictures I'm taking, it's the device which is helping me to manage the complexity and this is what I can see as the future for OCC.  

In a smartphone environment everything is in real time, everything is connected. If I take a picture of this meeting in London, I don't have to call my wife, it's in the family folder because that's how iOS does it. But if I take a picture of a naked person, and maybe don't want that picture to be visible to my wife, that means that I need to understand the consequences of integration. Using This concept is very powerful and will allow airlines to manage higher levels of complexity. 

Read the full interview

The following are links to white papers written by Daniel where you can learn more about topics related to our conversation:

How the lack of technology worsens airline disruptions:

Eye witness account and analysis 

Situational Awareness Technology in Airline Operations

The Flight Shame - How airlines can reduce CO2 emissions by 0.15% now

Airlines burn money every day!

Airline Crews are disconnected from Passengers’ Social Media - here‘s why.


If you are interested to learn more about a new framework for decision making that bridges the gap between strategy and operations, you can find some guidance in my book ​ Beyond Airline Disruptions - Thinking and Managing Anew and webinar Let’s Disrupt Disruptions.

A Bit More Food For Thought About Regulation EC261

Is this what passengers want?

What is wrong with regulation EC261? Who is really responsible for its enforcement? Why is it disliked by both airlines and passengers? How much we can learn from it about how the system works, what doesn’t work, and what to do to about it?

There is something unruly happening with regulation EC261, the EU rule set 15 years ago to ensure that passengers are compensated if their flight is cancelled or significantly delayed. Despite its age-related maturity, it’s ambiguity and lack of clarity made it increasingly disliked amongst passengers and airlines (*1). Also, it keeps resisting growing criticism of airlines, and is not working in line with ICAO core principles on consumer protection. As a result, the side effects of EC261 are getting worse, often hard to understand as shown in the following examples:

*       In the first week of September, Adria Airways had to cancel its evening flight from Ljubljana to Vienna after being informed that police in Vienna will ground the aircraft due to Adria’s refusal to pay 250€ compensation to an Austrian passenger after the passenger won the court case for a flight cancelled back in 2017. The whole story is not revealed but it is hard to believe that any airline would compromise its reputation for 250€ without a good reason.    

*       In January 2016 the Judge at Reading County Court ruled in favour of two passengers in an appeal case awarding them with €600 (£450) each for the five-hour delay of a Monarch flight. The judge ruled that lightning strikes are not one of the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ that excuse airlines from paying flight delay compensation. The Civil Aviation Authority do include lightning strikes in their list of extraordinary circumstances but the Judge said in the ruling, that this list is not legally binding and has been proven wrong in court a number of times.

Do these real-life stories cause you any concern? You can find myriads of them on social media. Don’t they illustrate the absurdity of the mechanics of regulation EC261 where written rules rest peacefully in the official document, trapped in linear understanding of complex non-linear interactions that are happening in real life? 

Identifying true reasons of flight disruptions do not belong to regulatory domain of this kind because of their intrinsic nature – they constantly change, interact, and are too complex to fit into the rigidness and prescriptiveness of institutionalised document. If EC261 is intended to assure passengers that they are looked after from above, while downloading the responsibility for compensating passengers experiencing flight cancellations and long delays to airlines even when they are caused by system issues, then it is not fit for the purpose it is intended to serve.

The damage is much deeper than what can be perceived. The legislation has incited animosity between airlines and passengers, as well as between airlines themselves, and caused confusion even at courts where the same reasons for delays and cancellations are understood and ruled in different ways. It has increased costs on all sides which will ultimately be paid by passengers.

The voices of both airlines and passengers are getting louder, asking for change but without success. This is because airlines didn’t come out with workable, fact-based evidence essential to support their case when presented to authorities - the problems are touched only at surface. And they can’t do that because this kind of information is not readily available – they are cross-functional and cannot be assigned to individual departments

At the very essence, most of the problems associated with flight delays and cancellations are caused by already critical airport and airspace congestion which is a collective, not a sole responsibility of airlines as this regulation suggests. Easing up the congestion problem can only happen by collective action organised by people who understand the functioning of the system from inside out.

To wrap up, EC261 is a by-product of dysfunctional state of the industry driven by legacy paradigms. At the same time, it offers us a unique opportunity to see what is happening in real life, understand how disruptions relate to regulators, airlines, airports and passengers, learn from them, and do something about it.

The breakthrough will happen only when airline leaders decide that they are ready to see operational failures, understand their own relationship with them, and understand others. Without conscious awareness about strategic aspects of disruptions and collective damage caused by their neglect there will be no clarity about what really needs to be improved.

The question is, will airlines get the courage to face reality before another even more restrictive regulation is introduced to ‘protect passenger rights’ and ‘public interests’? Or will the privatised and monopolistic industry find the way to a sustainable solution that works best for airlines and passengers? To get there, there is some work to be done. It starts with understanding operational dysfunctions and their strategic origins for which we need the right combination of new technologies and insights to keep strategy and operations connected and do the constant fine-tuning. Isn’t this more natural than wasting time in proving regulations wrong while losing even the most loyal passengers?

Take this as yet another call to change the way you think and manage the airline business.

After all, none of us wants to keep doing the wrong thing. To do things right, however, we first need to understand where does the ‘wrongness’ come from. As said, there is the work to be done and it is urgent.

Are you a change maker or an aspiring one? Let me know if you are ready to act.


Here is how EC261 looks from passenger perspective: