Beyond Airline Disruptions - A Leadership Guide to Reality

Today, AI offers extraordinary opportunities to process information, reveal relationships and support decision-making.

But technology alone cannot determine which problems matter most to an individual airline, or fully understand the human and organisational circumstances behind them.

That understanding must come from connecting operational data, experiential knowledge and strategic thinking.

This is the foundation of my work on Systemic Reality Check (described as Plan–Do–Check–Improve in my book), a practical approach that helps organisations recognise their most consequential problems, understand their wider implications and develop coordinated responses.

It is not another performance measurement exercise.

It is a way of learning from reality and turning that learning into better decisions.

An invitation to explore what is possible

My book laid the foundations for this approach long before today's AI capabilities became available.

What excites me now is the possibility of bringing together systemic knowledge, human experience and intelligent technology to address problems that have persisted for decades.

And the best way to begin may be surprisingly simple.

Choose one critical, recurring problem within an airline. Bring together the people who understand its different dimensions. Explore its causes and consequences across organisational boundaries. Then identify what can be done differently.

That is where practical learning begins.

I would welcome conversations with airline leaders and technology companies interested in exploring this approach through real operational and strategic challenges.

Not to introduce another universal solution, but to discover what works for each airline:

What is 

What matters

What is possible

The next breakthrough in airline technology may not come from what technology can do, but from what airlines can finally learn to understand about themselves. All it needs is overcoming the fear of the unknown.

Here is the link to my book on Amazon, written before the age of AI, but with a message that matters more than ever: learning to think, lead and manage differently, while embracing the possibilities of human-centred technology. 

Why do AI agents fail so often?

If agents have autonomy, why do they still fail so often in real life?

Here, Sandeep Swadia shares a simple, three-step technique to cut through the AI noise:

I was working with a board and leadership team of large consumer company. And when I asked what was stopping them from using AI to drive customer acquisition, for example, the CMO responded: We have all the data, but we still need to build a clean process so that we can turn that into something useful.

When I asked where the real challenge was, she said:

We need the right people in the seats first.

That's the story everywhere. Most AI problems are human problems in disguise. An agent is just a mirror. It reflects the quality of your thinking back at you. Usually, the agent fails because the human failed. So, before you automate anything run a      GPS check: 

• Goal
• Proof
• Steps 

Unless you can do those three things very well, your agent is not going to make any difference.

Watch the video

Let's Talk Crewing, Its True Nature That Interacts With The Rest Of The Airline

Let’s talk crewing, one of the most complex and consequential parts of airline operations and its wider impact. 

Together with fuel and maintenance it accounts for a major share of airline operating costs, and the decisions made in each area are deeply interconnected.

Technology has made crew planning increasingly sophisticated, helping airlines manage enormous numbers of rules, constraints and competing objectives. But optimisation within one area cannot, on its own, reveal the full consequences of the decisions being made.

A crew plan that looks efficient on paper may become expensive when exposed to operational reality. Tight connections, limited reserves, schedule changes, aircraft swaps, maintenance events and airport disruption can quickly turn planned efficiency into delay, cancellation, passenger disruption and lost revenue.

At the veey core, the problem is not necessarily the crew plan, nor the technology supporting it. It is our ability to understand what happens when crew related decisions interact with the rest of the airline.

This is an issue I have explored for many years, the practice that I shared in my talks, book, and articles: the real cost of disruption rarely sits where the disruption is recorded.

Understanding these relationships and feeding what actually happens back into planning is becoming increasingly important as airlines depend more heavily on optimisation, automation and AI. The process is created for individual airline needs. 

This is where a Systemic Reality Check can add another dimension: connecting technology with operational experience and the economic reality of the airline as a whole - the practice that doesn't take long to implement with the right guidance. It assumes that airlines and technology experts work together as long as necessary to make it work.

It is meant to serve leaders dedicated to creation of better future.

Here is the link to my related article Systemic Reality Check: A Practical Guide To Connected Decision Making https://lnkd.in/er5YJUkW

Interested in a wider practical context? Visit astuteaviation.com

How predictable is the future of flying?

How are we doing with predictions these days? 😃 

Making Peace With Flight Disruptions 2

In 2014, I wrote an article about Southwest Airlines and Herb Kelleher titled Making Peace with Flight Disruptions.

It wasn't really about what Southwest did differently. It was about something much harder to copy: the leadership conditions that made people behave differently.

Competitors can copy processes, procedures, technology and even business models. What they cannot easily copy is a tone - a culture built over time on trust, cooperation and the freedom of people to do the right thing when things go wrong, and to do it in synchrony. These days it is more important than ever.

Here is the original text of the article:

Yes, flight disruptions are an inevitable, often unpleasant part of air travel and we are going to see more of them in future. But that doesn't mean that they always have to be associated with feelings of helplessness and resentment on passengers’ side. Even the worst disruptions could be made tolerable if handled by people who care, who tirelessly work to soften these unpleasant experiences.

This is something that cannot be done by orders or written procedures created in atmosphere of fear. It can be achieved by nourishing values of trust and cooperation shaped by conditions inside the organisation where the leader sets the tone – like in the case of Southwest Airlines where quality is ingrained in daily activities with direct involvement of their leader and his management team.

In his powerful TED talk 'Why good leaders make you feel safe', Simon Sinek, a renowned leadership expert describes the value of culture where people don't fear their leaders.

'I was flying on a trip, and I was a witness to an incident where a passenger attempted to board before his number was called. And I watched the gate agent treating this man like he had broken the law - like a criminal. Shee was yelled at this passenger for attempting to board too soon. 

So I said something. I said, "Why do you treat us like cattle? Why can't you treat us like human beings?" 

And this is exactly what she said to me: 

"Sir, if I don't follow the rules, I could get in trouble or lose my job." 

All she was telling me is that she doesn't feel safe. All she was telling me is that she doesn't trust her leaders. 

The reason we like flying Southwest Airlines is not because they necessarily hire better people. It's because they don't fear their leaders. 

You see, if the conditions are wrong, we are forced to expend our own time and energy to protect ourselves from each other, and that inherently weakens the organization. When we feel safe inside the organization, we will naturally combine our talents and our strengths and work tirelessly to face the dangers outside and seize the opportunities.' 

Airlines Are Designed Like a Symphony But They Have to Survive Like Jazz

Being deeply immersed in the orchestration of airlines, particularly in the relationship between strategy and operations, I cannot help thinking how much these experiences and thoughts resonate with connection between symhonies and jazz music.

Whenever I see and listen to a symphonic orchestra, I am amazed by the sound of the music. So many different instruments, played beautifully by musicians, all in sync. And the whole is masterfully orchestrated by the conductor, touching the feelings of those listening.

Then my thoughts often slip to the artistry of jazz musicians — full of improvisation, with no conductor, yet self-synchronising in the moment.

The airline is designed like a symphony, but it has to survive like jazz.

Symphony gives structure. Jazz gives adaptability.

Doesn't that describe the relationship between strategy and operations?

Jazz isn't random improvisation. Great jazz musicians have extraordinary individual expertise, but that alone isn't enough. They are constantly:

• listening to one another,

• sensing changes,

• anticipating where the music is going,

• responding without losing the whole,

• and creating something collectively that no individual musician could have predetermined.

Isn't that remarkably close to what effective airline operations require?

The challenge and the opportunity is to combine the two.

Airlines need the structure and shared direction of the symphony, while developing the collective awareness and adaptability of jazz.

This is where Systemic Reality Check, which emerged from my diverse experiences across the airline system, can serve as a practical guide towards systemic intelligence.

Systemic intelligence is the ability to understand, navigate and act within complex, interconnected systems. It brings together systems thinking, awareness of feedback and deep pattern recognition, helping us address root causes rather than repeatedly responding to symptoms.

Systemic Reality Check makes this practical by bringing people, operational reality and organisational knowledge together — continuously asking:

What is?
What matters?
What is possible?

It is simple to start. What it ultimately depends on is an airline's readiness to look openly at its own reality and commit to building a better present and future for air travel.

And that requires something no system or technology can provide on its own: openness to fresh thinking and art of adaptability to ever changing circumstances.

Setting the ground for #groundedAI #systemicintelligence

Air Travel and Telecoms Revisited: Different Disruptions, Same Management Problem - In Conversation with Martin Geddes

About ten years ago, I published my interview with Martin Geddes, a fresh thinker in technology with a personal connection to the airline industry. The interview was part of my preparation for the second edition of my book, Beyond Airline Disruptions – Thinking and Managing Anew.

It is fascinating to see how deeply Martin’s responses still resonate with the open questions I raised about industry issues that remain unresolved today.

The interview is full of unconventional ideas that invite deeper thinking about what needs to change and what we can do differently to make air travel a better experience.

Perhaps today’s emerging AI can help us break that cycle, but only if it strengthens our systemic knowledge and skills rather than simply automating the thinking and practices that kept us there.

Rereading the interview helped me recognise some of the roots that contributed to the development of the Systemic Reality Check, now consdered as an integral part of Systems Intelligence.

Here is the link to my conversation with Martin Geddes

Thinkers360 recognition

Glad to see my blog article ‘Breaking Through Airline Compensation Denials’ listed as one of the year’s Most Popular Articles by Thinkers360 Thought Leaders (1H’26). 

It carries an important message for passengers: they need to be more inventive in challenging the rigid interpretations of passenger compensation rules that allow biased interpretation by airlines.

The post            The music    

The issues with AI moving too quickly

As Bill Gates said,  ”AI is moving too quickly to be treated as a future problem. We need urgent, coordinated action now to make sure the benefits of this technology reach as many people as possible while reducing the disruptions along the way.”

In reality, everybody is talking about generic AI solutions, not those tailored to the realities of organisations where work and value are created every day. 

To break away from this practice detached from reality, effective AI requires people with deep experiential systems knowledge, an understanding of an organisation's economic and core values, and insight into how it fits within the wider system.

This leads to the need for continuous reality checks, viewing each organisation as part of a larger interconnected system. 

Only then can augmented, human-centred technology operate in context, where better decisions and lasting value are created.

The Pike Syndrome Revisited

Our intelligence is shaped by the boundaries we have learned to live within. Formed through our experiences, beliefs, and habits, these boundaries can sometimes obscure our vision of reality and even  become harmful. This state was named the Pike Syndrome after the results of the following experiment carried out by Dr Mobius.

In 1873 a German zoologist Dr Karl Mobius conducted a famous experiment with a pike – an aggressive fish predator. Dr Mobius put a glass divider in the middle of a tank. On one side he dropped small prey fish, and put a pike into another. The pike started to charge the minnows. It charged over and over, and each time it would hit hard into the glass wall. It persisted even when impact was so strong that it would float upside down for some time before recovering and finally gave up after three months. After six months the glass wall was removed and the pike roamed freely among the minnows, peacefully sharing the tank. The pike survived by eating the food given by Dr Mobius. Other researchers have repeated Mobius’s experiment and results were the same. Some have actually allowed the pike to starve to death while minnows swam safely around. 

                   

To free ourselves from the Pike Syndrome we need to become aware of and question routines that no longer serve us before they put us in serious trouble. The same applies to organisations when their core business values are being unknowingly eroded by actions driven by inherited, ineffective habits and practices. 

It's time for a reality check.

***

The Pike Syndrome was first published ten years ago and has since become one of my most viewed posts. To me, this signals something important: people, leaders, and organisations can silently become trapped by habits long after reality has changed.

The question is no longer only whether we can recognise these invisible barriers, but how quickly humanised AI, guided by context, values, and human judgement, can help us break through them.