Thursday, January 3, 2013

The 7 habits of highly effective punctuality management

As soon as an airport or an airline has a punctuality record month, they publish press releases, they celebrate. But how sustainable is such a short-time success? If you check their performance from then on, you may find them falling back to the levels before.


Can on-time performance be actively managed? If you think it can't be managed or can only be resolved by others, the following 7 habits may present a different perspective. If you already manage punctuality, you can assess where you are in your quest.

Habit Characteristics
Accountability
  • There is a sufficient number of delay codes to differentiate delay causer
  • Each delay code (with sub-code) has an owner or responsible organization
  • The delay code assignment process is clear and in place (assign, accept, reject, handling of disputes, final call).
  • Secondary delays are allocated to the original causer
  • Delay cost is calculated and assigned to the causer
Transparency
  • Delay code assignment and on-time performance of every organization is transparent to everybody.
  • Data quality is high
  • Share performance with other airports
Standardization
  • Only one definition of delay codes and delays across the airport based on IATA standard, incorporated in the Airport Handling Manual (AHM)
  • Any non-conformance e.g. different reporting from an airline to its head office will be brought forward to the Governance Forum
Governance and Benchmarking
  • Multi-stakeholder Airport Operations Control Center to manage the daily operational on-time performance and escalations
  • Has a Punctuality Manager
  • Punctuality Board, chaired by the Airport's Punctuality Manager, with delegates from handling agents and airlines proposes and tracks actions
  • Punctuality targets are defined and broken down to each stakeholder
  • Maybe an award/penalty pool for on-time performance
  • Benchmark against other airports
System Integration
  • Delay codes and delays are captured or integrated into one 'global' system.
  • That system should also allow to automatically track issues of a flight which could have caused the delay in case of disputes.
Communication/PR
  • Constant, effective communication among all stakeholders
  • Maybe an award for the best punctuality improvement program
Empowerment
  • Agree on challenging yet achievable goals but leave it up to the partners to implement sustainable improvement
  • Provide sufficient resources for punctuality management and improvement programs