Does EUROCONTROL A-CDM improve departure punctuality?

For those who prefer executive summaries, just scroll down.

Don't get me wrong. I am a full supporter of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) whether it is driven by EUROCONTROL, FAA, SESAR, an airport operator, a local ATC, or even a software vendor. However, CDM, as I understand it, goes beyond data exchange. It is the participation of the airport community when it comes to decisions of the airport about the development of future infrastructure and in daily operation.

According to publicly available information improvements by ECTRL A-CDM include reduced taxi times, fuel savings, better slot adherence, less late gate changes, less network delays, and higher arrival and departure punctuality. The departure punctuality might be the most important element in this list for an airport and its stakeholders. Why? Because airports, airlines and service providers need to allocate reserve capacities for strategic (already planned buffers) and tactical (operational day) delays.

In my recent post about airport punctuality myths I mentioned that I conducted some research about the effect of ECTRL A-CDM on departure punctuality. There were two problems with this. First, as already pointed out in the other post, departure punctuality measured in percent is an imperfect metric. And I am still going to use that impudently. Secondly, there is not much data publicly available.

For the following analysis I used data from the Association of European Airlines (AEA) who themselves receive data from airlines and Central Office of Delay Analysis (CODA). Unfortunately, the data only covers AEA airlines and it does not include passenger figures. But for the sake of this analysis I assume that AEA airlines traffic is the most critical (in terms of turnaround process for instance).

What did I analyze? I investigated all A-CDM Airports according to the DPI implementation status and split them in two categories: (1) Fully compliant (DPI operational) and  (2) Locally implemented. I was expecting the following effect from an A-CDM implementation: (a) sustainable improvement of punctuality after implementation, (b) solid punctuality during adverse conditions (i.e. last winter), (c) continuous improvement, i.e. actual year at least as good as last year with more traffic or better than last year with less traffic and (d) a positive punctuality trend in the last 12 months.

Executive summary:

The following table lists the investigated airports and the findings. Example charts of individual airports can be found below.

In a nutshell:

• Being an 'A-CDM' airport does not mean that your departure punctuality improves sustainably.
• Even though the number of flights decreased at most European airports, punctuality has not improved.
• Most A-CDM airports spiral downwards in adverse conditions, i.e. winter operations.

And one more thing which I noted during the analysis:

• It is a crying shame that we work in an industry which publishes departure times and at most European airports only about every second flight actually departs on time.

Here are some example charts of the investigated airports. If you would like more of them, just let me know - jweder (at) neuropie.com.

 

Three Myths About Airport Punctuality

While Ryanair is boasting to be the most punctual European airline, Oman Air celebrates one day of 100% on-time performance on April 26 this year. Unfortunately there is no public data that proves any of these claims.

What about airports? In April 2011 London Heathrow published a record 94% departure punctuality.  Now they are Britain's worst airport according to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

I think it's time to wade through some of the myths and confusion surrounding airport punctuality.

1. Punctuality is an internationally standardized metric.

Punctuality targets are usually defined in terms of 15-minute punctuality, i.e. a flight is counted as departing on-time if the plane goes off-blocks within 15 minutes of the scheduled time of  departure. But what is "15 minutes"? Is it more than 14'59" or more than 15' or even more than 15'59"? Now some airports and airlines may disagree on this but even ACI, IATA and AEA don't. If they do, then it will probably be 15'59", stealing another minute from the passenger, airline and airport capacity just to look better.

And, have you compared off-blocks times of airport and airline? Some airports check and validate differences within +/- 1 minute, most don't. Result: airport and airline report different punctuality figures.

2. Punctuality is a great metric to benchmark.

In previous posts I was highlighting some flaws of punctuality as a metric.

• Cancellations of delayed flights improve punctuality
• Indicator ignores size of aircraft and number of passengers affected
• No assessment about the financial loss possible
• Mix of performance which can be influenced with exogenous factors
• Difficult to determine improvement measures

Why is it still used, even as internal target? Because it is easy to understand and when it is bad, it can be easily attributed to exogenous factors.

3. Eurocontrol A-CDM improves airport punctuality.

There is no evidence that ECTRL A-CDM improves punctuality. Yes, it might reduce taxi times but with a negative effect on departure punctuality. With the lack of evidence I did some research myself and present the findings in my next post.

I know it is easy to lament. What do I have to offer instead? An approach and metrics to actually address the issue together with other stakeholders. Because the airport can have that 360° view and not just the silo view by every other stakeholder.

Interesting interview

Pedro Garcia who writes a blog (http://www.aeriaa.com/) has asked me a number of interesting questions. Please see the answers in his latest post: http://www.aeriaa.com/2013/04/07/airtalk-with-jurgen-weder-neuropies-ceo/

One year after go-live of their Airport Management Center, Moscow Sheremetyevo is the best ACI ASQ airport in Europe. Coincidence?

Lasting success is not a result of coincidence. It's the result of focused hard work.

When Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport established their Airport Management Center by the end of 2011 they endeavoured to achieve these goals:

• To consolidate the coordination, monitoring and control of the different airport-wide spread operations control centres
• To effectively manage the airport across organisations
• To significantly shorten reaction times on irregularities
• To improve the capacity and act with standard operating procedures at hand to provide excellent customer service from end-to-end

We are very glad to have been part of the project with our technology and business expertise.

One year after their go-live, ACI names Sheremetyevo the best European airport in service quality. The Airport Service Quality (ASQ) is one of the most prestigious research programs on Airport Service Quality involving 250 airports in 50 countries.

Is this coincidence? Maybe they collaborate better than before, internally and externally. Maybe they act more like a business and more performance oriented. Maybe there are less friction-losses between processes and organisations.

In the end, what counts, are the results. And this award is outstanding because it comes from the end-customer, the passenger.

Is your Airport Duty Manager a leader?

More and more I become aware of the importance of the Airport Duty Managers, in particular regarding Collaborative Decision Making (CDM). 

As the designated moderator of the CDM process he/she must be perceived and accepted by his peers as the informal leader. To achieve this status, however, behavior and especially communication of the Duty Manager are essential, as demeanor, appearance and communication triggers and determines human interaction. This interaction in turn is the key for collaboration. In addition to distinct management and leadership abilities, Duty Managers should have excellent communication skills.

I hope that none of the following issues do apply to your Airport Duty Manager(s):

• Work almost exclusively re-actively. They rarely manage (act proactively) and are therefore not perceived as leader.
• Do not prepare sufficiently for possible irregularity scenarios but leave managing (preparation for possible scenarios) to the “responsible functions” without being part of it.
• Lack additional area of responsibility they have to manage (improvements)
• Do not communicate on a structured, regular basis with their partners inside and outside of the organization.
• Are not perceived as leaders or moderators but as mere supervisors controlling the partners.
• Neither possess the necessary skills nor the authority to lead a group of people not subordinated to them.

Airport governance model to establish leading position of airport company

How is your dialogue with your airport partners, in particular your hub carrier (or biggest carriers)?

In order to achieve and maintain a leading position it is important for the airport company to institutionalize contacts with partners on all management levels. Despite data sharing and the processes around it, a successful Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) model should also address performance management and a solid governance model.

Institutionalized meetings do not only ensure the dialogue between the airport and their partners but also between the partners. This dialogue has to be regular and structured. Separate, additional meetings with the hub carrier (or major carriers) have to be added to emphasize their importance and to allow the discussion of matters bilaterally.

Policies on the different subjects have to be formulated which will serve as guidelines in the CDM meetings. Deviations from these policies have to be authorized by top management. Every meeting between airport  with partners requires an internal preparatory meeting where every agenda point is discussed and possible compromises are reviewed.

This may all sound too logical and straightforward to you but rest assured, there are not many airports out there practicing these fundamentals.

Collaboration and performance at South African airports

Last week I was in South Africa visiting the Airport Management Centres at the airports Johannesburg and Cape Town. It has been more than two years since my last visit and I was wondering what their maturity level would be. It was simply great to see them continuously working on improving airport performance and collaboration. Just highlighting two areas: stakeholders and performance.

Stakeholders: They have representatives from the airport, from the major airlines, from all three ground handlers, ATC and recently a fueling company (because of the current fuel issues in South Africa). Sure, there are still some issues with cooperation but can you imagine that a ground handler representative would pick up the telephone of his competitor while he is away? These things happen there.

Performance: Needless to say that they have improved their on-time performance and many other areas. They even publish the airline's performance on the Internet. With the airline's consent. And every morning they have a briefing with the airlines where each airline sets their punctuality target for the day (so does the airport). Every hour they check where they are.

I am sure we will hear many more success stories about ACSA. Particularly after ACSA has won a bid for the expansion, maintenance and operation of Guarulhos, Brazil's busiest airport, located at a suburb of the city of São Paulo.

Empower your Airport Duty Managers

Most often, operational problems are not caused by the airport infrastructure, but lie in the organization. You may find situations where daily operation is focused on airside and on troubleshooting only. Processes are hardly perceived as such and infrastructure and maintenance deficiences are considered to be issues of specialized services. Work is primarily reactive. Airport Duty Managers wait until a problem is reported and then try to resolve it or refer the caller to another department (maintenance & engineering, IT, cleaning, etc.). They do not feel responsible. The obvious reaction of the affected is to call senior airport executives instead to make things happen.

How can we empower our staff, intensify the dialogue with the airport partners and in particular implement a process focus?

1. Assign responsibility for each core process to an Airport Duty Manager which covers infrastructure and quality of that process.
2. Make sure that process weaknesses and infrastructure issues are continuously addressed in a structured manner.
3. Define, implement and monitor service levels with internal and external partners.
4. Discuss and implement contingency plans together with the partners.
5. Establish a dialogue with partners on each management level with a discussion about quality and performance.
6. Make partners aware of the issues and how you address them.

 And we may achieve

• Better cooperation with partners.
• Mutual understanding about each other's business and its issues.
• Partners become more aware of what the airport actually delivers, day by day.
• Airport users percieve the improvements in quality and performance and the image will improve.
• More airlines are attracted.

10 characteristics of Airport CDM culture

In their implementation manual Eurocontrol defines the requirements for an 'Airport CDM culture':

• Agreed relevant data should be shared between all partners involved
  at the right time.
• Data shared should be of sufficient quality to facilitate improved traffic
  predictability and planning capabilities for all partners involved.
• Decisions should be made by the partner best placed to make them.
• Decisions made should be shared with all other partners.

This sounds good, in theory. But how do we know? Here are 10 characteristics on how you can evaluate whether you have a CDM culture or not:

1. Complete openness (well, I understand if you want to keep your financial data privately, but airlines: what is the problem with sharing your pax figures?)
2. Admit your mistakes and errors (airport, please lead by example)
3. No finger pointing
4. Common and shared database (e.g. AODB as a central hub for flight information)
5. Mixed working groups and task forces, so everybody participates in finding a solution
6. Goodwill of all partners to find solutions
7. Joint design of measures for improvement
8. Experimental approach / test runs (do not underestimate the power of trials!)
9. Free discussion of findings (the goal is always the same: we want to improve)
10. Unbureaucratic implementation of measures

How can CDM help to get off the list of the 10 of the world's most hated airports?

Some of the international airports' reputation has been shaken with a world-leading news website ranking them as the most hated airports in the world. CNNGO.com published a report this week titled “10 of the world’s most hated airports”.

According to the journalist the most hated airports in the world are not the worst airports in the world. However, "the worst part may be this airport’s aura of indifference to it all."

Shouldn't Airport CDM also deal with passenger experience? Or, do we just hope that by exchanging information between stakeholders the performance and they way we deal with disruptions will improve automatically?

CDM lesson from the movie 'Men in Black 2'

We all agree on the expected benefits from Collaborative Decision Making (CDM), but not necessarily about what it really means and how to implement it. What I like about it is that people start thinking out of (their) box. CDM illustrates the benefits from avoiding silo thinking and silo decision making. The silos that still exist at many airports.

Rembember the movie 'Men in Black 2'? There is a race of minuscule extraterrestrials inside a storage locker at Grand Central Station, the locker encasing their whole world. At the end of the film, there is even a much larger locker in an enormous alien version of Grand Central Terminal which seems to contain the human world. What about the lockers at the airport?

Airport retailers part of Airport CDM?

In a recent meeting I was told that a retailer had approached the airport operator to become part of Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM). They found this rather strange and wanted to find out more.

The retailer had done some research on the passengers waiting in the gate area. They discovered that passengers waiting for the boarding of their delayed flight would not give up their seat - even though they might be hungry or thirsty. The retailer would take this opportunity and approach those passengers to take their orders. In order to be ready for those situations the retailer would like to have early information about delays.

What a great example of opportunities created by information sharing! However, this will require reliable and accurate information about an expected delay and most probably the retailer will not be happy by just providing a FIDS screen to monitor himself all the time.

Just another thought. Suppose that the delay is rather long? Why not changing the gate to keep passengers moving through the restaurants and shops?

There is no such thing as 'Collaborative Decision Making'

Group Decision Making or Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is about bringing people together to solve problems with the idea that they are more effective than individuals. But how are collaborative decisions actually made? By vote? By secret ballot?

When was the last time we actually made a 'collaborative decision'? Sure, we may have listened to arguments, we may have taken every possible information into account, we may have thought about all possible impacts of a decision. But in the end, for what is considered as my responsibilty and accountability, the decision will be mine. There is no such thing as 'Collaborative Decision Making'. There is information sharing, collaboration, decision making and performance.

Who is afraid of EC Regulation 691/2010?

The EUROCONTROL Performance Review Commission (PRC) has been analyzing the performance of the European Air Traffic Management System since 1998. Initially, the focus was on en-route ATM performance. Some indicators from this framework were selected in 2010 for regular monitoring of operational airport ANS operational performance. Three of the flight efficiency indicators have been adopted as airport capacity indicators for Reference Period 1 (2012-2014) in the SES II performance scheme:

• Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) Arrival Delay
• Taxi-Out Additional Time
• Arrival Sequencing and Metering Area (ASMA) Additional Time
  

So this is all about ANS and EUROCONTROL.Why, despite delivering data to EUROCONTROL, should an Airport Operator bother about it? Well, it may fall back on them.

Let us take the Taxi-Out Additional Time as an example. The indicator measures the delta between the Actual Off-Block Time (AOBT) and the Actual Take-Off Time (ATOT). Now if you us airline data, they may report very long taxi times. Longer times than the Airport Operator. Why? Firstly, they may measure the AOBT differently because they use a different source than the airport, for instance ACARS. Secondly, since stations are evaluated against outbound delays, they will try to 'optimize' the AOBT to remain within the 15 minutes IATA threshold and report accordingly to their headquarters. You know what I mean.

Now here comes the problem. Whoever will get the blame (and potentially penalties) about long taxi times will have to demonstrate that it was not them causing it. As an Airport Operator, would you like to engage with the parties about this sort of questions when the performance regime has been implemented and the results have been published? Maybe the Airport Operator will already want to engage in the process to make sure that  questions about data quality, measuring standards, including reasons and impact of delays, is being addressed now.

The problems with early flight arrival

My flight recently arrived early at an airport which completely surprised the place with no-one around to operate the air-bridge.

Does Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) address this problem? I would expect the ground handler to know what the estimated arrival time (ETA) of my flight will be. And, they should be ready when it does. With or without CDM.

Useless application of video walls

There is an increase in the application of large screen presentations of process information in airport operations control rooms. In addition to the standard screens on the operators' station, the control rooms are equipped with one or more video walls or large sized screens, displaying a summary of the process being supervised.

Often these overview displays look impressive and sophisticated. They surely contribute to a high tech appearance of the control room. However, further consideration may reveal that an overview display is a costly, often quite useless addition to the standard desktop work stations. See the following example where the center video wall continuously shows a Windows error message.

To be fair, there are a few applications of video walls in airport operation control centers, like to provide a common situational awareness to both controllers and visiting public or to highlight an area to focus on an issue for a specific group. One of the key success factors will be the layout design and the information design on the video wall, both derived from what the control center is aimed at achieving.

The real potential of Airport Collaborative Decision Making

The current scope of Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) is focused on Air Traffic Management (ATM) problems, i.e. the turnaround process and departure sequencing process. In the words of a CDM project manager: "I do not care if a flight is delayed for one hour, as long as I have a predictable and accurate departure sequence."

This is limiting the full exploitation of the CDM philosophy.

To fully unleash the potential we should include ALL processes at the airport which include aircraft, passenger, baggage and cargo. Furthermore, CDM is not about information sharing only but also about communication and objective critique. Before making a decision in a silo, for instance a short term change of baggage belt, that functional area should consult immigration and the ground handler. And, if things go wrong in a process consistently (based on facts), we should work together on an action plan to improve.

Because, in the end, isn't CDM about excellence in the way we operate and perform, together and as individual stakeholders?

How to fix airport delays

Airport operators sometimes tell me that because of the interconnected structure of air travel, any real solution to resolve delays needs to be system-wide. What they mean is that government and airlines need to come up with long-term plans and actions to increase capacity and remove congestion. The industry legitimately applauds NextGen, A-CDM, and other national/international airspace programs.

What can and will airport operators do now to improve the situation? They will certainly act as soon as they are being fined over delays. For instance, Dublin airport  has been fined for delays to passengers passing through security and consumer dissatisfaction. Yet, this a fine for delays processing passengers through the terminals but not for flight delays. In fact, flights can still be delayed without queues.

Just like tackling any other problem, let's first start to believe we can resolve it. Maybe the problem requires innovation to surmount. Maybe we need first to understand the impact of the problem which is, for instance, the cost of delay rather than on-time performance in percent. And, maybe we can use that data to convince our partners in joining improvement programs and recognize that the airport itself is a system which can resolve issues.

Measurable benefits of airport CDM

I came across a discussion in LinkedIn about issues you might face when implementing airport collaborative decision making (CDM). One of the issues mentioned was: "Airport stakeholders are not always fully aware of the costs and benefits that CDM brings. These benefits are hard to be proven at airports which operate below their maximum capacity levels."

I am convinced the benefits can be proven, even if airside (apron, taxi, runway, airspace) is not a bottleneck to an airport.

Firstly, it depends on what the objectives of CDM are and whether they are tangible. A target which says that TOBT and EOBT should be more accurate and reliable does not, in my opinion, add value to the operation but to the ANSP. Secondly, you will have operational peaks with capacity issues and which must be managed well, because that is where most value is added (or destroyed). Thirdly, there are metrics available which measure the benefit of less delays and more efficient processes for every stakeholder. How open is the industry and governmental organizations ready to adopt best practice?