Getting the best out of your operations control - part 1

"You can’t motivate people, but you can create an environment that encourages them to be motivated." In his article Getting the Best Out of People in the Workplace, Les Landes covers a number of key areas to achieve that goal. What applies to the workplace in general, surely applies to operations control.

This first post about 'getting the best out of your operations control' addresses the operations control processes. Les Landers points out that "if people don’t have clearly defined processes for the tasks that they’re expected to do, they are likely to struggle with how to carry out the tasks." What follows is how a high-level model for an integrated operations control. Such a model should apply for each process being monitored and steered, whether the airport can manage the process directly or not.

Let us take an example of the passenger flow, specifically passenger screening. Flight schedule, resource allocation, capacity information and standard processing times can be used to predict expected passengers and expected waiting times. In the best case, booked passenger numbers are available from the airlines (split by transfer and local passengers). During the day, planned information is automatically and dynamically updated with status changes, such as cancellations, delays, passenger number changes, gate changes, etc. which make the predictions more valuable. Automatically triggered warnings alert coordinators in operations control about potential bottlenecks (e.g. expected waiting times even with all lines open). Pro-active actions can be taken like delaying gate information to passengers and changing the gate. An actual waiting time at a passenger screening, automatically detected or manually reported, will trigger an alert and associated action. Such an action can be, obviously, to open more lines. Another action, maybe not that obvious, would be to first provide a list of flights which are currently being processed at security screening and which maybe become critical to complete boarding in time. Then, passengers of that flight can be directly addressed at the screening point. The analysis and reporting does not only cater for statistics. It should also analyse how well the prediction was, in order to adjust the algorithm. And provide feedback to planning and scheduling.

Now apply the same approach and technology to other processes.

Let's see what will be in part 2 of the series on how to get the best out your operations control. Maybe about Constructive Accountability?

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

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.

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.

Hidden Issues Behind 99.9% Service Level

Your IT Director is surely proud to constantly deliver 99.9 and more percentage of availability of systems and network. Though it is probably the most commonly used metrics, it is not necessarily the best metrics to use. It does not, for instance, tell you anything about the impact of a downtime or outage. What we usually would be presented are great uptime graphs like this one:

What does this tell us really?

Imagine this, due to a network or system issue, check-in is not possible for an hour. The check-in agents will have to fall back to manual check-in. In addition to cost of additional staff, this may result in flight delays. Again, what is your plan to address this? Buy more technology? What is the ROI?

What if you knew the delay cost of the affected flights and could relate this to the responsible IT department? You then could trade an investment off against the cost of downtimes.

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.

Get rid of long airport lines

I like the idea of either measuring queues or tracking passengers throughout the airport to monitor and respond to queues in real time, manage service levels and improve management of the terminals. This is to ensure that passengers have more time to spend in restaurants, bars and shops, as well as improve the overall passenger experience.

Let's take an example. You can check the queues and queuing times at security checkpoints or immigration in real time and allocate extra staff if queues are growing and reducing those working if the numbers of passengers waiting are low.

A few thoughts here. What if the staff at security checkpoints or immigration is not yours to control? Having read my blog you will know that I believe in the power of transparency. How can we make sure that passengers do not queue up in the first place? What about the static and dynamic information you provide to the passengers; they will always have an impact on passenger flows.

My point is, managing queues is (again) not about technology only. It is also about a cunning concept, smooth processes, engaged stakeholders and last but not least performance and responsibility again.

Who should manage the airport operation?

I thought about starting a poll to ask who should be responsible for the airport operation. Suppose at a hub airport, should it be the airport operator or the hub carrier? Irrespective of the fact that a strong hub carrier will insist on being number one at the airport, operational decisions should not only be driven by the hub carrier. There are other airlines with interests which need to be catered, just look at stand allocation, for instance. And, decisions should be made value-based, creating the most value for the entire operation.

Accuracy of delay codes

Some airports call delay codes "lie codes". It is obvious that ground handlers will, in doubt, blame anybody else for delays because they may have service level agreements with their airlines. I have even come across airport where airlines insist on adjusting the off-blocks time so that they do not have to report a bad on-time performance to their headquarter.

How can this be changed i.e. improved? My little plan would include
- Accountability
- Transparency
- Standardization
- Governance
- System Integration

Accountability: Each delay code (with subcode) has an owner or responsible organization and the delay code assignment process is clear and in place (assign, accept, reject, handling of disputes, final call).

Transparency: The assignment and the on-time performance of each organization is transparent to everybody.

Standardization: There is 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: The Punctuality Board, chaired by the Airport's Punctuality Manager, with delegates from handling agents and airlines proposes and tracks action plans on punctuality. They define punctuality targets broken down to each stakeholder.

System Integration: Delay codes and delays are captured or integrated into one system. That system should also allow to automatically track issues of a flight which could have caused the delay in case of disputes.

When boarding starts late

I am sure it happened to you. You are waiting at the gate and nothing happens after the time indicated on your boarding pass has passed by, meaning, boarding has not started yet. You ask yourself, am I at the right gate, will the flight leave on time, should I ask the staff at the gate, does anybody care about this at all?

Even though you might say that it is the Ground Handler's responsibility, contracted by your airline, an Airport Operator should be highly interested in measuring this because it is an important part of the Passenger Experience and step for on-time departures.

The importance of ETD

ETD is the date and time which an aircraft is expected to depart from an airport. It is also called expected time of departure or Estimated Off-Blocks Time (EOBT) in the 'airside world'.

Every flight has a Scheduled Time of Departure (STD), the date and time when an aircraft is planned to depart. All aircraft related processes (loading, catering, pax transport, boarding, push-back, ...) depend on that STD and plan their resources and equipment accordingly. Suppose there is a delay and no ETD is set. All related processes dispatch their resources wrongly. The STD time passes by and the push-back tractor is still waiting.

Who should set an ETD and when? In my opinion it should be the ground handler responsible for the flight. They should set an ETD as soon as they become aware of a potential delay. Which, in fact, could already be when an aircraft is arriving too late.

Obviously you can differentiate between a Staff ETD and a Public ETD to communicate expected delays more frequently to staff.

Resolve reactionary delays

Nearly half of all flight delays in Europe are actually "reactionary" or "knock-on" delays caused by previous late departures or arrivals, according to a new study of Eurocontrol. Unfortunately the study is an analysis and does not, despite some suggestions on adjusting the framework for reporting delays and improving the quality of the delay data captures, provide any means to tackle this issue.

We have come up with an approach to resolve reactionary delays. We found that we can attribute the delay cost to the original causer of the delay. That causer may still be within the airline (e.g. aircraft maintenance) but it is a much better decision tool than just 'reactionary delays'. It is still about responsibility here ... nobody feels responsible for reactionary delays.

Prediction and responsibility

Weather, astrology, champions league final ... a number of areas call for predictions. When it comes to airport operation it is about air traffic demand/capacity and surface demand/capacity with runways, taxiways, ramp areas and parking bays. Same applies for passenger flows with car parking, check-in, security checks, and gates.

We would like computers to forecast operations. But how far should they determine plans and schedules for operations, in fact allocate resources? How much can or should we delegate to the computer? It depends on who is held responsible for the outcome of a decision. In theory, with the decision right you should also delegate the responsibility attribution (blame, praise).

In my observation, users use complex predictive models as an excuse for bad performance i.e. decision making. They will tell you that this and that factor has not been considered in the model. So, give them some prediction which can be easily understood and still make them responsible for their actions.