Hurricane Helene as well as a brief IT failure at Alaska Airlines are the latest disruptions that have caused flights to be delayed and sometimes grounded. According to reports, disruptions cost the industry $60 billion per year. This is a significant amount for an industry with thin margins. And while airlines say passenger communication and greater personalization are challenges, there are technologies and processes leaders believe would help them better navigate disruptions.
Asking airline executives to list their top wishes for managing these events will always result in a long list. In terms of technology, airlines are looking for self-service apps and artificial intelligence-driven decision support to help them achieve the best results. They would also prefer disruption to be given more importance within their respective carriers. Executives would also like to see a more coordinated approach to the problem involving airports, airlines and other stakeholders.
The wants and needs were discussed at the Grounded in Iceland event, which was hosted by Plan3 earlier this month. There, Evert Gramsbergen, head of passenger and operations control at Transavia, said he would like to see disruption management “become more central” in airline operations with higher budget allocated to help solve it.
He believes that airline board members and leaders need to give this issue more importance to begin with.
“Disruption is what gets in the newspapers. That’s where we make a difference,” said he.
Yvonne DeSilva is the director of operations control for Aer Lingus. She believes that mobile apps and decision support are both important, but also cohesive thinking.
“I also want, that when the decision is made, it feeds out to our handling agents, our boarding agents and anyone that needs to know about the disruption… I also think we need to join our thinking as an industry because it’s much bigger than airlines. We can put in place all these fancy systems, but if there isn’t a coordinated approach at the airport, etc., they won’t work.
Reykjavik University conducted research that was shared at the Grounded in Iceland Event. The findings revealed that passengers wanted to be treated as individuals and offered options, including self-service, when something went wrong.
The power of sorry
Valdimar Sigurðsson, a professor at the university’s Centre for Research in Marketing & Consumer Psychology, said that even intangible actions such as an apology or explanation that don’t cost an airline much but make a difference to passengers, as well as tangible actions.
His advice was to focus on low-hanging fruits, “the things which don’t cost much but create a great deal of value”, and can be implemented even if legacy systems or slim margins are present.
The university’s research revealed that 72% passengers prefer to get an apology or an explanation in the event of a mistake. While 15% of passengers prefer to receive their information from airport staff and boards, 85% would rather have mobile updates every 30 minute and the option to assist themselves via a smartphone.
He said that the increase in flight disruptions is not only due to an increasing number of passengers, but also weather related events. He said airlines are also held more accountable. He cited the recent United States Department of Transport laws compensating passengers in case of delays and cancellations.
Sigurðsson said the whole area of passenger disruption and recovery is “crazy under-developed” with research from Accenture revealing that only half of travel companies have developed a robust disruption management system and only 37% offer mature self-service data and insight tools.
Some of the airline’s wishes to close the gap have already been implemented or are in the pipeline, depending on where the carriers are in their disruption management journey. Others require more work and thought.
Brighter future is on the horizon
There is still optimism. Simon Dempsey is the chief commercial officer at Plan3. He said that although passenger disruption management hasn’t changed much in decades, the industry is currently in a “perfect storm” of tools, processes, and mindsets to transform the outcome.
Gramsbergen backed the view, saying Transavia was developing a similar toolset. However, the airline still needs to invest in skillset.
“We must train people to work in a new way.”
We haven’t spent enough on training people to think differently. He also touched on having the three elements, tooling, processes, and mindset, in place, because “if you have only one, it will not work, they must be running in tandem.”
Legacy systems can often impede progress. Bart De Groote is the head of ground operations at Brussels Airlines. He said that legacy systems can hinder progress and only solve “one tiny bit at a time.”
DeSilva stated that airlines are not limited by their systems. They can work towards becoming a “human airline”, alongside processes. Aer Lingus is a good example of this.
“You can alter your DNA so that you have a toolkit of five tools you can use, regardless of the system. No matter if it’s snowstorm, volcanic explosion or a strike by pilots, there are five things that we can do. We can cancel the event, we delay it, we hire in etc. If you can get your staff to adopt this mindset, your systems are not necessarily limited.”
De Groote says that Brussels Airlines, during its transformation, has changed the way disruption is described to favor passenger recovery. This was a “mindset shift” according to De Groote.
He also spoke of the need to digitalize “mandatory services, mostly in the hotels and ground transportation sections,” along with the need to have access to all data in one place.
De Groote stated that “my data is scattered across 20 different systems.” “We have to do some landscaping in order to really have a solid structure on which to build for AI and decision-making.”
The airlines stressed that it is important to have protocols in place for when disruptions occur, and to continue to learn from them. Gramsbergen said that evaluation is a key component in the aftermath of major disruptions, especially as incidents are becoming more frequent.
DeSilva says that disruptions are now a standard for Aer Lingus: “You need to schedule a disruption session every week for even the smallest disruptions like a single flight. A standard meeting everyone must attend so that you can learn.”
