Punctuality is a dominant factor in customer appreciation, so airlines spend a lot of time, effort and resources to increase on-time performance.
Popular industry measures to improve punctuality are longer block times and longer turn times.
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Punctuality is a dominant factor in customer appreciation, so airlines spend a lot of time, effort and resources to increase on-time performance.
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The cost of this is immense, while reality is that most of these extra buffers remain un-used; a waste that can be avoided with more intelligent buffer planning and enhanced process flexibility.
It takes for everyone to look beyond the fences between departments.
The basis of traditional punctuality approaches is formed by delay codes, invented to track frequent sources of delays.
In practice, they are easily seen as a way to cast blame on operational departments. That’s why departments do a lot to polish up their delay code scores, for instance by applying more than safe margins in their internal planning.
But disruptions cannot always be prevented and delay codes don’t always tell the full story.
In many cases, delays are the consequence of a complex of events, where one disruption triggers a chain of domino effects. Then, delay codes become a hot potato for which everyone has legitimate reasons to pass it on.
Too often the solution is in delay codes with no owning department, like ATC (81) or late incoming aircraft (93).
On the basis of such statistics, it seems perfectly logical to call for extra time.
So what’s the harm of five minutes extra?
To start with, in many cases it’s a bit more than 5 minutes, buffers of 30 minutes or more are no exception.
Applied as generic measure to all block times and turn times on a mid-sized fleet, this accumulates to a significant number of hours, all fleet capacity that is not generating profits.
Of course a schedule needs redundancy in the form of buffers. However, where most investments by airlines take elaborate procedures to justify, decisions for extra buffers are often side issues.
Rarely is there an open trade-off between costs and benefits, nor is any of this reported in P&L’s under the chapter “punctuality measures” so everybody can see the cost.
As with the costs, neither is there a clear view on the benefits of extra buffers.
In fact, generic buffers are far less effective than assumed.
For one, because they spread redundancy out all over the schedule. Sometimes this is amplified by the the habit of OCC’s to allocate tailnumbers on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis, giving more time between flights.
In roughly 70-80% of cases there is no disruption, so the buffer is wasted.
In other cases, the buffers are too short to solve the problem and it takes a cascade of fleet swaps to release the redundancy from the schedule. This is a source of new disruptions.
Second because, even for smaller disruptions, the effects of generic buffers in turn times easily wear off.
In practice, much of the extra time gets absorbed by the process and is no longer effective to prevent delays. Whoever spends a regular portion of his/her time in airport waiting lounges, can testify how often minor incoming delays simply bump on to the next departure, despite a generous turn time.
Even when redundancy is not spread out, such absorbing effects can be seen. Take the ultimate redundancy fleet buffer, the operational reserve. How often is it not available due to “extra” maintenance or ad-hoc charters?
The above illustrates how a generic static approach falls short in touching the heart of the problem.
Since disruptions can never be 100% ruled out, the core challenge is to reduce the exposure of the operation to disruptions by limiting their impact.
This cannot be done if an airline operation is treated as the sum of separate departments working on islands. Effectively responding to disruptions takes coordinated efforts.
This starts with the smallest delays, which can easily evolve into a longer delay later on the day.
There are good examples of teams that work in a pro-active atmosphere, where departments will cover for each other’s glitches, determined to recover every minute possible.
In addition, the schedule must be equipped with smartly planned larger buffers, to provide effective redundancy in those cases where it is really needed.
Throughout the day, the risk of disruptions varies. This means that at some times buffers are more effective than at other times. A longer buffer at times where the accumulated risk of delays becomes significant solves more than smaller buffers for all flights.
Also, especially in a larger fleet, there is a significant potential synergy if multiple arriving aircraft can share buffers.
In every airline, all the information is there to calculate exactly at which times buffers are needed and for which duration they are most effective.
The effects of smart buffers can be significantly enhanced with certain operational measures.
It all starts with strong process monitoring and control. This makes an organization more assertive and pro-active, while keeping the message alive that every minute counts.
Further, process control has more options when departments are more flexible, for instance with a sharp reduction of reaction times.
For this, some need extra backing from top management. Operational departments are under constant pressure to reduce their costs, which leads to sub-optimization.
However, there are clear examples where extra resources for specific tasks bring more stability to the entire process, maybe compromising department efficiency but significantly reducing overall punctuality costs.
It’s not the easiest way, but the reward of a more refined punctuality approach is substantial.
In the first place, it’s more effective in controlling and improving on-time performance.
Further, taking organizational measures and adding low-capital resources, instead of sacrificing expensive fleet, simply reduces costs.
This way, better punctuality goes hand in hand with higher efficiency!