The best-laid plans of mice and men are mightily challenged when it comes to airline scheduling. Take June 2014 – but it could be any month – disruptions included industrial action by French air traffic controllers and transport workers in Belgium, Slovakia and Hungary, European-wide IT problems affecting luggage, thunderstorms and fog in Chicago and volcanic activity in both Alaska and Indonesia. The result was flight cancellations and delays for thousands of passengers.
These disturbances were in addition to the glitches that never make the headlines – such as maintenance issues or crew problems – but nonetheless result in hold-ups, stress and cost for airlines and passengers alike.
No wonder then that the 2014 Airline IT Trends Survey, co-sponsored by Airline Business and SITA, reports a groundswell of industry activity planned and under way to invest in smart technologies to better manage flight disruptions and to give passengers more control and choice via self-service rebooking solutions.
“Airlines across the world are investing in four main areas to improve disruption management: communications, passenger recovery or rebookings, staff awareness and prevention,” says Nigel Pickford, director market insights, SITA. “[There is a] fundamental need to gain faster accurate insight to the nature of the disruption, its impact, to understand who is affected – both passenger-wise and staff-wise, and to assess and initiate recovery,” he says.
Over the next three years, 87% of airlines are planning information technology investments in self-service solutions for irregular operations (IROPS). A total of 41% of airlines have already implemented business intelligence (BI) initiatives focused on travel disruptions, with an overall 90% of them planning to have these measures in place by the end of 2017.
This IT investment is reflected in initiatives across the industry. Giving passengers the chance to be proactively rebooked and to obtain new booking options or boarding tokens via a self-service channel when disruptions occur is a key part of IATA’s Fast Travel programme. Its goal is that 80% of global passengers will be offered a complete self-service suite throughout their journey, include flight rebooking, by 2020.
IATA reckons that rebooking would contribute $455 million to the potential annual savings of $2.1 billion Fast Travel adoption (excluding check-in) could generate.
However, the flight rebooking saving is the tip of the iceberg. For airlines using smart technology to address and recover from delays, the potential rewards in cost savings are significant. In the USA alone, delays weigh heavily on both airlines and passengers, with Airlines for America calculating the burden at $8 billion in direct operating costs for US airlines in 2013. It estimates the cost to their passengers at billions of dollars in lost time.
COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS
The consensus is that the best way forward should be holistic and collaborative, putting the passenger at the heart of the operation. This inclusivity extends from tools to bring together disparate airline teams to engaging with customers via social media. Needless to say, this IROPS agenda is challenging. However, looking beyond the immediate goals of more automation and self-service, there is another prize of being able to take action to avoid disruptions or limit their impact.
First: the vision. Norm Rose of PhoCusWright argues that airlines should consider a more customer-focused approach to managing delays, cancellations and missed connections in Passengers first: re-thinking irregular operations – a study commissioned by Amadeus and published in September 2013.
It called for a standard service approach to disruptions and for airlines to go beyond automated re-accommodation technology that gets the journey back on schedule. Rather, they should consider intelligent one-click solutions that empower passengers to select the alternative that best suits their needs, and also consider investing in systems that offer a greater understanding of passengers’ preference.
“The significance of this can’t be overstated: although a delay may seem minor to the airline, to the passenger that misses a connection or is late to a relative’s wedding, it is of critical importance. In an industry where traditional business models are converging, a positive customer experience, even in times of irregular operations, is what will secure competitive differentiation for an airline,” says Patricia Simillon, senior manager of strategic planning, airline IT strategy at Amadeus. “Since the launch of the paper we have seen good progress from all players in the travel industry towards becoming more customer-centric when dealing with irregular operations.”
Passengers are looking for a more active role in the IROPS process, says Antonio Castro, board advisor for IT/IS projects at TAP Portugal and chief executive and co-founder of MASDIMA, which develops disruption-management software. “TAP always tries to include a customer-centric approach in IROPS resolutions, using not only the more classical approaches (phone contact, SMS messages, email and service desks), but also, social networks like Facebook.
“TAP has a team dedicated to this important issue. However, there is space for improvement and IT has an important role here. It is not an easy task and the main challenges are related with the integration of information and the quality and accuracy of data.”
Current airline initiatives are concentrated on providing real-time information and notifications to passengers. Over the next three years, 93% of airlines will be offering these services via smartphones and 81% providing mass notification via social media, according to the Airline IT Trends Survey.
Over the past 12 months, Virgin Australia has invested in an automated IROPS recovery system, plus automated SMS/email communications in the event of cancellations and delays. These systems provide recovery solutions via advice from agents at the airport and SMS/email messages, which involve a callback to the airline contact centre in the event of a required change.
However, Andrew Lillyman, general manager network operations, sees room for further enhancement.“With the use of mobile devices by guests, we see advantages in providing this service in an automated manner. As a result, we also receive positive confirmation from a guest that they still want to fly the arranged recovery,” he says.
Six months ago, Virgin embedded a social media team within its operations control centre. Lillyman says social media enables proactive communication, even when guests may be overseas with limited access to SMS and email. The result is an improvement in how the airline is perceived.
“We see a marked difference in customer satisfaction where we pro-actively inform guests of significant external events, such as volcanic ash or cyclone weather, as well as positive feedback from potential future guests in the broader public,” he says.
According to IATA’s 2013 Passenger Survey, over two-thirds of air travellers use social media daily and would like to interact with the airline through social media during the journey. Hugh Best, IATA’s project manager for Fast Travel, believes social media can only get more important and more closely intertwined in disruption recovery processes.
“Technology such as social media still needs to be linked into the reservation system, so you will need a reservation desk with two screens – one with reservations, one with your social media page,” he says, asking: “Are we going to take something like Facebook and integrate it into the airline passenger service system (PSS)? This will be the challenging, but interesting, scenario we will see in the future.”
Meanwhile, one of the first hurdles today can be reaching the customer. “You can have a beautiful system, but you cannot contact the customer, for example if booked by an agent, you might only have the travel-agent contact,” says Best. “I think it is a perceived issue of competition. It is understandable from the point of view of marketing, but passengers themselves are not being assisted with this. So we have to think about how we can offer passengers the best possible journey.”
Other communication complications are that passengers, armed with mobiles and tablets, may sometimes be better informed about the disruption than the airport staff or ground handlers; or, if there is a lag in sharing information among stakeholders, passengers may receive contradictory messages.
Beyond timely data sharing, to be truly customer-centric airlines may also have to include data feeds from further afield.
REAL-TIME SCHEDULES
“During an irregular operation it is important for airlines to work not only with the airport, but with other local services too. Ideally the airline should have access to real-time intermodal transportation schedules and availability, hotel availability, food and beverage and other concession hours of service at the airport. Having this information, and in particular it being accessible online, allows the passenger to be served in a more holistic way,” says Pickford.
Currently just under one-fifth of airlines offer passenger self-service tools to solve IROPS problems, but 76% are planning to have them in place, according to the Airline IT Trends Survey. Some of the automations already in place at Lufthansa include passenger notifications and self-service short-term “dispositions” or transfers to alternative flights, with automated delivery of the new mobile boarding pass, plus self-service mobile train vouchers for intra-German traffic. The airline has received good feedback from both passengers and staff.
“Clearly positive reactions were noticeable both from passengers and staff, particularly from our stations. Especially in case of an IROPS, with advanced notice, our self services are capable of assisting many passengers in advance and thus take away pressure on our ground staff,” says Ulrich Richter, manager of product management for airport and passenger services. “In future the most important step among many is to extend our self-service options to online IROPS rebookings via our reservation [and] booking system.”
Lufthansa is currently rolling out a new departure control system, which includes features to facilitate positive and quick IROPS handling at its stations. In addition, its service centres are testing new tool-based processes to speed up ticketing so that passengers with an IROPS rebooking are given immediate ready-to-check-in status.
Passengers are one element in the equation. Ideally, airlines also need to look at disruptions in terms of aircraft and crew and be able to bring teams together. The ability to automate IROPS responses starts with flexibility in the PSS, but for a multidimensional solution you have to be able to add in other systems – operational systems, cost information, loyalty, baggage systems and more.
Research into tools that simultaneously consider the three dimensions of flight/aircraft, crew and passengers is growing. While airlines still regard their workforce as the best solution to IROPS decision-making, says Kamal Qatato, vice-president marketing and solutions at Sabre Airline Solutions, end-to-end modelling tools can take the pressure off those staff members.
“It’s a hard problem to solve if you cannot look across all facets of the operation and be able to allow those teams to share what-if scenarios across the operation,” he says. “The biggest challenge right now... is making sure that not only the passengers, but folks responsible for making decisions, are doing so with a level of confidence and are able to collaborate in that decision-making process.”
More on the IT Trends Survey here
Source: Airline Business
