A Collaborative Approach

These events have adversely affected the global aviation network and cause airlines to modify and adjust their normal operations to accommodate unexpected schedule changes. The capacity to recover from these events, whether planned or unplanned, determines the resiliency of an organization. In the case of the aviation industry, both airlines and airports must work together to provide resiliency in the face of uncertainty while continuing to offer the best possible passenger experience.

The Impact of Irregular Operations

With increased flight demands and limited numbers of gates, airlines have limited flexibility to adjust to unforeseen conditions. An irregular operations event can have immediate and severe, negative effects on an airline. An event at any one airport with a single plane can ripple through hundreds of airports serving thousands of commercial aircraft. The impacts of a single event are felt on local, regional and even national levels — sometimes for months, or even years.

In an age of social media exposure, even acts of nature can impact the reputation of the airports and airlines if unplanned events are not handled proficiently and with the least impact to the passenger experience. Damage to an airline’s reputation can equate to impact to the bottom line.

Key to success of recovering from both planned and unplanned events is collaboration between airports and airlines. Airlines can do a certain amount of preparation and planning for events in isolation, but without the wider vision of impacts across the airport — in coordination with other airlines that serve an airport — there is a limit to the success that any single entity can have. Through collaboration and interconnectivity with other stakeholders at an affected location, the impact of events will be minimized. Interconnection and communication are key to providing an integrated plan that keeps all stakeholders working together to provide unique solutions.

Recovering From Irregular Operations

For planned events, any impact to the airline’s operations is considered unacceptable. Every gate that is disabled due to construction required for modification or upgrade limits access to the revenue each flight contributes to the airline’s bottom line. With strategic design and phasing of construction projects, impacts to operations can be planned for and minimized. In certain situations, innovative phasing can provide benefits that improve performance over and above the disruption planned during preliminary construction planning. Bringing key construction and operations stakeholders into the planning process can highlight opportunities for improving planned outages at an airport.

Unplanned activities require operational resiliency plans. These plans provide preparation, management and recovery strategies required to deal with unplanned events. They are designed to give the airline operations teams the strategic and tactical planning needed to respond to unplanned events. They include critical training scenarios that give airline operations teams the critical skills needed to adapt to changing and dynamic situations as unplanned events unfold. Completing dry runs for emergency scenarios across the entire airport ecosystem provides comprehensive preparation for unforeseen events.

The Importance of Redundant Infrastructure

In addition to preplanning and collaboration, having a robust backup system to support operational plans is a key to success. Infrastructure upgrades like backup power, fuel storage, alternative energy and redundant systems can influence resiliency planning by understanding how both the airline and airport can work together to provide the highest level of redundancy to minimize impacts of catastrophic and unplanned events.

This collaboration between airports and airlines allows for better planning by both parties to understand the ability of the infrastructure to react in emergencies. Completing assessments and what-if scenarios can help identify key gaps in existing infrastructure that impact the ability of both the airport and airline to return to regular operations. In some locations airlines can even develop their own redundant systems, such as backup power, to fill gaps or supplement existing redundancies at an airport.

Continuing Efficient Airline Operations

As events happen, both airlines and airports bring all hands on deck to minimize disruptions for passengers. Trading, refining and sharing communications is key to preparing for the unexpected, as is understanding gaps or needs of both the airport and airline capabilities. Successful resiliency planning for both planned and unplanned events includes the creation of a more collaborative atmosphere to improve passenger experiences and return to precrisis state as quickly as possible.