The Negative Impact of an unplanned disruption has on an Airline.

Like all businesses, airlines strive to organise and create the correct operational environment to maximise commercial success. Disruptions and in particular unplanned disruptions, without exception, impact negatively on this goal. Once a disruption occurs, be it foreseen such as an ATC strike or suddenly in the case of weather or a tech issue, an airline immediately goes into damage limitation mode. Firstly, by making sure where possible, those operations and the serving of passengers not directly affected continues as planned and secondly by dealing with and limiting the effects of the disruption. Weather is the number one reason for delays As with any business, an airline can’t justify having vast resources on standby just in case. So when disruptions occur, a combination of technology, tried and tested procedures, hard work, stretching of already committed resources and imagination are the traditional methods employed to handle them, whether these are man-made, technical or weather-related. These methods look at disruption management from an economic and technical perspective. At Flightbuddy™ we believe that there is another element that needs to be looked at as well – this is the “psychology” of the disruption. By this, we mean, how a cancellation or a delay is perceived by passengers and staff. This needs to be factored into the overall efficient management of the situation. We look at how disruptions are perceived by both staff and passengers and what we learn helps guide us in terms of the technology we deploy and the capability we build into our platform. We combine technology, sound economics and psychology in order to address each disruption challenge swiftly, cost-effectively and with the best outcome in mind. The key to this approach lies in “information” and how [...]