Challenges Faced :-

Schedule disruptions:
- Aircraft: not on the schedule route
- Crew: violates rules
- Passenger: canceled flight or missed connection

Shortages of airline resources:

- Resource schedule dependability
- Aircraft mechanical problem
- Crew unavailability (misconnections)

Shortages of airport resources:

- Inclement weather: reduction in airport runaway capacity; affect all aircraft flying through the
airport
- Airport security.

Airlines’ plans are sophisticated

- Aircraft, crews and passengers have different route schedules
- The objective of planning is to minimize operating costs, which result in maximizing resource
utilization, leaving very little slack to recover disruptions

Following a disruption, choosing the best operational decisions are hard because:
- Size of the decision space
- Real time; If wait too long, solutions might become obsolete
- Complex restrictions (FAA, contractual) interdependencies between airline resources and
passengers

Impact of delay depends on the state of the complex multi layer plan at a given time:
- 30 minutes flight delay may result in crew disruption, flight cancellations and severe
passenger disruptions. The effect can last for more than a day
- Conversely, a 30 minutes delay might benefit crews and passengers as both would have been
disrupted had the flight departed on time

What is the objective?

- Can we assign a cost to one minute of flight delay?
- Can we assign a cost to a flight cancellation?

Locations and availability of resources

- Aircraft
- Pilot and flight attendant crews
- Passenger states (i.e., disrupted or not) and locations/destinations
- Reduce total passenger delay and the number of disrupted passengers by deciding on:
- Flight departure times (or clearance)
- Flight cancellations if necessary while satisfying resource feasibility (crew and aircraft
restrictions) and controlling actual operating costs

Importance of delivering services as expected in airline industry

- Very competitive industry
- Low profit margin (5% in 2000, best year)
- Dissatisfied customers might shop next to competitors, jeopardizing your profitability
- On time service is not prime factor to attract customers but it contributes to loyalty
- Passenger delay distribution is not continuous, few passengers suffer high delays
- Passenger dissatisfaction function with respect to delays is not linear
- Clear objective: minimize passenger ill will with same operations costs
Disruption impact:-

Flight delays
- Broken crew pairings
- Resource shortage
- Crew unavailability
- Disrupted maintenance
- Gate problems
- Baggage handling Problems

Possible Solutions:-

• Hold flights
• Cancel flights
• Aggregate flights
• Divert aircraft
• Swap resources
• Use spare aircraft
• Use reserve crews
• Deadhead crews
• Layover crews

Constraints:-

• Aircraft balance
• Market protection
• Fleet/crew compatibility
• Resource positioning
• Maintenance requirements
• Crew legalities
• Union contracts
Conclusion:-
• Propose new airline operations recovery models that reduce
passenger disruptions and:
¾ Does not disrupt additional crew duties
¾ Recover aircraft plan
¾ Maintain overhead costs
¾ Found 10% to 20% reduction in passenger disruptions for bad days
of operations, using a sophisticated simulation environment
¾ Run fast and meet real time AOCC needs
• Airline long term profitability: higher service reliability
improves customer retention and long term revenues
• Future research:
¾ Estimate the impact of different disrupted passenger’s priority
strategies (e.g. Passenger routing: recovery priority given to
business passengers over leisure passengers; Optimization:
minimize the revenue of disrupted passengers) on overall passenger
population
Questionnaire Design :-

After analyzing possible problems, constraints and possible solutions, we designed

our questionnaire with those objectives only. After a brief introduction we sought to
ask all the problems, their solutions as being practiced in the industry and the
constraints faced in real life situations. We divided the problems into External and
Internal Problems. While External problems would deal with Unions, Customers,
Govt. policies, Budget, etc, the internal problems would deal with those of staffing,
planning, technology, etc. We also wanted to give special emphasis on customers,
what problems they could face and how airlines dealt with them. Problems like those
of fooding, lodging, ticketing, etc were some we emphasized upon.
The Interview:-

Q: Your work experience in this field?

A: 2 years.

Q: Number of employees?
A: 50 permanent employees and rest on contractual basis.

Q: Recruitment procedure?
A: We have no tie-ups with any academy or recruitment agency. The recruitment is
done by exam which is conducted by Govt.

Q: How do you plan operations?

A: We have separate divisions for Front end and Back end jobs.

Q: Do you have any unions?

A: Yes we have an employee union.

Q:do unions create any problems

A: every employee is satisfied with the remuneraton that they get ad there is no
problem at all

Q: Nature of job?
A: I am a Front end executive

Q: I.S. structure used?

A: IBM – DB 2

Q: Reason for use?

A: Simplicity and error free. Requires little maintenance.

Q: Do you keep back up data?

A: No.

Q:You say there is no backup but what about the virus attacks
A:The operating system that we use are quite robust and there is no need for the
Anti-virus solution

Q: What is the aircraft mixture?

A: Mix of boeing and Airbus. Boeing- 747-400, 747-800, 747 LR. Airbus- A-319, A320,
A330.and few turboprops for shorter routes

Q: Economic constraints?
A: We are funded by govt. So our budget is decided by the ministry. Our salaries our
under govt. jurisdiction.

Q: Threats faced by other airlines?

A: Earlier we used to cater to rich class. But with introduction of budget carriers,
customer base has opened up and so our customer base has enhanced and we now
have to face stiff competition. Also this increases our workload. We had to increase
number of employers also.

Q: Do you have tie ups with any ticketing agents?

A: We used to have but now we have ceased to do so.

Q: Reason?
A: This is done to reduce cost as we had to pay commission to the agent as well as
the agency. Now by removing the agent we have started directly dealing with the
agency.

Q: How do you manage Fooding and Lodging facilities? What are your procedures in
case of delayed flights?
A: We have outsourced our fooding services. In case of delayed flights we provide
food. As we are a very small airport we do not have any lodging facilities.

Q: The networks that are used in your Organisation

A: We use the leased lines for our networking needs

Q: What is the standard at which the local airport operates

A: Our airport is compliant with IL 2 standards

Q: If there is any problem related with the landing in difficult circumstances who
handles it
A: The whole thing is taken care by the ATC

Q:Who takes care of the security issues at the Airport

A:CISF(central industrial security force) takes care of the security

Q:What if you are not satisified with it

A: we can do individual checking on our own to be sure that nothing is wrong