Last year’s holiday season was not a particularly good one
for U.S. airline operations. Between Dec. 20, 2022, and Jan. 4, 2023, the six
largest U.S. carriers in total canceled nearly 23,500 flights—a rate of 10.7
percent, according to data from FlightAware. There also were more than 73,600
delayed flights for a rate of 37.7 percent, with an average delay time of 63
minutes.
Over the same period a year prior, the six carriers canceled
a bit more than 10,100 flights—a rate of 5.2 percent—and had about 60,000
delays, or just more than 32 percent, with an average delay time of 47 minutes.
Weather in December 2022 was a significant factor, with
Southwest Airlines famously facing days
of disruptions that started with snow and ended with system processes being
called into question. The U.S. Department of Transportation investigated the
carrier, and last week penalized
it $140 million—although most of that amount is being covered by credits
and offsets.
But weather is just one disruption factor and can hit at any
time. Though airlines have touted their efforts to beef up their staffs the
past two years, some still point to what they consider a pilot shortage.
There also remains a ground crew shortage at airports. IATA
reported in May that a recent survey it conducted showed that 37 percent of
ground handling professionals anticipated staffing shortages until the end of
2023 and beyond, and 60 percent felt they didn’t have enough qualified staff to
ensure smooth operations.
Further, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is
struggling to restaff air traffic controller positions. In September, a bipartisan
group of U.S. senators introduced the Air Traffic Controllers Hiring Act of
2023, which would require the FAA to “conduct maximum hiring” of
controllers, which works out to about 1,800 individuals per year.
Doing so, however, likely depends on the FAA receiving full
congressional reauthorization and funding before another potential government shutdown.
At the U.S. Travel Association Future of Travel Mobility conference on Nov. 15
in Washington, D.C., JetBlue president and chief operating officer Joanna
Geraghty said she had recently learned that “a one-week shutdown holds ATC
training back for a month” and “a one-month shutdown holds back ATC
training for a year.”
The U.S. Senate last week passed
a second FAA extension, though it’s good only through March 8, 2024.
(There also was the Dec. 2 New
York Times’ scathing report on the burnout and poor conditions controllers
face.)
Disruptions Affecting Business Travel
Business travelers are feeling the effects of these delays
and cancellations. A whopping 84 percent of those traveling in 2023 for work in
the United States surveyed this autumn by global travel management platform
TravelPerk said they were affected by disruptions during business trips. About
25 percent had reservations canceled, with 40 percent experiencing delays of
more than one hour, they said.
Similarly, BTN’s
2023 Airline Survey & Report, published
in November found that nearly 83 percent of surveyed travel managers said that
airline and airport disruptions “significantly” or “somewhat”
negatively impacted their company’s return to travel this past year.
Findings in an October survey by the Global Business Travel
Association paint a less drastic picture. About 44 percent of buyers said
travel disruptions were a significant barrier, with 32 percent of suppliers
agreeing. Overall, though, respondents said travel disruptions had a slight to
moderate effect on their employees’ willingness to travel for business, with 11
percent of non-executive employees and 10 percent of executive employees
reporting being “greatly” affected.
In response to the disruptions, about 30 percent of U.S.
business travelers are extending their trips to stay overnight, ensuring they
get to where they need to be on time, according to TravelPerk. In addition, 37
percent of workers have considered different modes of transport, such as
driving or taking the train, even if doing so takes longer.
Airlines, airports and the federal government have taken
steps to try to mitigate disruptions for the winter season, defined by the
International Air Transport Association as the period from the last Saturday in
October through the last Saturday in March. Here’s a look at some of the
actions taken, including one product from the business travel segment.
U.S. Government Response
Much has been reported about the shortage of air traffic
controllers and disgruntled customers. U.S. government agencies are taking
steps to address the situation.
The FAA on Dec. 20 created a three-person panel of
“fatigue experts” to identify new ways to tackle ATC fatigue. The
panel will examine how the latest science of sleep needs and fatigue
considerations can be applied to controller work requirements and scheduling. The
work will begin in January and is expected to conclude six weeks later.
In October the FAA awarded nearly $57.6 million in grants to
47 airports in 23 states so they would be “better prepared to keep airport
operations running safely and smoothly.” About $17.7 million was for snow-removal
equipment, $27.6 million for deicing facilities, and $12.2 million for the
construction and renovation of buildings that house and maintain such
equipment.
After an August New
York Times report on close calls at airports, the FAA invested an
additional $121 million for projects at eight airports across the country to reduce
the chances of their happening. The projects include reconfiguring taxiways,
installing new lighting systems and providing more flexibility on the airfield,
according to the FAA. Prior to the report, the agency had invested more than
$100 million to 12 airports to also reduce runway incursions.
DOT is getting in on the action, too. In May, it announced
plans to propose a rulemaking aimed at requiring airlines to provide
compensation and cover expenses for amenities such as meals, hotels, ground
transport to and from hotels, and rebooking for controllable delays or
cancellations. The notice of proposed rulemaking for this rule currently is
scheduled for April 29, 2024.
Airline Responses
Southwest Airlines arguably has taken the most
dramatic steps over the past year to better prepare for possible winter
disruptions as a result of its challenges a year ago.
To wit: The carrier has added 30 deicing trucks, including
five closed-cab trucks each at Denver, Chicago Midway and Nashville, according
to an airline spokesperson. It has purchased 16 high-powered heaters spread
across 10 stations, including three at Denver and three at Midway. There are
three addition deicing pads, for a total of six, at Midway, with an additional
four in Denver for a total of 10. Southwest also trained more than 2,700
employees across the system for deicing.
“We’ve been focused on how we can make the operation
more resilient and more productive throughout the year and get ready for the
new year,” Southwest COO Andrew Watterson said during a Dec. 8 webinar for
corporate customers. “We must plan for weather that is outside the norm. So,
we went back to all of our stations to understand what is required to operate
in winter weather. … That allowed us to have a throughput to handle events
outside our norms.” The result, he said, was that Southwest is “ready
for winter.”
Additionally, the carrier reports it has enhanced
collaboration across teams and improved tools and procedures to streamline
communications and decision-making, and accelerated investments in its tools
and technology that can help the carrier recover operations more quickly during
extreme weather and beyond, including upgrading crew software and the phone
system call capacity.
American Airlines has developed technology that
“keeps customers moving when severe weather impacts our larger hubs.”
The Hub Efficiency Analytics Tool—HEAT—”dynamically moves our flight
schedules around” to ensure operations keep moving when weather threatens
to disrupt schedules, according to the carrier.
The tool optimizes data about weather, load factors,
customer connections, gate availability, and any air traffic control or crew
constraints. An algorithm weighs the data and shifts arrivals and departures
around at the hub. Since it was deployed in 2022, “HEAT has prevented
nearly 1,000 flight cancellations across our network,” according to the
carrier.
United Airlines has focused on its mobile app to help
travelers through disruptions. In June, the carrier launched features that
automatically present personalized rebooking options, bag tracking information
and meal and hotel vouchers when eligible if a flight is delayed or canceled.
There’s also on-demand customer support via United’s
“Agent on Demand” feature. A customer can scan a QR code or use the
app to video chat, text or call customer service instead of waiting in line. As
of Nov. 14, more than 1.5 million customers had used the service to get real-time
flight status, upgrade and standby lists, seat assignments and irregular
operation assistance, according to United.
In addition, United has 150 deicing trucks “ready to
deploy this holiday season.”
Delta Air Lines directed BTN to online resources that
encouraged customers to use its app for real-time flight information. The
carrier also in September detailed its meteorology team’s work on forecasts
that are updated every six hours and used by station managers. “These
forecasts inform decisions about everything from flight paths to
staffing,” according to Delta.
Industry Response
In addition to receiving support from the federal government
for infrastructure and equipment, airports themselves are making investments in
their processes to improve operations. IATA prioritizes airport staff
recruitment and retention, including training, the implementation of global
standards and the acceleration of digitalization and automation.
For the third priority, airports can implement new tools
that provide predictive data. One such airport management solution is
AeroCloud, with offices in the United Kingdom and United States. The company’s
solution, launched in 2019, currently is deployed by nearly 60 airports in
North America, Europe and the U.K., and processes over 200 million passengers
annually.
“One of the biggest problems is, airlines and airports
have not shared valuable data across platforms,” AeroCloud co-founder and
CEO George Richardson said. “What companies like AeroCloud are doing is,
we are trying to break down the barrier of siloed data between airline and
airport, and we also are using [artificial intelligence] to predict data on
behalf of the airport on what is missing in the dataset aggregate. We use AI to
populate the fields of data on passenger movement that we don’t get from solutions
that are present in the airport.”
The Tampa and Sarasota-Bradenton airports in Florida use
AeroCloud, and Richardson cited hurricane season as an example. He said company
has enough data to which inbound and outbound flights will be affected by
weather-related disruptions. The company also collects data about how travelers
return to their originally scheduled destinations once they are diverted—and
the accumulation of all that data provides a measure of predictability for
airport operations.
“We now have a recording system and an ability to look
back in history and also season the plan with regards to sandboxing about
schedule service that is coming in that we already know about that might well
be affected by diverting inbound or diverting outbound,” Richardson said.
That said, there still isn’t much that travelers, let alone
travel managers, can do to mitigate air delays and cancellations. One corporate
travel industry supplier, however, has created a tool for airlines that it says
could help make the disruption process go more smoothly for impacted travelers.
HRS nearly two years ago introduced its Crew & Passenger
Solutions product, which provides a single mobile platform for airline partners
that reaches out to the carriers’ disrupted travelers with personalized
pre-arranged travel packages, supplier-designated virtual payment for lodging
options and transfers, and instant reimbursement for meals and services,
according to the company.
Multiple airlines since have signed up for the service,
including Lufthansa and Norwegian. HRS expects additional “prominent”
carriers to be announced during the first quarter of the new year.
“Historically, these kinds of disruptive events were
being treated as emergency cases. Now they are part of the new reality,”
HRS Crew & Passenger Solutions CEO Luca De Angelis told BTN.
“Accordingly, we need to create new customer journeys that already
allocate for potential disruption … [which] should be part of the same regular
daily workflow for airports and airlines. Cancellations and irregularities
should not be surprising anymore.”
In one instance, a delayed Norwegian flight arrived into
Oslo late, at 1 a.m. One hundred passengers who were rebooked to the next day
because of missed connections were informed about HRS’s self-service solution
available at their destination as soon as the delay was known. Seventy-five
percent of passengers were able to select an overnight stay prior to the actual
departure of the delayed flight, with others using the service after landing.
“The very big change is they shifted 92 percent of
their passengers that were queuing up to completely online,” De Angelis
said. “Norwegian now handles the vast majority of its disrupted passengers
online with the self-service solution.”
HRS has extended a similar platform the corporate space for
joint customers of HRS and participating airlines.
“Let’s consider a scenario with Lufthansa and a global
corporation with significant volume on that carrier,” he added. “Our
solution will give airlines the capability to create personalized options in
disruption scenarios that go out to a single corporate traveler of that
company. Traditionally, we see airlines basing loyalty status on
airline-defined passenger trip volume and/or spend tiers. We’re giving airlines
a new category to put the business travelers of select companies into, creating
loyalty tiers based on the airline-corporation relationship. … For example, if
you are from the Siemens Corp., you’ll get a different set of personalized
options in a disruption scenario, with these coming to your phone as a
cobranded service.”
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