A decision support tool for evaluating decision options for out-bound flight delays considering high-valuable passengers

Abstract

Though studies show that arriving on-time is the service characteristic most valued by the air passengers and passenger service coordinators are consulted in the operation disruptions, passengers rarely drive operational decision-making in the disruption management of an airline. Taking into consideration airlines’ seeking the prevention of losing passengers’ goodwill in situations where the level of service quality (SQ) performed is not as high as the promoted one, this research is focused particularly on an influence of delayed connecting (or in-bound) high-fare passengers on making decisions on onward delays. Operationally seen, connecting passengers are of a particular importance for airlines, since they are already involved in their operations-flow, while becoming in this way the third most important airlines’ aspect of operations, succeeding aircraft and crew. On the other hand, exclusive travellers such as first class and elite-status, contracted corporate members, and business passengers are considered as the high-valuable passengers, who are enough (financially) worth to the airline, particularly for to be waited for if they are delayed in arriving with an in-bound flight. Based upon an examination made from the airlines’ operational point of view and for determined prioritization strategy, a Decision Support System (DSS) tool, named DEVOTED DSS Tool, for use in the disruption management of the Airline Operation Control Centre (AOCC) is presented. For assisting the airline operation controllers in decisions on whether to delay the departure of out-bound flights in order to wait for arriving-delayed high-fare passengers from an in-bound flight, an influence of these passengers’ satisfaction on making decisions on onward delays, the passenger segmentation per flight, associated consequences in terms of the Level of Service (LOS) performed by the carrier and the one perceived by the passengers, as well as the accompanying costs are taken into account. The designed tool incorporates the key elements of Human-Centred Design (HCD) relying on a multi-criteria algorithm making-up its decision making process for evaluation of decision options and making suggestion. Being scenario-driven and knowledge-based the tool implements the airline prioritisation policies. Hereby, the level of service quality delivered by the air carrier and the level of service quality expected and perceived by the high-fare passengers are determined quantitatively by employing a created LOS-model which relies on the basic categorization rules of the Kano’s quality model. For testing of the tool, two scheduled airlines with two different prioritization strategies and operating on the same flight route between the same origin-destination airports (i.e. city-pairs) are taken. Though the testing is real-world data based, in order to expose a tangible aim and capabilities of the designed tool, the testing scenarios are constructed in such a way to reflect specific borderline operational situations, while emphasizing occurring conflicting decision key criteria. The tool output consists of two components – the LOS quality delivered by the carrier including the delay-costs (LOS Airline) and the level of service perceived by the high-fare passengers on both flights (LOS Passenger) – which are reflected on the user interface in form of two bars, each consisting of three colours indicating an option as good (green), neutral (yellow) or bad (red). Although the operation controller may take the opposite decision as recommended, the tool is enabled to display the evaluation of consequences of any decision made, while being visualized as a scale-value positioned somewhere on the three- colour-bar. Investigating the impact of a passenger-structure on decisions on onward-delays in the every-day flight operations execution, a decision support real-time tool, De laying V IPs O rien ted D ecision S upport S ystem (DEVOTED DSS) was created, implementing (pre-specified) airline prioritisation policy in accordance with the rating of the high-fare passengers-classes importance. The decision solutions’ consequences displayed in the designed form are practical in terms of user-friendly utilization of DEVOTED and are simple and easy to deal with, since being relieved of any digits, data and/or calculations. Aiming at accurately evaluating the impact of operational disruption-decisions on the high-fare passengers, DEVOTED processes the LOS quality which is to be delivered to these passengers, SQ-attributes required/expected by these passengers, number of passengers in each defined passenger-group and the ticket prices purchased, as well as expected costs. For the first time, an introduced juxtaposition of the in-bound and out-bound high-fare passengers of the same cabin-class within connecting flights has been employed as an influencing factor in the decision making process of the airline disruption management. When it is about to make the choice between a monetary benefit and the retention of the reputation of a reliable service provider, the use of the designed tool affords rather objective instead the still occurring intuitive decision making in such disruptions.

Document type: Article