airline industry – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

OM in the News: When Pigs Fly

When pigs fly—and they are doing so a lot this year—they usually take wide-body jets across the world, writes The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 11, 2020). One of the few bright spots for a global airline industry has been an increase in live animal cargo flights. Cargo planes this year have taken thousands of pigs, goats, alpacas, cats and dogs on international flights, and demand for the fastest mode of animal transportation is rising even as many human passengers shun traveling by plane.

Hundreds of pigs can travel on each cargo flight, with groups in large wooden crates roomy enough for them to move around in, and that fit nicely in Boeing 777s and 747s. Other than the flight crew, the only other humans aboard are the animals’ handlers. They keep an eye on the pigs’ mood, fill up their water sipper bottles and “give them a little bit of encouragement.”

Pigs relax in their crate aboard a Boeing 747 on a flight from Denmark to Russia.

China has been buying lots of pigs abroad after losing many of its own hogs to African swine fever and is expected to import 25,000 live hogs in 2020, compared with 4,000 in 2019. Many of those will fly. Qatar Airways has added 50% more livestock flights this year in response to higher demand. On a typical day, the airline transports 10 horses and 500 farm animals, including cows, goats and sheep.

Some animal flights haven’t panned out. Earlier this year, a Qatar flight to Johannesburg to pick up young giraffes destined for a zoo was forced to return empty. In the 6 weeks it had taken to get all the paperwork sorted before the flight, the giraffes had grown too tall for the 10 foot plane ceilings. (Adult giraffes can be 18 feet tall.)

Pigs grow quickly, too. Earlier this year, 1,300 young hogs that were scheduled to be flown from the U.S. to the Philippines were bumped when their plane was requisitioned by the U.S. government to move PPEs. A new flight was secured 2½ months later, but the original young hogs had become older hogs, and much bigger—too heavy for the 85 tons the plane could handle.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why use planes for these shipments?
What are the OM issues faced when shipping animals?

OM in the News: Everything Has a Life Cycle, Including the 747

Retired Delta 747s in the Arizona desert

There may be no airliner as recognizable as the Boeing 747, the world’s first jumbo jet, with its iconic hump of an upper deck. The introduction of the “Queen of the Skies” was a triumph of engineering and grace: unprecedented size and speed with spiral-staircase international glamour. But the airline business has changed, and the giant plane has become more expensive to operate. A couple of weeks ago, the final 747 flight by any commercial U.S. airline took to the sky.

“Like so many others before it,” writes The New York Times (Jan. 20, 2018), “the plane was heading to the Southwest to retire.” Hours after takeoff from Delta’s Atlanta hub, the jet was circling Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, making its final approach to Pinal Airpark, between Phoenix and Tucson. It’s an ideal place to store airplanes long-term, and about 120 aircraft are parked there now, scattered across the desert floor. The dry air prevents major corrosion, so their parts can be used to help keep other planes flying. About 50% of the retirees are stripped and sold for scrap. But some end up working for air carriers in Africa, Asia and South America, for whom buying a used aircraft is a lot more affordable than buying new, even though they are less fuel-efficient.

The 747 aircraft was a marvel for when it was built. But, a marvel of 1960s engineering is not necessarily suited to 2018 industry needs. Many airlines are moving to a business model that focuses on connecting more cities directly with smaller, more fuel-efficient planes, rather than funneling passengers through a few large hubs. As we state in Chapter 5: “Products are born. They live and they die.”

Classroom discussion questions:

How is production of a 747 different from making a 737?
What are the major OM issues facing Boeing, as maker of the 747, and customers of the plane, such as Delta?

OM in the News: Reliabilty and Maintenance Secrets of the Airlines

“Airlines are pouring lots of time and money into understanding fleet reliability,” reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 12, 2017). Delta put together a team of mechanics, engineers and data geeks to find ways to make specific types of planes less prone to breakdowns. American has renewed efforts to schedule flights so each type of plane performs better.

“It’s not necessarily the airplane itself. It’s how we’re operating it,” says American’s VP. If no planes are reserved as spares, fleets become less reliable. Small fleets spread out among multiple hub airports often suffer higher cancellation rates because there aren’t opportunities to swap planes. Time scheduled for routine maintenance can get crimped if the planes get to mechanics late day after day. In 2016 American had 6 different kinds of wide-body jets flying international trips from Chicago. Reliability suffered. When glitches hit, the airline had little ability to swap planes.

Summer reliability is critical for airlines. Among the worst-performing planes were United 747s, which arrived on-time an average 63% of flights during the past 2 summers. United says it has worked the last several years on improving the reliability of the wide-bodies to achieve better on-time performance. Wide-body cancellations are down 60% since 2014.

Delta’s technical data team can not only predict which parts are liable to break, but also redesign some parts to make them more reliable and add monitors to track the health of parts on older jets. Suspect parts get replaced proactively ahead of manufacturers’ recommended replacement schedules, dramatically cutting cancellations. In 2010, Delta had 5,600 flights canceled by maintenance problems. Last year breakdowns caused only 303 cancellations, and the airline has suffered only 70 so far in 2017. Delta also loads seven 40-foot trailers each summer and sends mechanics out with the equipment to small cities to create temporary maintenance bases for specific types of planes. Last summer they were positioned in 7 spoke cities to do preventive maintenance on planes parked overnight there.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why do reliability figures differ dramatically among airlines and plane models?
What is the “secret” to picking an on-time flight?

Video Tip: Using Our Five Alaska Airlines Video Case Studies

Barry and Jay filming in an Alaska Airlines cockpit — Barry and Jay filming the videos in an Alaska Airlines cockpit

The Wall Street Journal‘s annual scorecard of U.S. airline performance (Jan. 12, 2017), which ranks major carriers on 7 different measures important to travelers, has just been released. We note that the company we prominently feature in our latest edition, Alaska Airlines, topped the scorecard as the best overall performer for the 4th-straight year, edging out Delta. Alaska also scored 1st in: on-time arrivals, least extreme delays, least 2-hour tarmac delays, and in least number of complaints. It was 3rd in cancelled flights and involuntary bumping, and 4th in mishandled bags.

The Seattle-based airline says its poor baggage showing in the 2016 scorecard drove a deep study of which flights were causing the most mishandled bags. Alaska began bar-code scanning of every bag going on and off planes. It also figured out which cities, which shifts and which flights had the most problems and found delays with bags transferring from other airlines. So instead of waiting for bags to come through an airport sorting system, Alaska now takes carts to other airlines in Seattle and waits for connecting bags at the tails of arriving airplanes.

Here are the 5 short videos we provide free to adopters:

Quality Counts at Alaska Airlines (Ch.6): “If it is not measured, it is not managed,” says one Alaska exec in this case that provides explicit performance metrics.

Alaska Airlines: 20-Minute Baggage Process–Guaranteed! (Ch.7): Students can flowchart the process a bag follows from kiosk to destination carousel after watching this video.

The People Focus: Human Resources at Alaska Airlines (Ch.10): The employee “Empowerment Toolkit” reminds us of Ritz Carlton’s famous customer service philosophy.

Lean Operations at Alaska Airlines (Ch.16): The company’s aggressive implementation of Lean includes its 6-sigma Green Belt training, Kaizen events, Gemba Walks, and 5S applications.

Scheduling Challenges at Alaska Airlines (Module B and Ch.15): Good scheduling of crews and planes means optimization–the perfect fit for our coverage of LP and scheduling.

OM is indeed a centerpiece of Alaska’s success and we think your students will enjoy these videos.

OM in the News: Airbus Invents the “Flying Doughnut”

The Airbus design would revolutionize air travel

“Airbus’s design for a future aircraft looks less like a conventional airliner and more like something from a 1950s sci-fi comic,” writes The Financial Times (Nov. 17, 2014). If a patent application filed by the European aerospace and defense group takes off, future passengers could fasten their seat belts in cabins shaped like giant doughnuts – or flying saucers.The UFO-like shape addresses a problem facing aircraft designers. Cylindrical shapes are good at containing the stresses of pressurized cabins, but huge pressures on the cylinder’s front and rear ends need to be managed with strong, heavy structures.

Other futuristic ideas that the company have patented include the idea of an economy class seat for standing passengers shaped like a bicycle saddle; immersive virtual reality helmets for delivering in-flight entertainment; and, most alarmingly of all, a windowless cockpit.

The “flying doughnut”, however, is the company’s most radical reinvention of aircraft structure. The “simple and efficient” solution would involve passengers not only receiving their in-flight meals from trolleys negotiating curved aisles, but also learning an entirely new way of boarding. Diagrams in the patent application show passengers entering the aircraft through steps leading up to doors arranged around the hole in the doughnut’s middle.

The design fits with the concepts some aerospace companies have been considering as they pursue the next step in fuel efficiency. One exec at GE Aviation said designs such as Airbus’s could be aerodynamically more efficient than traditional designs. “It is an approach that reduces the overall fuel burn for the aircraft.”

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why is this an important OM issue?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the doughnut concept?

OM in the News: Airlines Fly on a Sugar High

GOL's flight uses a blend of farnesane and jet fuel — GOL’s flight uses a blend of farnesane and jet fuel

The red-and-white Boeing 737 looked like any other plane on the tarmac here at Orlando International Airport. But 2 months ago, the plane became the first commercial flight powered by a new jet fuel made from sugar cane. The passenger flight, operated by the Brazilian airline GOL, flew from Florida to São Paulo on a 10% blend of a clear liquid called farnesane mixed with regular jet fuel. And last month, Lufthansa flew a passenger plane from Frankfurt to Berlin on farnesane, which can be mixed directly with petroleum jet fuel without any changes to planes, engines or fueling equipment.

Renewable bio-jet fuels like farnesane hold the elusive promise of better energy security, reduced carbon emissions and lower fuel costs — an increasingly pressing concern as international regulators prepare to tighten regulations, reports The New York Times (Oct. 8, 2014). The global aviation industry has also set ambitious goals to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, including slashing emissions by 50% by 2050 compared with 2005.

Airlines like United, KLM and Alaska Airlines have flown planes powered by oil made from algae, used vegetable cooking oil and plants like camelina and jatropha. In spite of initial excitement, commercial airlines have not widely adopted bio-jet fuels, mainly because of their high cost. But farnesane could be more commercially viable because it is produced in Brazil, which has a robust policy and infrastructure to promote and produce biofuels. (Brazil is the world’s largest producer of sugar cane as well as the second-largest producer of ethanol. A majority of light vehicles on the roads in Brazil can run on ethanol, which is made from domestic sugar cane.) According to rigorous testing by plane makers like Boeing, farnesane and other types of bio-jet fuel actually perform better and burn cleaner than conventional jet fuel.

Classroom discussion questions:

1.Why is this new jet fuel an OM issue?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of farnesane?

OM in the News: Improving the Airline Baggage Claim Process

In 2007, airlines world-wide mishandled 47 million bags, or 19 per 1,000 passengers. Lost baggage was costing the airline industry $4 billion a year. Returning delayed or lost luggage to passengers cost an average of $100 per bag, and there had been a steady increase in the frequency of mishandled baggage. But airlines last year mishandled only 22 million bags, or 7 per 1,000 passengers, reports The Wall Street Journal (June 5, 2014). Why the dramatic change?

One big factor was that airlines realized when they started charging fees for baggage, customer expectations would rise. Airlines typically spent as little as possible on baggage handling before fees because it didn’t drive revenue. Now baggage was bringing in money and new equipment was easier to justify. Bag fees also reduced the volume of checked baggage, as passengers carried more on board. Airports got more involved and some invested in new innovations to move bags faster from the curb to the airplane belly. TSA sped up the process by moving baggage screening from terminal lobbies to machines built into conveyor-belt systems that can check bags faster.

Airlines also focused attention on the problem by sending teams of baggage experts to 80 airports world-wide and evaluating root causes of lost bags. One of the biggest issues they found: Airlines did a poor job communicating with each other and their own employees about bags. Baggage handlers often didn’t know when a bag was coming from another carrier or when a quick transfer had to be made. Another simple fix: Keeping tag printers clean and well-maintained so bar codes print crisply for machine-reading.

Airlines say the effort coincided with availability of cheaper technology for scanning bag tags and tracking bags. Key infrastructure such as airport Wi-Fi that could be used by hand-held scanners and computers mounted in baggage vehicles also made a difference. Finally, with more data available, airlines can tell baggage handlers when to shuttle connecting bags from plane to plane directly, and when there’s enough time to put bags into the airport’s sorting system so they can go out to their next flight with other luggage.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why did airlines decide to improve baggage handling processes?

2. What tools in Chapter 7 can be used to analyze this process?

OM in the News: Speeding Up the Airline Boarding Process

Jay and I just returned from a visit to Alaska Airlines headquarters, where we studied the intricacies of operations management at the top-rated U.S. carrier. One of the many issues we discussed was the speed of boarding passengers onto their flights.

In the past 3 decades, the airplane boarding process has become an increasingly important industry-wide issue for airlines and passengers. Prior to 1970, the average boarding speed of passengers nationwide was 20 passengers per minute. By 1998, this rate had decreased to 9 per minute. The increased costs of checking luggage will continue to play an important role in the time to board, as passengers are going to respond to increasing fees by carrying more bags onto the plane. As a result, the boarding speed may continue to decrease.

When using an average boarding strategy, the difference in boarding times when passengers have 2 carry-on bags compared to zero is almost 60%. Long boarding times impact costs. The total cost of airline delays in 2007 was estimated to be $29 billion in the U.S. alone, with the cost to airlines ($8 billion), the cost to passengers ($17 billion), and the cost from lost demand ($4 billion). This indicates the possibility for large savings for the airlines and passengers with more efficient boarding methods.

So a recent article by Clarkson University researchers to develop a strategy for boarding flights caught our eyes. The new method, published in the Journal of Air Transport Management (Jan., 2014), assigns airline passengers to a specific seat based on the number of bags they carry, causing luggage to be evenly distributed through the plane. Each row of seats would tend to have a passenger with 2 bags, a passenger with 1 bag and a passenger with no bags. “The new method would save at least several seconds in boarding time and prevent any one area of the plane from becoming overloaded with bags,” says author Prof. John Milne. “Airlines could provide a smoother boarding experience for passengers by utilizing the research.”

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why is boarding an OM issue and what control do managers have over the process?

2. What other boarding procedures are in place across the industry?