It wasn’t long ago that airlines were talking about getting data and then making it into something meaningful.
The industry is moving on, however, and an increasing number of airlines are seeing positive results through putting data to good use.
Step forward easyJet, which says it has managed to cut cancellations by two-thirds and reduce “costly three-hour delays” by 32%.
Speaking at the World Aviation Festival in London last week, CEO Johan Lundgren explained how the carrier has proactively managed later booking patterns because of a softer environment in much of Europe.
On top of managing cost and late deal initiatives, Lundgren says the airline has put a lot of focus on data as a “resource for mitigating disruptions in air space.”
“One thing we focused on was the schedules. I said last year that we wanted to be the world’s most data-driven airline. It might not sound exciting, but there are billions of data points, so we took a look at our performance last year, ours and competitors, to see where are the greatest bottlenecks, where they occur, what time of day.”
He goes on to explain that easyJet then simulated different schedules to work out what would result from an on-time performance point of view as well as a revenue point of view.
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“With that we shifted a lot of things within the program and made 52,000 changes to the summer program this year by moving things here and there by five or 10 minutes.”
He adds that this is just one of example of how the airline is using data effectively.
Lundgren also advises a fail-and-fail-fast strategy, sharing that “you can’t sit and design the perfect algorithm.”
“The other learning is that it does not matter how many data scientists you employ if the data is not available, easy, accessible for you to use and also qualitative to the extent you can actually use it. You need to start at the source of the data and ask how can I use it and also what problem are you trying to solve? You need to determine that really clearly, what opportunity are you going after and be really detailed about that.”
Final advice for the audience from the airline boss is to let initiatives flow once you’re seeing results.
“You have to trust it because we’re so hands-on within our yield, pricing and planning departments that we want to go in and fix things, but if you see that it is working, job done, just keep improving it.”