A..AP - "As PREDICTABLE as Possibe". That´s what it´s all about !

Wise companies learn from crises - that´s widely known. And covid-19 could not be a better test, for all entities involved in air transport activity, worldwide.

Will traffic will peak up again ? Definitely, yes… but when ?... where ? at which rate ?

So many variables, as unpredictable as the virus itself, are involved, that our passion for "speed" is of no help, at all. But for wise people, there is always a broader message behind facts and that´s not different, here.   

If we just rewind the tape back to 2019, when air transport activity was growing at an average rate of 7 to 8% worldwide, we´ll surely realize that, for quite a while, “speed” was failing to cope with the need to improve airports/airspace capacity and management.

CDM (Collaborative Decision Making) initiatives, were already proposing “predictability”, rather than “speed”, as the key element, for operations efficiency and passengers´ experience.

It was getting kind of weird to hear flight attendants proudly announce “we have closed door right on time”, when we knew, by experience, how things could go wrong in a flight, after the door had been closed ! Or else, upon arrival, “we have landed prior to our scheduled time”, when we knew how troubled disembarking could be, due to unavailability of resources required at the airport.

Now, as we struggle with so many questions related to the unpredictability of traffic recovery, we face the fact that air transport management is all about dealing with the imponderable - weather conditions, technical failures, urban traffic jams, you name it…. all of them, unpredictable variables greatly affecting air transport.

That´s why “speed” can´t help and ASAP has long proved to be the shortest way to chaos, when unpredictable things happen.

Planning hates surprises, and Covid-19 seems to have reiterated that airport stakeholders are challenged to come up with a new attitude, towards wise use of airport infrastructure and airspace capacity. It´s true that strategic slots are defined, on a seasonal basis, to balance demand vs capacity of airports and airspace. But let´s keep in mind slots are meant to address nominal capacities under standard conditions.    

Bad weather will occur, airports will close, aircraft systems will fail and delays will happen. Well informed passengers will take some time to have dinner at the airport (generating non-operational revenue), with their relatives and partners at the destination, duly updated on their arrival time. Let´s not believe they would prefer to be standing on the line, wondering when they would finally hear the “last call” (funny, as the “first calls” were always the "last call"... for the sake of speed).

So, may I propose a look at Seneca´s famous quote:

“If you don´t know what port you are sailing to, no wind is favorable”

When I put myself in the shoes of airport and airlines staff, facing the challenge of providing precise estimates of aircraft and vehicles´ movements and tasks, I am tempted to rephrase Seneca´s quote:   

“If you don´t know where they are, no prediction is accurate”

Air traffic control learned this lesson decades ago, when airspace capacity was dramatically improved by the adoption of ATC surveillance technologies. Time has come for airports, airlines and all air transport stakeholders to understand predictability is all about situation awareness and plenty of non-ATC inexpensive technologies exist, to allow them to seriously look into CDM operations, within airport environment.

First things first !!! Prior to acquiring extremely precise sophisticated calculators, one needs to have more than whole numbers to feed in.