This paper presents an alternative way to use records from safety investigations as a means to support the evaluation of safety management (SM) aspects. Datasets from safety investigation reports and progress records of an aviation organization were analyzed with the scope of assessing safety management’s role, speed of safety communication, timeliness of safety investigation processes and realization of safety recommendations, and the extent of convergence among SM and investigation teams. The results suggested an interfering role of the safety department, severe delays in safety investigations, timely implementation of recommendations, quick dissemination of investigation reports to the end-users, and a low ratio of investigation team recommendations included in the final safety investigation reports. The results were attributed to non-scalable safety investigation procedures, ineffective resource management, lack of consistent bidirectional communication, lack of investigators’ awareness about the overall organizational context, and a weak commitment of other departments to the realization of safety recommendations. The set of metrics and the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods presented in this paper can support organizations to the transition towards a performance-based evaluation of safety management.
This research aims to find relevant evidence on whether there is a link between air capacity management (ACM) optimization and airline operations, also considering the airline business model perspective. The selected research strategy includes a case study based on Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to measure the impact of ACM optimization variables on airline operations. For the analysis we use historical data which allows us to evaluate to what extent the new schedule obtained from the optimized scenario disrupts airline planned operations. The results of this study indicate that ACM optimization has a substantial impact on airline operations. Moreover, the airlines were categorized according to their business model, so that the results of this study revealed which category was the most affected. In detail, this study revealed that, on the one hand, Full-Service Cost Carriers (FSCCs) were the most impacted and the presented ACM optimization variables had a severe impact on slot allocation (approximately 50% of slots lost), fuel burn accounted as extra flight time in the airspace (approximately 12 min per aircraft) and disrupted operations (approximately between 31% and 39% of the preferred assigned runways were changed). On the other hand, the comparison shows that the implementation of an optimization model for managing the airport capacity, leads to a more balanced usage of runways and saves between 7% and 8% of taxi time (which decreases fuel emission).
MULTIFILE
Export shipments arriving late at the freight building of KLM Cargo at Schiphol Airport is a trigger to deviations in the standard acceptance process. These Late Shows are currently handled ad-hoc making it difficult to plan and predict these events. In addition, shipments arriving on time is currently not a criterion for acceptance, while a shipment should depart on the flight planned at the moment of acceptance or the quality of the process deteriorates. By conducting a data analysis to quantitatively identify the characteristics of the Late Shows, and by conducting stakeholder interviews to understand the current process and discuss the future process, this research tried to design the operational process of the Late Shows to improve the operational excellence and quality of the acceptance process. The research shows that currently, late shipments are often still tried to be build up for the planned flight. It is found that 13% of these shipments do eventually not depart on the planned flight, while being accepted by KLM Cargo, deteriorating the quality of the process. The research concludes that the design of the Late Show process should include a check on whether the shipment was delivered on time, before acceptance of the shipment. By only accepting the shipment once it is decided that the planned flight is achievable or when it is rebooked to another flight, it is assured that the Late Show will be on time at the buildup buffer for the booked flight.
