Airline Operations: Handling Excessive Weight of a Flight

This study explores how a station manager can handle an unwanted situation such as the excessive weight of a flight. It discusses the option of offloading passengers instead of cargo and examines the processes, procedures, and actions involved in minimizing inconvenience to offloaded and delayed passengers. The study emphasizes the importance of effective communication and coordination in ensuring customer satisfaction and preventing reputational losses for the airline company.

Running head: AIRLINE OPERATIONS
Assignment 2: My Airline Operations Learning Journey
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary
An airline operation is full of challenges and opportunities as well. Acquiring and developing a
career in the aviation industry requires leadership skills from each one of the personnel for their
sustained growth. The main purpose of this study was also to examine how the station manager
can handle an unwanted situation such as the excessive weight of the flight. The study explains
how the station manager can give preference to offloading passengers instead of the cargo.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Body:................................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Initial reaction being the Station Manager and situation handling process...........................3
1.2 Processes, procedures and actions.........................................................................................4
Actions.....................................................................................................................................4
1.3 Assistance to be offered to minimize the inconvenience to the offloaded passengers if any,
and to delayed passengers on-board............................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Ensuring compliance with the weight limit set for a flight is utterly important for flight
safety. Operating above the maximum allowed limit affects the structural integrity of an aircraft
and severely affects the performance. Moreover, operations under a condition that the center of
gravity (CG) is outside the approved limits can result in control difficulty (Bazargan, 2016). The
main purpose of this study is also to address a scenario where a flight is being shown to have
crossed its maximum allowed limit for weight.
Body:
This section describes the actions taken by a station manager under a scenario the station
manager is now into. The station manager has to show a positive reaction to the urgency.
Moreover, the station manager must also do something to avoid negativity from creating among
the customers.
1.1 Initial reaction being the Station Manager and situation handling process
A station manager is like a mediator between the management team of an airline
company and its travelers. The primary role of a station manager includes ensuring that fights
take off on time, safety measures are appropriately in place, budget for ground operations is
under control, adequate numbers of labors are available and that all resources are in place (Cook
& Billig, 2017). However, the station manager also needs to manage the unwanted circumstances
like canceling of flights to ensure operations running peacefully.
The cases study scenario does also speak of an unwanted situation where there is an
urgent need to reduce the actual carrying weight of the flight by either reducing the cargo or by
asking a few passengers to offload. Indeed, this is a very complicated situation as being the

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station manager; I cannot just go and announce my final decision to passengers. Rather, I need to
find some other way out to avoid any reputational or monetary losses happen to the airline
company and to ensure that there is no unrest between the passengers regarding the final decision
being taken off. Hence, the solution should be something, which is feasible with the operational
demands and acceptable to passengers (Bruce, 2016).
My initial reaction being a station manager will be full of surprises. I will feel like
having no clues on how to handle this situation. However, there has to be a solution to come out
of the crisis, and ensure that business is not a loss and that passengers are happy as well. The
situation handling process will mainly include coordinating with the concerned department and
with the passengers (Robinson et al., 2016). Coordination with the concerned department such
as the Load Control Department is needed to keep them updated with the actions being taken and
its outcomes. On the other hand, coordination with customers is required to keep them informed
on the situation and ensure they have no complaints with the service. Moreover, the station
manager will also need to ensure that their actions do not go beyond their duty guidelines. A
detailed description of the process, procedures and actions to be followed to handle the situation
will be discussed in the next section of this task.
1.2 Processes, procedures and actions
This section covers the processes, procedures and actions, which should necessarily be
taken to ensure that flight is able to take off and that no inconvenience is caused to the
passengers.
Actions

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The lists of actions that a station manager can adopt are as listed below (Bouarfa, Blom &
Curran, 2016):
Communications with stakeholders:
The stakeholders in the given case scenario are as mentioned below:
1. Passengers
2. The Load Control Department
3. Flight Attendants
4. Flight Dispatcher
5. Ground Station Attendant
1. Passengers:
Under the given case scenario, it is important that passengers have appropriate
information on the situation. Moreover, they should be told about the consequences of the
decision to know whether they have any complaints about the decision. It is expected that the
situation as such in the case scenario will cause inconvenience to passengers those who will have
to off-board the flight. However, the station manager will have to ensure that alternative
solutions like changing of planes are arranged for customers (Tubigi & Alshawi, 2015). Change
of planes might be time-consuming and the offload passengers can be late in reaching to their
destination. Passengers might have their schedules fixed and they would perhaps be missing on
it. This is where the role of the station manager will become important. Along with providing an
alternate solution to passengers, the station manager will also be ensuring that no disinterest is
caused by passengers. Effective communication should perhaps be helpful in dealing with the

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situation effectively (Holloway, 2017). Passengers should be well briefed on the situation and be
requested for their cooperation on the matter.
2. The Load Control Department:
The station manager will have to communicate a few things with the load control
department. As per the case scenario, the station manager is given two options, which is to either
reduce the cargo or offload 10 passengers. The station manager after selecting one of the options
will confirm the load control department regarding the same.
3. Flight Attendants:
Flight attendants will notify of the decision being made to the passengers. Moreover,
flight attendants will guide passengers to reach to the concerned department in case it is needed.
4. Flight Dispatcher:
The station manager will notify the flight dispatcher about the decision, which is being
taken to address the case scenario.
5. Ground Station Attendant:
Ground station attendants should also be informed on the decision, as they are
responsible for the smooth transport of passengers from and to the airplanes.
Deployment of resources:
To handle the case scenario, the station manager will need various resources to
accomplish different related tasks. Effective communication will be needed to communicate with

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Offloading the Cargo
Convincing them for their product safety
Calling the Cargo Vehicle
Communicating with Customers
Additional Expenses For paying compensation to other airlines
the passengers those who will be affected by the decision and the concerned department those
who need communication from the station manager.
Consideration of various possibilities and alternatives:
The various possibilities and alternatives are already there in the case scenario such as
offloading some cargo or 10 passengers. Being the station manager, I must ensure that the
decision that I adopt is meaningful to customers as well as to the airline company and that the
decision is highly feasible and is capable to ensure customer satisfaction. Hence, I decided going
with offloading 10 passengers as offloading cargo could be more complicated as compared to
offloading the passengers.
Figure 1: Offloading the Cargo

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(Source: As created by the Author)
The above figure indicates that there will be an additional investment required for using
the cargo vehicle to unload and reload the cargo to the other airplanes. On the other hand, in the
case of offloading 10 passengers, additional investment will not be needed. Indeed, this will be
compensated by the case airline brand for loading the cargo to another airline brand. In any
situation, the case airline company is going to compensate for the sudden change in plan.
The strategy will require me to take certain actions consisting of various processes to
make it happen. The processes to be followed will be as mentioned below (Budd & Ison, 2016):
1. Communicating flight attendants to announce the names of the passengers who will be
offloading;
2. Passengers to be offloaded will be selected based on the routes for which other airplanes
brands are available;
3. Briefing the entire situation to selected passengers in an effective manner to ensure they
relate to the situation and cooperate by waiting for other airplanes to takeoff;
4. The load control department, the flight dispatcher and the ground attendant should be
informed on the decision;
5. Paying a compensation amount to the other airlines' brands for cooperating by allowing
offloaded passengers to board in their airplanes.
1.3 Assistance to be offered to minimize the inconvenience to the offloaded passengers if
any and to delayed passengers on-board

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The best way to minimize the inconvenience caused to the passengers for offloading and
for delaying the case study airplane is to maintain effective communication with the customers
and the control team till the situation is under control, and that effective solutions are
successfully delivered (Bruce, 2016). In brief, passengers should be communicated why they are
being offloaded and how excessive weight could be threatening for the flight. Moreover, ground
station attendant should be communicated the entire situation and be requested to provide
accommodation of a few minutes or hours to the offloaded passengers. The role of the station
manager is just limited to communicating to the passengers about the inconvenience caused to
them and the concerned department to arrange next flights for the offloaded passengers (Tubigi
& Alshawi, 2015). However, this holds critical importance in keeping the passengers’ trust in the
brand alive and preventing the brand from going to reputational losses.
Conclusion
To conclude, it can be said that the station manager can play effective roles in a scenario
such as the one highlighted in the case scenario. By communicating to the right person at the
most appropriate time and by delivering accurate messages, such situations can be handled. This
kind of situation is a real test for the station manager and for his sustained career growth.

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References
Bazargan, M. (2016). Airline operations and scheduling. Routledge.
Bouarfa, S., Blom, H. A., & Curran, R. (2016). Agent-based modeling and simulation of
coordination by airline operations control. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in
Computing, 4(1), 9-20.
Bruce, P. J. (2016). Understanding decision-making processes in airline operations control.
Routledge.
Budd, L., & Ison, S. (Eds.). (2016). Air transport management: an international perspective.
Taylor & Francis.
Cook, G. N., & Billig, B. (2017). Airline operations and management: a management textbook.
Routledge.
Holloway, S. (2017). Airlines: Managing to make money. Routledge.
Robinson, P., Fallon, P., Cameron, H., & Crotts, J. C. (Eds.). (2016). Operations management in
the travel industry. Cabi.
Tubigi, M., & Alshawi, S. (2015). The impact of knowledge management processes on
organisational performance: The case of the airline industry. Journal of enterprise
information management, 28(2), 167-185.