Operations Management Within The Aviation Industry

This assignment analyzes and measures how operations management within the aviation sector supports to acquire customers as well as allows airports and airlines to compete. It covers topics such as customer service, total quality management, and the impact of operations management on the aviation industry.

Operations
Management Within
The Aviation Industry

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8
Books and Journals:................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Operations Management can be understood as the administration of organisational
practices to generate the highest level of efficiency realizable within the business. It mainly
focuses on the concerned with transforming materials as well as labour into products or services
as efficiently as possible to increase the business profits (Abdallah, 2019). It involves the process
that commonly plans, supervises and control production and manufacturing processes, together
with service industry (Singh, and et.al., 2021). Operations in aviation industry mainly focuses on
the flight planning, dispatch, flight watch, operations control, weather data provision, ground to
air communications as well as integration with crew, maintenance planning and schedules. The
following assignment analyses and measures how operations management within the aviation
sector supports to acquire customers as well as allows airports and airlines to compete (Singh
and et.al., 2020).
MAIN BODY
Aviation is known as one of the most “global” industries- connecting people,
organisations, cultures across the continents. Aviation industry has continued to expand. It has
demonstrated long-term resilience and weathered crises,becoming an indispensable
transportation means. It also indulges the only rapid world-wide transportation network, which
makes it significant for multinational business (Bassi, 2020). It helps in creating job
opportunities, economic growth while indulging international trade and tourism. The nature of
operational management is delineates as the administration of organisational practices to make
the highest level of efficiency (Tuzcu, Sohret and Caliskan, 2021). The processes can be
understood as the transformation of inputs such as labour, supplies and resources into products
and services at low cost, thereby generating value. A good illustration of operational process can
be understood on how an aircraft is produce (Shang and et.al., 2020). By overseeing several
small operations, they are able to modify those inputs by exploiting a assembly line processes
into bigger and massive outputs, which allow enhancement in the design while configuring to
give customer satisfaction (Benita, 2021). The key agenda behind operational management is
vital to any business entity as this is the main product around the business develops. Although in
the aviation industry, there requires to be considered other key competitors that interact with

them in a direct manner and can influence decision-making such as alliances, government,
suppliers, airport customer, competitors and unions.
Travellers and passengers throughout the UK can plausibly point out one happening in
their lives where a air-plane did'nt live up to expectations. These issues may cover a lack of
amenities, poor seating condition and many other complaints common in the aviation sector.
Many of the people see these complaints may notice that security, safety and other major
problems are often not considered by customers (Berbeglia, Garassino and Vulcano, 2021).
Indeed, passengers take for granted that their aircraft is going to take off while landing safely and
all travellers will be latched from damage. The fact is that it is taken for granted as in UK, there
is premium on perfection in the aviation sector. There are different professionals accountable for
a part of this premium (Selcuk and Avṣar, 2019). Agents of tickets work hard to identify the right
air plane match for each of the travellers. Security department ensure that everyone is safe from
hurt from another person. Operations manager ensures that every single factor of the flight
process goes off without any occurrence. These professionals work with airports and airlines
with an intent to coordinate services with other airlines and suppliers within the airport (Vo, Xiao
and Ho, 2019). Managers often overlook a team of different professionals who work around the
clock to assist consumers and airline experts identify the middle ground i.e. required for
customer service. Identifying perfection in the aviation industry signifies ascertaining solutions
to issues that have not increase yet. Customer services and public relations are incredibly vital in
maintaining perfection in the aviation industry (Chang, Yang and Hsu, 2019).
In aviation industry, a good customer service always plays a significant role as it helps in
boosting the business revenue by making a sense of trust between the airline organisation and its
passengers. This enables customers to keep selecting the same airline organisation in future as
well. There are many operations in aviation industry such as flight planning, dispatch, weather
data, ground to air communications, operations control, flight watch, maintenance planning,
integration with crew and many more (Lee, 2018). It may also cover ATC and airport
management, gate allocation or slot control as a part of operations management in aviation
industry. Efficient airport operations are a vital factor of air transport system in current days.
These are strained by the progressing range of air travellers while sustaining safety, punctuality
and performance.

Management has a significant influence on the air transportation management in these
days. Having shifted with increasing demand from management to acquire a competitive edge in
the market, airline organisations are exploiting modern optimization techniques to make decision
support system for operations control and management (Dogru and Keskin, 2020). For the
purpose of providing better and high quality customer service as well as low cost, airlines spend
a tremendous range of resources as well as effort to make cost effective and profitable fare
classes, fleet plans, flight schedule, gate assignment, crew pairings, aircraft routes and so forth.
Airline organisation can improve their customer experience by several ways. It is
important to build relationship with customers, so the airline organisations can use omni-channel
approach to serve their customers. The airline organisation should be clear on their target
audience and identify their needs, requirements or expectations from airline services. It is also
important to listen their grievances and issues than communicate with them through several
channels such as email, call or even social media platform. By satisfying their unique and
specific customer needs, they can retain them for a longer period of time which help in building
relationships with them. Another method is to empower customer service employees as these are
the backbone of the overall customer service experience. It is important for aviation employees
to equip with technology, tools and information they need to manage customer queries and
implementing a virtual queueing management software such as QLess can help in diminishing
the most hectic airport lines such as experience flight delays (Magon and et.al., 2018). Deploying
a key management solutions support in making a more orderly approach to their customers. The
airline customers will get a notification on their phones as they turn approaches as well as arrived
just in time for the service, they required. Therefore, this is a flexible and convenient option for
the customer and they can choose to wait in the cafeteria lobby or somewhere else.
Flight operations officers are accountable for the regular running of the airline working
and control centre. They ensure that airline has the right aircraft in the accurate place, at the
accurate time, with the accurate crew. Flight operations managers meet their employees regularly
to discuss the problems, oversee all bigger operational choices while devising solutions to issues
that arise. Moreover, these departments also give advices to the operational issues that may
impact the performance of airline (Lurkin, Hambuckers and Van Woensel, 2021). Flight
operation managers are responsible to deal with major issues such as adverse weather conditions,
air traffic control problems. It can contain re-arranging slots when delays occur. They

responsible to monitor the aircraft to ensure that the flight run on time (Chowdhury and Paul,
2020). They arrange aircraft to undergo maintenance, and repair when necessary. This contains
liaising with engineering centres. These sort of managers also responsible to ensure that each
flight has the right amount of qualified and suitable crew members (Wu and Law, 2019).
The implementation of airline planning as well as operations management involves
various operations and activities. This planning begins with the strategic decisions which takes a
long lead time, for example, demand forecasting. The next step is to consider a set of inter-
related decisions of planning, for instances aircraft routing, fleet assignment, crew scheduling are
taken into consideration (Cui, Orhun and Duenyas, 2019). This process of planning are
commonly finished during the execution of the formed schedule which takes into consideration
flight as well as schedule recoveries.
Total Quality Management is an approach of management to long-term success through
satisfying and fulfilling the needs of customers (Braganza and et.al., 2021). In a TQM effort, all
employees of the business participate in enhancing processes, services and products and the
culture in which they work. TQM can be concluded as a management system for organisations
which are highly customer oriented that contains all workers and employees in continual
improvement. It exploits data, strategies, effective communications to combine the quality
discipline into to activities and culture of the business. It can be better understood with an
example of EasyJet Airways which is popular airline brand in UK (Meredith and Shafer, 2019).
This company is highly customer focused so they provide training to employees, upgrading
computer systems so the customer ascertain whether the endeavour were worthy. Total
employee involvement is one of the key concerns in the company so all workers are participate
in working towards shared objectives. In aviation industry, it is much likely expected to see the
shift of management attention from its functionalities to its customer experience (de Souza and
de Almeida Filho, 2020). Companies in this sector, are showcasing the tendency to downscale
the pursuit of the capacity and speed of their equipment and turn, rather to considering the
customer's needs. Such experiences are made sure by the airport's security measures, customer
perception of the service quality, capability of emergency responses. It is mainly get by knowing
the customer requirements and giving them with the services of needed quality. One of more
spontaneous methods is controlling the costs of airline tickets (Raut and et.al., 2019).

Despite being mainly connected with reliability and functionalities of equipment, safety
in airlines relies on the range of factors such as teamwork capacity, training and communication.
For example, the facilitators set reliable communication modes to make sure the synchronicity of
information between dispatchers, pilots, managers, together with public (Dožić, 2019). This in
turn, guarantees that the compliance with safety standards as well as limits the likelihood of
error. For example, most of the aviation organisations announces team work with each
department. Coupled with positive business culture, this approach increases the chances that a
mistake reasoned by human factor is timely perceived, reported and considered before leading to
any bad implications (Endsley, 2021). Training of technicians is also prioritized to exclude the
likelihood of unskilled employees performing vital operations. The short-term training and
enrolment are cautiously tackled to allow only the right staff members to qualify for the work
(Xu Chan and Zhang 2019).
Therefore, airline industry is a service based industry and its success and growth highly
depends on the level of customer satisfaction. It would be sensible to expect to delineate the
ability to know the existing and predict the most likely of the rising expectations of the travellers
and ability to fulfil their demands (Moon and et.al., 2019).
CONCLUSION
It is concluded that airports and airlines have been exploiting operations management
techniques. Operations management models and approaches have had a extraordinary impact on
the planning managing operations within the aviation sector. Aviation industry is highly complex
in nature as it is highly values customer experience. Total quality management approach
possesses an essential part in the operation management of organisation.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Abdallah, T., 2019. On the Benefit (Or Cost) of Large‐Scale Bundling. Production and
Operations Management, 28(4), pp.955-969.
Bassi, E., 2020. From here to 2023: civil drones operations and the setting of new legal rules for
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Benita, F., 2021. Human mobility behavior in COVID-19: A systematic literature review and
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Berbeglia, G., Garassino, A. and Vulcano, G., 2021. A comparative empirical study of discrete
choice models in retail operations. Management Science.
Chang, Y.H., Yang, H.H. and Hsu, W.J., 2019. Effects of work shifts on fatigue levels of air
traffic controllers. Journal of Air Transport Management, 76, pp.1-9.
Chowdhury, P. and Paul, S.K., 2020. Applications of MCDM methods in research on corporate
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Cui, Y., Orhun, A.Y. and Duenyas, I., 2019. How price dispersion changes when upgrades are
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de Souza, N.M. and de Almeida Filho, A.T., 2020. A systematic airport runway maintenance and
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Dožić, S., 2019. Multi-criteria decision making methods: Application in the aviation
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Endsley, M.R., 2021. Situation awareness. Handbook of human factors and ergonomics, pp.434-
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Moon, D. and et.al., 2019. Comparison and utilization of point cloud generated from
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Selcuk, A.M. and Avṣar, Z.M., 2019. Dynamic pricing in airline revenue management. Journal
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Tuzcu, H., Sohret, Y. and Caliskan, H., 2021. Energy, environment and enviroeconomic analyses
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Vo, T.T., Xiao, X. and Ho, S.Y., 2019. How does corporate social responsibility engagement
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Business Ethics, 157(2), pp.525-542.

Wu, C.L. and Law, K., 2019. Modelling the delay propagation effects of multiple resource
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Xu, S., Chan, H.K. and Zhang, T., 2019. Forecasting the demand of the aviation industry using
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Lee, C.K.H., 2018. A review of applications of genetic algorithms in operations
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Dogru, A.K. and Keskin, B.B., 2020. AI in operations management: applications, challenges and
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Magon, R.B. and et.al., 2018. Sustainability and performance in operations management
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Lurkin, V., Hambuckers, J. and Van Woensel, T., 2021. Urban low emissions zones: A
behavioral operations management perspective. Transportation Research Part A:
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Braganza, A. and et.al., 2021. Gigification, job engagement and satisfaction: the moderating role
of AI enabled system automation in operations management. Production Planning &
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Meredith, J.R. and Shafer, S.M., 2019. Operations and supply chain management for MBAs.
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