Airports hire graduates from aviation programs across the United States. It is only a matter of time before these same airports will seek analytics program graduates in their list of hires. Several universities have specialized one-year programs in business analytics, the discipline of using data to explore and solve business problems. We have access to an abundance of data but what is missing is a sustainable and pragmatic framework to have that data work for airports. In our very competitive aviation industry, the long-term success of our business will be determined by how well we utilize the intelligence garnered from the data.
Any discussion of data begs a reflection of our current state of business. We rely on data intelligence while pitching to airlines for new air service and to the community for creating awareness about the airport’s economic impact. We are familiar with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as operating revenue per enplaned passenger, on-time departures, non-airline revenue per enplaned passenger and number of runway incursions. According to the Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Report 19 article “Developing an Airport Performance-Measurement System,”
KPIs can be classified into six buckets: Financial Performance, Safety Performance, Operations Performance, Personnel Performance, Customer Service Performance and Community Performance. Most airport managers measure the success of running their airports using data-driven KPIs from these aforementioned six buckets. The point this article discusses is not a new concept, but rather a tremendous opportunity that is perhaps going untapped by not using the data airports already have to its fullest potential.
The current usage of data at airports has a variety of limitations. These limitations apply to other industries but in general the public sector has been slower to take advantage of data. There has been good work produced by ACRP that elaborates on some of the challenges faced by airports in leading the way in using the data. The current usage of data has small sampling size and the frequency of data analysis is on a monthly basis, at best. Data analysis is being handled manually, using Excel or similar tools. This approach is cumbersome and limits the scalability of data analysis.
Several airports are also limited by staffing and lack of proper training to conduct data analysis on an ongoing basis. These airports are restricted to using a data driven approach for Financial Performance and Customer Service Performance. The data analysis for Financial Performance is done not by choice, but as a requirement for reporting purposes to boards and federal and state-level agencies for grant compliances, etc. The Customer Service Performance data is generally captured and analyzed through third-party annual surveys. With the current approach to data, the power of data intelligence is underutilized.
Data Drives Big Dividends
Given the current background, let us next focus on the benefits of data to airports. Using data as the central pillar to making business decisions should be each and every airport’s goal. From a financial standpoint, a good understanding of an airport’s data helps derive the cost of doing business, areas for revenue enhancement, and the external and internal drivers for concomitant variations in financial numbers. The same data analysis applied to safety framework helps illustrates the number and frequency of incursions, accidents and injuries occurring at the airport. A rigorous data-driven approach helps you perform root cause analysis of these situations to address any deeper infrastructure or personnel issues that could be leading to these safety outcomes. The application of data to operations helps ensure that runways and taxiways have the highest uptime, work orders for maintenance are being handled in an expeditious manner, and parking assets and ground transportation services are meeting passenger demand.
The data can also benefit when applied to the personnel area. It can provide a deeper understanding of employee turnover, training hours per employee, and airport certification achieved by employees. The insights gained can help to boost employee morale, lower the cost associated with employee turnover, and training in on-boarding new employees. The data can provide gold nuggets to measure and improve customer service. An analysis of the nature and frequency of complaints along with demographics of the complainant, viewed with external factors such as time of the year, can help the airport improve signage, provide more food and beverage outlets, and offer relevant retail stores to passengers. The response time associated with these complaints and measuring passenger satisfaction with the response of the customer service representative are few other ways to enhance customer service at the airports.
Last but not the least is the category related to airport community. This predominantly includes data related to noise, environmental issues and construction projects. The data analysis could be used to better handle noise complaints. Perhaps, data correlation of noise complaints to the aircraft, carrier, time of the day, and day of the year can be instrumental in addressing and mitigating noise issues, not just reactively but proactively as well. Similarly, using data to get a deeper understanding of environmental performance such as number of hazardous material discharge violation can be a meaningful metric to communicate to the community to ease environmental concerns. On a similar note, it is instrumental for airports to capture and inform the community on how “green” they are from a sustainability point of view.
The benefits of data can only be accomplished if there is openness in the industry to share the measured outcomes. We can utilize our industry organizations to compile these KPI outcomes so we can see how we fair to comparable airports. As airports, we can also lead by identifying similar airports for sharing data benchmarks and results to assess our success for different KPIs.
Tools to Track Data
Utilizing the power of data has become easier for airports with advancements in software. Software allows scalability, real-time data analytics, and removes the manual process associated with data analytics of yesteryears. Software also allows for data analysis on an ongoing basis rather than limiting it to few times a year. This helps with sample pool size and increases confidence level in the data. Furthermore, use of software facilitates learning in real time and allows airports to adjust the business processes to achieve the targeted results. The key to finding the right solution is software that is configurable and customizable to meet an individual airport’s specific data needs and one that can adapt as needs evolve. Success will be determined by selecting a software partner who has aviation subject matter expertise and the know-how to achieve the desired outcomes.
Based on ProDIGIQ’s experience helping airports nationwide, the solution should be extremely user-friendly and intuitive even while dealing with complex and sophisticated algorithms. Another key that has helped the firm’s clients is the data visualization associated with its software. End-users can easily comprehend complex data visualized in the form of graphs and charts with data outcomes, as opposed to spreadsheets.
The whole discussion about data would be incomplete without addressing the intersection of data software and social media. Social media has become necessary for airports to market themselves and engage with customers. Now airports can use software to automatically draw insights from social media about what customers are saying, their likes and dislikes about the services offered and areas for improvement. This tool replaces the need for cost-intensive surveys on an annual basis. Furthermore, the process provides a bigger sample due to ongoing data gathering and allows airports to employ corrective actions based on what they are hearing from their customers in real time.
There are many useful resources that we could use as airports, including aviation-specific sources for data benchmarking such as FAA’s CATS system, ACRP, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Airports Council International - North America. There are even more non-aviation resources to master this subject including Ted Talks and Harvard Business Review case studies. There are two well-written books on this topic -- “Data Science for Business” and “Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight.”
We all have heard the saying, “When you’ve seen one airport, you have seen one airport” and that saying is even more applicable when it comes to data. No two airports have the exact same needs but one thing is clear --we cannot ignore the power of data on our business decisions in order to remain competitive.
Author Bio:
Arpit Malaviya is the co-founder and CEO of ProDIGIQ Inc. He is a Board Member of the ACI-NA World Business Partners/Associates and a board member of the Southwest Chapter of the American Association of Airport Executives. Malaviya was honored among Airport Business’ 2014 Top 40 Under 40 winners. He is actively involved in and serves on various committees of AAAE, FAC, and NWAAAE, NEAAAE, SWAAAE, SCAAAE and SEAAAE Chapters. Malaviya is a frequent speaker and author in the aviation industry. He previously worked for Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and was involved in a major strategic re-engineering initiative at American Airlines. Malaviya has served on the Advisory Board of Technology Management Program at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is a recipient of Barry Goldwater, UC Regents, National Science Foundation and Paul and Daisy Soros fellowships, to name a few. Malaviya holds a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering (EE) from Stanford University and an Undergraduate Degree in EE with highest honors from University of California at Santa Barbara. He has a patent pending for digital media technology for airports.
