Airline Operations and the Operating Environment - Management Assignment

Internal Code: MAS5746

Management Assignment:

Broadly speaking, the term “airline network” has two meanings. First, an airline network means the network that is formed by those airports that are serviced directly or indirectly by an airline. This definition places an emphasis on network coverage (the “spatial” coverage) and the seamless services that an airline and its 2 Airline Operations and Delay Management partner airlines can provide customers. The second meaning of an airline network focuses on the more “temporal” attributes of an airline network. The temporal attributes of an airline network are characterised by the frequency of services between two airports and the extent an airport is connected with other airports in the network via various service types (direct fights or transfer services) and service frequency. The strong focus and competition, both on the temporal and spatial attributes, gives rise to various airline network models. Among these, some focus more on the temporal attributes such as a hub-and-spoke network, and others focus more on the spatial attributes or market orientation such as a point-to-point network. A hub-and-spoke network consists of at least one “hub airport” that plays the role of “collecting and distributing” passenger traffic among fights at an airport. Passengers fy to the hub airport and then either transit to another fight to reach their destination, or end their journey at the hub airport. To efficiently “exchange” transit passengers among fights at a hub, inbound fights come in “waves” (or “banks”), followed by waves of outbound flights. The role of a hub airport is to facilitate intensive and often dense aircraft ground operations during the time when passengers need to travel from one gate to another for a connecting flight. Since limited direct connections are available between spoke airports in a rubbing system, most spoke-to-spoke connections must be made via a hub, resulting in a longer travel time than a direct service between two spokes. In a large geographic region such as North America, there may be two or more hubs in a hubbing network to facilitate passenger connections. Question: (1)  How can air passenger connections, commercial interests, and markets possibly influence the network complexity of an airline? (Hint: you may like to consider different types of networks and pax connections and explore how this may affect network complexity.) (2)  How can aircraft routing and aircraft utilisation affect network complexity? (3)  How can crew pairing, rostering, and crew utilisation affect network complexity? (4)  How can network complexity be influenced by the pursue of schedule robustness and the practice of disruption management by airlines?