The Future of Airline Planning: A Strategic Analysis

Airline planning is inherently challenging, in part because many planning inputs are outside an airline’s control. The global aviation ecosystem relies on interwoven networks shaped by competing stakeholder priorities. Travel demand patterns are forever shifting and tough to forecast. Unpleasant surprises—including major storms, airport infrastructure breakdowns, IT failures, ground staff shortages, and aircraft delivery delays—can add significant uncertainty to any projections. This can be further exacerbated by global crises, geopolitical challenges, and other external factors. Making flawless decisions, up to a year in advance, about which exact aircraft should fly which route, with what crew, and how to react to unforeseen disruptions (and these are only a portion of the variables involved) would require airline executives to be clairvoyant.

Airlines could mitigate some of these planning challenges if they took steps to update their tools, methods, and mindsets. Many of the decision-making processes through which airlines establish route maps, schedules, fleet management, airport staffing levels, and so forth remain impeded by siloed communications and outdated technology and metrics. There have been some recent positive developments in the planning sphere. At the same time, many airlines have abandoned many of the collaborative and flexible approaches they pioneered (out of necessity) during the pandemic.

Factors complicating effective airline planning

Inflexible processes and long lead times

Airline operations are inherently unstable—often constrained by prolonged, externally dictated lead times that can require schedules to be set nearly a year in advance—and they are subject to uncontrolled developments, such as weather issues, equipment malfunctions, or airport construction work that unexpectedly increases ground times. The need to plan for a probability distribution of scenarios, instead of for discrete events, adds considerable complexity to decision-making processes.

Siloed teams with misaligned priorities

Historically, there has been a disconnect between commercial and operational planning within airlines. Fragmented workflows cause both sides to misjudge critical factors. Commercial teams will sometimes underestimate operational constraints when setting a schedule. Operational teams might size the impact of schedule delays without fully understanding the effects on the customer. Without the right tools and a common language, both commercial and operational teams frequently resort to inserting precautionary buffers into schedules to account for potential delays.

Inadequate tech

Technology often limits airline planning. Tools sometimes lack adequate capabilities, and upgrades can be very costly to implement. Existing optimization software is unable to handle the complexity of combining all the aspects of planning into one calculation. This siloed approach to employing tech also often leads to the use of narrow KPIs that focus on the activities of individual departments instead of the overall performance of the airline.

Clouds on the horizon

Increasing congestion in both airspaces and airports, potential economic uncertainty, and rising costs could all put additional pressure on planning processes, necessitating more sophisticated and dynamic solutions.

Positive airline planning developments

Creation of joint planning teams

Airlines have increasingly adopted integrated-planning processes to bridge the gap between commercial and operational priorities. Initiatives have ranged from establishing cross-functional planning forums to undertaking full organizational restructuring.

Agile process born from a crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic forced airlines to adopt unprecedented levels of collaboration and flexibility in their planning processes. Business-as-usual processes ceased in most airlines.

Improved tech to tackle complexity

Airlines are rich with data. Technological innovations can enable greater use of complex data sets and have given airlines tools that can inject the power of simulation and optimization into their planning processes.

A vision of fully integrated planning

What if … there was a single tool to plan the airline?

Rather than completing a series of hand-offs from group to group and optimizer to optimizer, a consolidated planning organization could use an integrated architecture that incorporates customer demand, aircraft availability, crew requirements, maintenance requirements, gate availability, and other factors to create a schedule that considers and solves for all of these varying constraints.

What if … customers mattered more than the schedule?

Airlines could make a leap from thinking about their own binary on-time performance and completion factors to instead thinking about customers’ minutes of delay and journey completions.

What if … flights were planned days, not months, in advance?

Imagine a world where itineraries can adjust far more dynamically to changing conditions.

The path forward

Building the tech and data foundation

Any effective future planning process will be underpinned by accurate and reliable data. Today, airline data is often fragmented and not organized in a way that enables a constant feedback loop.

Establishing analytically integrated processes

The fragmented workflows employed by traditional planning software tools are rooted in airlines’ historical reliance on separate, siloed systems for scheduling, crew management, and aircraft maintenance.

Reorganizing planning structures

Achieving integrated planning will require a fundamental rethink of how airline planning is organized.

Conclusion

The future of airline planning lies in integration—bringing together commercial and operational priorities to create a more nimble, efficient, and customer-centric process. But achieving this vision could require comprehensive technological and organizational transformations. The journey to integrated planning might be full of obstacles, but the potential rewards—greater operational reliability, enhanced customer satisfaction, and improved financial performance—make it a goal worth pursuing.

FAQ

What are the main challenges in airline planning?

The main challenges in airline planning include managing long lead times, dealing with siloed teams and misaligned priorities, inadequate technology, and emerging trends that add complexity to the planning process.

How can airlines improve their planning processes?

Airlines can improve their planning processes by adopting integrated planning approaches, enhancing collaboration between commercial and operational teams, investing in advanced technology for data analysis and simulation, and restructuring their organizational structures to break down silos.

What are the benefits of fully integrated airline planning?

Fully integrated airline planning can lead to improved operational efficiency, enhanced customer satisfaction, and better financial performance. By aligning commercial and operational priorities, airlines can create more flexible and responsive planning processes.