Spanish travel technology provider Amadeus and global airline information technology (IT) consultancy T2RL came up with a new report which showed that flight disruption costs the travel industry $60bn annually. Putting it into perspective, the amount equates to around 8% of global industry revenues per year.
The report found factors such as natural disasters; strike action, bad weather, and planes and crews arriving late are the major reasons which contribute to delayed and cancelled flights. The report is named ‘Shaping the Future of Airline Disruption Management’. T2RL principal consultant Ira Gershkoff said that there is every reason to believe the historic challenge of re-routing planes, crew and passengers during disruption will finally be addressed over the next several years. He continued that after a period of limited investment, the will has once again returned across airline boardrooms, driven in large part by the need to deliver reliably on ancillary product sales.
With the release of this report the service providers across the entire industry has collaborated to mitigate the impact on the travellers.
The report added that industry regulations, such as the tarmac delay rule in the US and mandatory compensation for delays across the European Union (EU), help airlines to create standard procedures for handling disruption. Operation managers, airports and airlines have been urged to develop an integrated approach in order to address flight disruption issues. Additionally, the growing motivation of air-line boardrooms to invest in addressing disruption management could mitigate problems in the future.
