What is Operations Management? Why is it important in airlines?

You cannot imagine an airport without a terminal, long queues, information displays, conveyors for baggage, etc. Airport operations have a tight schedule with different tasks like passenger processing, staff management, and much more. 

Thus, proper and timely management of airline operations can easily improve the quality of the service in the airline industry. So, let’s take a look at some airline operations and also know why airline operation is important.

Airline operations and their different types

The area of airline operations management has a great impact on modern air transport management. The airlines are using advanced and optimized techniques to develop a proper support system that can help in managing the entire aviation industry.  

In order to offer a service that is a low cost yet of high quality, airlines are spending a lot of effort and resources to generate cost-effective and profitable flight schedules, fare classes, aircraft routes, fleet plans, gate assignments, and many more. So, here’s starting with the main airport and airline operations.

  1. Ground resources: In this part, the emphasis goes on the [roper use of scientific techniques that helps in increasing the effectiveness of labor and reducing costs of the entire industry. The parts considered by this group are task allocation, employment planning, production efficient roasters, training, recruitment of manpower, etc.
  2. Flight operations: This part of airline operations includes flight watch, flight planning, operations control, provisioning weather data, maintenance planning, slot control, and many more.
  3. Maintenance: In this part, the proper maintenance of machinery and engineering are considered for the proper airline operations.

Airport operations and their different types

  • Airside operations

This part of airport operations includes airport traffic management, aircraft navigation and landing, ground handling safety, and runway management.

  • Landside operations

This part of airport operations focuses on parking facilities, maintenance of the terminal building, serving passengers, baggage tagging and handling, etc.

  • Information management

This part relates to the distribution and collection of daily flight details, storing arrival and departure information, connection with airlines, etc.

  • Invoicing and billing operations

This part covers the tasks like non-aeronautical and aeronautical parts, including flight bills, sales within the airport, invoice handling, staff payrolls, etc.

Is operations management crucial in airline operations?

The management of airline operations is really crucial in the aviation industry. The problems related to reliable performance have not changed a lot from the previous times. 

But with the help of proper operations management, all the tasks of the airline industry have become much easier because of those integrated and automated systems.

Mainly four factors of airline operations are becoming more and more important nowadays those are the growth of revenues, cost-effective solutions, social networks markets related to the airline industry, and the significance of global networks.

The role of an operation manager in airline operations

The operations managers of the airline industry need to have the qualities like thoughtfulness, team working abilities, adaptive and flexible attributes, as well as technical knowledge. 

The very definition of an efficient operation manager is that he/ she needs to work across different functions to execute a reliable, timely, and up to the mark operation of the aircraft and the other important tasks of the aviation industry.

Thus, operation management is very crucial for the proper, timely, and even cost-effective execution of airline operations