Managing disruptions in airport operations

A new guidance document to enhance the management of disruptions in airport operations

ENAC Alumni released today Managing Disruptions in Airport Operations:  Lessons Learned for Enhancing Real-Time Response & Operational Resilience. This guidance document was developed by a coalition of members of ENAC Alumni as well as non-alumni experts under the leadership of the Airport Think Tank of our association. The research effort was coordinated by Elena DJAKOVITCH (MS MTA 2010), Vice President of ENAC Alumni and Romain HERICHER (MS MTA 2003), Chair of ENAC Alumni Middle East.

According to Marc HOUALLA (IENAC 1982L & IAC 1989), President of ENAC Alumni: “This report comes at a time when our industry needs to reset the conversation on operational resilience. The implementation of airport collaborative decision making (A-CDM) around the world was a first step toward more resilient airports. Now, beyond the concept itself, working collaboratively towards more integrated operations requires a new mindset that is not necessarily intuitive. This ENAC Alumni project brought together a diverse group of people – including aviation professionals outside of our alumni community. The result of this thought leadership process is an outstanding report that demonstrates the excellence of our think tanks.”

For Gaël LE BRIS (IENAC 07T), Vice President of ENAC Alumni and Chair of the Airport Think Tank, “the recent events that have happened, at the midst of the post-COVID-19 recovery, show that the stakeholders of airport operations have still a lot to improve when it comes to planning for, and mitigating, adverse conditions. Throughout the pandemic, the aviation community talked extensively about building back stronger – including our think tank with the publication of our white paper Preparing Airports to the Post-COVID-19 Era: Ensuring Immediate Safety and Developing Long-Term Resilience. It is urgent that this “resilience jump” comes true, especially in the context of our industry losing experienced professionals, and with many organizations facing difficulties regarding the development of the next generation of operations leaders.”

Reflecting on the development of this guidance document, Elena explains that it started as a small task force effort. Initially, the team thought about developing a 5-page white paper in a few weeks. “However, after the first working session, we realized that we should expand our scope in order to embrace and address the complexity and the diversity of the subject. This is how we ended up spending far longer writing a full report!” According to Romain, “one of our main concerns was to provide practical recommendations to enhance the management of adverse conditions. We spent time gathering lessons learned and documenting best practices by building on the collective experience of the paper’s contributors. The document features many templates and tools as well.“ Complex new procedures can be a burden for the teams who have to implement and use them. The two task force coordinators recall that “throughout the development of the guidance document, we kept in mind that we need to foster collaboration through user-friendly practices and tools that, ultimately, make the life of the airport operations community easier.”

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE GUIDANCE DOCUMENT