Weather delays and cancellations can be extremely costly for airlines and airport operations. Snow, ice, fog, thunderstorms, and hurricanes can throw a wrench into efficient operations and OTP with little to no notice.
Even with all the processes and procedures in place, weather can turn a well-oiled machine into late flights, unhappy customers, and staff shortages. With the recent release of our Historical Archive API, airlines can analyze historical data to learn from past weather events and enable smoother operations going forward.
Here are three different ways operations teams can use historical data to proactively prepare for severe weather:
1. Avoid Staff Shortages
Avoid staff shortages, which can lead to a domino effect of delays, grounded flights, and stressed employees, by taking a retrospective look at past weather events and creating a plan for the future. Compare past weather impacts on staff scheduling and shortages to better anticipate staffing needs and plan ahead for the next weather event. Couple this with alerts and notifications to stay ahead of the curve.
2. Minimize Delays
Delays cost airlines $74.24 per minute on average. The minutes add up when you need to ground flights due to storms or high winds. This is a great time to look back and analyze the data of past events. Was there a hurricane that grounded all flights in 2018? Was your fleet grounded too early by chance? Even having a few extra planes taking off prior to a storm could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars saved.
3. Avoid Equipment Damage, Get Covered When It Does Occur
It’s costly and time-consuming when there is hail damage to your aircraft or other equipment. Especially when it is at the hands of mother nature. You can analyze past hail storms with historical API to assess past hail events or other damaging weather and compare them with any damage that was incurred. Additionally, pull this data for any insurance claims to prove the storm resulted in said damage.
