Airline operations present a striking dichotomy. Each day, the airlines achieve the remarkable by safely moving nearly five million people more than 40 million air miles around the world. Often, however, they fail to deliver on the ordinary. Once the aircraft land, all too many of them taxi to a jetway and wait—perhaps for a ground crew to arrive and open a door or for the end of the traffic caused by another plane’s maintenance delay. Even standout, low-cost performers lose bags, keep valuable employees idle, depart late, and have billions of dollars in chronically underutilized aircraft and other hugely expensive assets.
These extremes coexist because airlines have historically focused on safety, aircraft technology, speed, geographic reach, and in-flight service attributes; on distinctive regulatory constraints and labor issues; and on the unpredictability imposed by weather and rapidly shifting demand. At the same time, issues such as route structures, excess capacity, pricing, and yield management compete with operations for the airlines’ attention.1 As a result, the airlines haven’t given their operations factorylike, industrial-engineering scrutiny. Great operators in other heavy industries have worked through these challenges to deliver low costs, high quality, and satisfied customers.
One hundred years after the...