Vistara Airlines

 Improving the on-time performance of the airline through field research.

Contextual inquiry and Field research

The Methods

Increased Vistara’s on-time-performance to nearly 90%, second only to the industry leader, IndiGo.

The Impact

Lead Human Factors Researcher

My Role

VP, Flight Operations
Ground Manager, New Delhi Airport

Collaborators

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The Problem

Due to flight delays at its major hub (New Delhi), the airline was incurring several costs, including but not limited to:

  • Punitive penalties imposed by aviation regulatory bodies

  • Monetary losses due to customer compensation, logistical costs, and trickle-down delay effects

  • Reduction in customer loyalty and satisfaction

Interestingly, the cause of these delays was not attributed to frequent technical issues with aircraft or delays in actual flight time. Delays were happening even when an incoming plane arrived at an airport on time.

If inbound flights were arriving on time and no frequent technical issues were reported with aircraft, then why were flights getting delayed?

As a human factors researcher, this was the question I was tasked with investigating.

Noting down my field observations for ground operations at New Delhi Airport

Research approach and method

If delays were not happening in the air, there must be something amiss on the ground - so that is where we looked 🤔
Field Research + Contextual Inquiries

Why I chose these methods:

Field research is a great way to observe people in their normal environments.

I was concerned about employees perceiving my research as an audit of their performance. If they thought I was tasked with identifying mistakes with the intent of reprimanding poor performance, I would compromise the validity of my insights. I wanted to ensure that I observed the end-to-end ground management process at the airport firsthand without influencing the organic behaviors and processes of the ground staff.

Contextual inquiries allow folks to describe their processes without relying too much on memory - reducing the possibility of details getting lost in recall.

For this research small details about the processes followed by ground staff were important. Moreover, it was unlikely that groundstaff would have time to participate in in-depth interviews lasting for 60 minutes or more. Conducting contextual inquiries offered me a way to collect rich feedback in a short amount of time without getting blocked due to recruiting hassles.

Key Insights

I found several contributing factors to flight delays

  • The gate agents were not late to reach the gate once an inbound flight arrived, which led to delays in starting boarding

  • The gate agents were unsuccessful in enforcing proper boarding protocol (by boarding groups)

  • Cleaning procedures were inefficient and created a bottleneck for different cleaning crews - elongating the cleaning process. For example, due to the current procedures, the vacuuming crew had to wait for the trash collection crew to be done. 

  • The load and trim sheet, which ensures that a plane is safely balanced by calculating weight distribution and center of gravity, has to be signed by the Captain prior to launch and given to the gate agent. This sign-off process was taking too long as the person doing the calculations would pass the sheet to the gate agent, who then walked into the aircraft to get it signed. This transfer was creating an unnecessary step.

Did you know?

According to multiple aviation reports, flight delays cost the industry approximately $30 billion annually 💸

Impact

According to a 2019 traffic report, Vistara’s on-time performance was close to 90%, second only to the industry leader, IndiGo amongst airlines of comparable traffic volume.

I co-presented the findings were presented to the CEO and the SVP of Flight Operations.

Our flight operations department, after Vistara one the customer’s choice award for the best airline in India