Whenever we think about writing a note about COVID-19 and how it has impacted airline operations, the first idea that pops up is to start by describing how no one in the airline industry, not even in their wildest nightmares, would have imagined the hinge that was to occur in March 2020 when, in a matter of days, governments around the world began to fold one after the other into the first major globalized quarantine.

In any case, it is a matter of leaving that «first thought» aside, because it is the obvious one, the most common one, no matter how much this idea tries to cling to the text editor screen. But in this case, I’m going to make an exception.

While the pandemic affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent, it was particularly hard on commercial aviation. That almost perfect industry, standardized in every aspect you can imagine, where every decision is backed up with data, with science, with technology, a lot of technology that supports highly skilled professionals.

Leaving aside the financial areas and the juggling the industry had to do to keep most airlines afloat, there was a specific sector that saw everything they had built for years, if not decades, explode into a thousand pieces: Network Planning & Scheduling.

Flying a certain route, at a certain time, with a certain aircraft, with certain services, is not a decision that airlines make randomly. There is a lot at stake, and the slightest mismatch in one sector can end up dragging the entire network towards inefficiency. Every minute of every human or technical resource is worth a lot. So everything must be justifiable with data.

But how do you plan a network in this context when the certainty of historical data has been diluted by border closures, vaccination rates, and mandatory quarantines? What role has technology played during the pandemic and how can it help with its recovery?

To answer these questions and others, on the occasion of the launch of the company’s white paper «The Art & Science of Airline Network Planning to Ramp up for Recovery», Aviacionline has video conferencing interviewed Cem Tanyel, Executive Vice President and Chief Services Officer of Sabre, a leading technology provider to the global travel industry.

What role did planning expertise play in this scenario, and do you think the industry could have foreseen in any way what happened with the pandemic?

Cem Tanyel: – To be completely honest, what we had to deal with in 2020 and what we’re still dealing with in 2021 and maybe for the next two years, is unlike anything we’ve seen before. We’re dealing with a paradigm that we have no experience in, so I think it would be unfair to our colleagues in Network Planning & Scheduling to claim that they could have seen this coming and prepared for it earlier.

It’s a very difficult situation to deal with. We have seen very small versions of this. Let me give you some examples.

With SARS in Asia, we saw a downturn and then a recovery took place.

We suffered through 9/11, which had a big impact on the industry. A lot of people in the U.S. said travel would never be the same again. They started to change the protocols at the airport. But 9/11, by its nature, was U.S.-only.

This was a difficult event for network planners to foresee. But, given the circumstances, they managed as best as they could.

At the beginning of the pandemic, they kept their schedule almost unchanged, and as the date of a flight approached, about eight weeks before, they would look at the booking data and start canceling some of the flights. This was the procedure during the first half of 2020 because at that point everyone expected a quick recovery, so schedules were maintained.

As the pandemic evolved they continued to adapt.

In our white paper (Editor’s note: you can read about this at the end of the article) we state that one of our beliefs is that network planners will continue to have to adapt. Before the pandemic, they relied heavily on the size of the source and destination market of the previous 8 years. For example, they would look at Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo, they would look at the size of the market, their growth rate, and conclude: this is our capacity and this is the programming that we will put in place. In this new era that approach just doesn’t work anymore.

So one of our beliefs is that this industry will have to continue to evolve, and planners and schedulers will have to continue to apply more intelligence to it. And that’s what we’ve proposed, a new methodology for them to really get ahead of the pack of where this industry is going. Because some of the changes are temporary, but we also believe that some of them will remain permanent, and they’re here to stay and I think planners and schedulers will have to change the way they’ve been doing the job to be successful.

And how should they work from now on?

Cem Tanyel: – Our view is that this old method that is based on collecting data from previous years, looking at the size of the Origin/Destination market, projecting growth rates, and then sets the schedule doesn’t work anymore. It’s not going to be accurate. We think we need to get into a much better understanding of segmentation and sub-segmentation.

We divide the air market into business travel, leisure travel, visiting family and friends. Planners will obviously have to look at these factors. I mean, we know that leisure travel is recovering faster than business travel. But that level of segmentation (or tiers ) is not going to be enough.

For example, in business travel, you have conferences, exhibitions, incentive travel, which are going to have a very slow recovery. But on the other hand, if we start looking at visits to factories, to supply chains, we notice that the U.S. economy is picking up, so that sub-segment of business travel is recovering much more quickly, and this is where our technology starts to play an important role.

Artificial intelligence (AI) applied to travel is something we have been working on even before the pandemic, having doubled our efforts in the last two to three years. We’ve brought in data scientists and data consultants, we’re moving forward in a partnership with Google, both from a «cloud» perspective and also from what they bring to the table in terms of artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics.

This is how we think planners will need to work from now on, taking all of these things into consideration.

How does human work fit in with this?

Cem Tanyel: – You can’t do everything with technology alone. A robust planner will have to take all these things into account. Technology helps. And this is where we see the transformation of network planning from a science to a mix of art and science because managers will have to take into consideration many of the constraints.

In our white paper, we used the example of Hawaii vs. Florida.

The contagion rate in Hawaii was very, very low. But with all the restrictions they put in place, it became very difficult to fly there.

Florida on the other hand is much more flexible because in the U.S. states can set different approaches. So even with high contagion rates, there were many more flights.

And we have also seen this in Latin America. At Sabre, we have the possibility to observe what is happening all over the world. On one hand, in Latin America, the vaccination rate is picking up, but at the same time, from a recovery perspective, overall the region is second only to North America. It is faster than in Europe. Much faster than Asia-Pacific.

I think this happens because we combine constraints with the fear factor, which is different in America, and here you see how technology alone could not solve a question like this, realizing the valuable contribution of the planner, whose role is to unify all the available information.

In other words, we have to take advantage of technology, but at the same time, we need to raise our antennas to see what is happening in terms of quarantine rules, vaccination rates, contagions, and government policies. All of this combined will help planners make the best decision.

Is there a difference in the approach to planning technology between low-cost and traditional airlines?

Cem Tanyel: – I think from a technology perspective, technology is important for all airlines.

We have a notion of what a «digital airline» is, and Planning and Scheduling go hand in hand with Operations, so the benefits of technology essentially help all types of airlines, whether they are network carriers, full-service carriers, or low-cost carriers.

If we look at the recovery process we notice that the low-cost carriers are doing very well taking advantage of the pent up demand for leisure travel, so in general terms, they are experiencing momentum, while the traditional airlines are adjusting at different speeds as much of their business is affected by border restrictions.

Most U.S. airlines derive a good portion of their profits from the business and international travel segment. And those markets no longer exist.

The pent-up demand is in visiting family and friends, going on vacation. Identifying these patterns is very important for all types of airlines, whether full service or low-cost.

Back to your question, it is interesting to notice that we see that many low-cost carriers are being more aggressive and more innovative in how they look at their markets and how they explore new technologies.

Some of the advances that we are bringing in terms of retailing, using artificial intelligence and machine learning, could now be of more interest to low-cost carriers given that they generate a lot of extra revenue through the sale of ancillaries.

So how do you bundle ancillaries with seat sales, where do you offer these packages, bundle or dynamic unbundle?

Looking at all the changes in the travel landscape, that’s where we notice that airlines will have to be very agile, and in that perhaps the low-cost carriers have an advantage and are proving to be much more aggressive. But we believe that all airlines will be able to take advantage of technology.

Airlines are trying to capture a lot of new interactions with their customers through their websites, and doing it manually is very difficult. You have to consider how you display promotions and packages to passengers to improve conversion rates. All of these areas are going to be very important. Fundamentally, airlines need to become better retailers to compete.

Cem Tanyel has an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, a B.A. from San Jose State University in California and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey

Cem TanyeHow did Sabre experience this whole process through the pandemic?

When the pandemic started, first of all, our executive team and our board of directors acted very quickly. We strengthened our balance sheet and the foundation of the company.

As our CEO said, this too shall pass, and in the process, we have put a lot of focus on the transformation of the industry, because some of the changes will be permanent, so our goal was to get ahead of the market and position Sabre in creating a platform that will generate the next generation of the travel ecosystem.

That’s the vision we have, and in that sense, we continue to evolve into the cloud, because we believe in those kinds of technologies, and this is where our partnership with Google has become crucial.

We also continue to invest in the next generation of distribution and retailing technologies, working with partners in both the airline, travel agency, and hotel sectors to find the best use of artificial intelligence and technology.

All of this has not made us lose our focus on innovation, and we will continue to invest to be expeditious in terms of transforming the travel ecosystem and innovating the market.

How are Latin American airlines doing in terms of technology and innovation?

Cem Tanyel: – Currently our network planning & scheduling tools are used by many airlines in Latin America, so we have a good sense of what is happening in that market.

I don’t want to mention any specific company, but we see that there are very innovative professionals working in the region.

As I mentioned before, Latin America is second only to North America in recovery, so in some ways that makes it a necessity for airlines to embrace technology and innovation if they want to come out of this pandemic in a healthy way.

How do you think the airline industry would have responded if such a crisis had occurred 30 years ago?

Cem Tanyel: – This question can be answered from two different perspectives.

Firstly, I believe that travel and airlines are very resilient industries. Air travel is in the DNA of human beings.

The pandemic was a very strong event. We are still navigating it and there will be injuries.

But whether this would have happened 30 years ago or 30 years from now, airlines will survive because it’s in our DNA. Air travel would have recovered 30 years ago as it is recovering now, and if it happens again, we will recover again. This industry has survived many events and will survive more.

Now, it is true that the pace of recovery would have been different 30 years ago. It probably wouldn’t have been as efficient because the technology we have now is much more sophisticated, and along with the collaborative tools we’ve been able to continue to do fascinating things. We learned to work with Teams, with Webex and Zoom, and we didn’t lose the rhythm of collaborating with our customers.

All this would have been much more difficult 30 years ago when everything was done on paper and with manual procedures.

Modern technology has made it simpler, but on the other hand, the complexity of operations has taken on a different magnitude.

Fundamentally, as I said, air transport is in the human DNA, we will recover from this and continue to evolve.

Those are my firm beliefs.

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